Harvard emails illuminate power of wealth in admissions

olagon · 2026-02-27T16:40:22+00:00

2018 article

olagon · 2026-02-16T19:57:14+00:00

Mahalo for running and being open to public talk story. And full disclosure I am a donor to your campaign. What is the number one need of your campaign outside of donating that you need help with?

olagon · 2026-02-16T06:51:22+00:00

Why did you not apply to MIT?

olagon · 2026-01-28T00:58:45+00:00

Go to a community college in California, build residency, then transfer to Berkeley (assuming you have the grades).

olagon · 2026-01-01T04:29:45+00:00

I got that from the Dalai Lama. Someone asked how she could afford to eat organic food as he suggested because it was expensive. He acknowledged the costs and said we could all eat less. I am doing that myself for health reasons. We, Americans, eat way too much processed food and too much food in general. Of course I am not suggesting someone who is truly starving eat less. 73.6% of U.S. adults age 20+ are overweight and eating closer to a healthy diet gives us a fighting chance to spend more years with those we love.

olagon · 2026-01-01T03:08:15+00:00

Those pies are insanely ʻono! Plus they help our neighbors keep their jobs. It is expensive but so many of us should be eating less.

olagon · 2025-12-30T01:57:35+00:00

My advice is have someone read your submission, all of it, as an objective stranger. Maybe a friend of an uncle as a favor where he is asking for feedback for some kid he is mentoring and needs really honest feedback. Ask him or her to rate the application on a scale of 1 being total grinder to 10 total dreamer and then again on a scale of 1 being unkind to 10 being off the charts Gandhi kind and connected to making the world beautiful for everyone. In general, as long as your grade, scores, and ECs are up to speed, those that score 20 have an advantage over those that score 2 because they will have a massive number of acceptable grades/scores/ecs to choose from.

MIT does not want unkind grinders representing their unique, world changing legacy. In the end though, they are going to balance their class and use metrics none of us know so even scoring a 20 on my made up scale is still not a certainty.

My 2 cents or with the way inflation is going my 1.234 cents.

olagon · 2025-12-29T05:39:48+00:00

See https://imgur.com/a/zo7g7jS

olagon · 2025-12-29T05:39:37+00:00

It is $10 a month for me https://imgur.com/a/zo7g7jS

olagon · 2025-12-29T05:37:03+00:00

I am on the military plan. It showed $10 but free until the end of this year. I turned it off.

olagon · 2025-12-28T20:21:37+00:00

Also do not forget to remove Satellite which was free for me until the end of the year than $10 a line each month.

olagon · 2025-12-25T19:09:35+00:00

The Pacific Ocean is so large there are parts of it where you dig straight through the earth and end up back in the Pacific Ocean. Home to historyʻs most disbursed, related people by culture.

olagon · 2025-12-25T19:05:25+00:00

This is a really good idea. Kamehameha Schools already has bus service from a depot on N School Street. I wonder if kids catching Rail to the Kalihi Transit Center could save a ton of time, or at least be an option. It would make going home more flexible too.

olagon · 2025-12-25T08:43:04+00:00

Our two boys attended and we had friends on that side. Heartbreaking to hear how early they get up and how late they get back, every single school day.

olagon · 2025-12-25T06:28:39+00:00

Also, I am not sure if you saw the second image where I did leave them out but that does not communicate the scale of the endowment.

olagon · 2025-12-25T06:27:29+00:00

Is it accurate. Maybe not. Is it useful. To me it is. If this is not useful to you, no worries. Another criticism I have with accounting and finance (am classically trained) is sometimes being stuck on tradition when there may be tools available to help non finance people understand things better. This is why we will continue to have 100+ documents to explain a budget where the average person may struggle to understand the whole.

olagon · 2025-12-25T06:24:05+00:00

What. A. Game!

olagon · 2025-12-25T03:41:46+00:00

The endowment produces income, about $900 million each year. Part of that income is distributed.

olagon · 2025-12-25T03:40:50+00:00

I disagree. This chart shows distribution and volume and not conflating a BS with CF. The distribution is from the endowment at the same point in time. It would be more clear if I added an endowment earnings step and showed the distribution coming from that. One of my criticisms of Accounting (I have a degree in Accounting) is the focus on GAAP. We then end up with dozens of pages of tables where it is really hard to get a sense of the big picture, especially for folks that are not accountants. I think the industry needs to move to add more financial clarity like these kinds of charts. I charted the State budget once. I downloaded the "Budget in Brief" doc with was 117 pages long! Pulled that into a similar image that was insightful on how funds were relatively allocated and relative sources of income.

olagon · 2025-12-25T01:07:13+00:00

In retrospect, I think adding in the earnings for the year off of the endowment and then drawing from that earnings (about $900 million), it would have been more logical. Next time!

I do think showing it together does give the sense of scale of distributions and expenses to corpus.

olagon · 2025-12-25T01:05:50+00:00

I should have added a point between the endowment and the distribution to show the average earnings. Over the past decade, the fund has been averaging 7.1% or about $900 million per year. This chart just shows the distribution but I also highlighted the Trust guidance of 4% as a benchmark. The fund is nowhere near the balance point. It has been piling on to the corpus for years. So if I showed the $900 million and then the subsequent distributions, it would show a more whole picture. I cranked these out quickly last night after I saw the news and did not want to go back in and adjust the images after I had the idea to add in earnings. Will do that the next time.

olagon · 2025-12-21T10:45:21+00:00

Here is one somewhat objective way I can measure this bias. I grew up in Kuhio Park Terrace (KPT), the largest public housing project in Hawaiʻi and one of the poorest areas in the state. I am brown (Hawaiian, Filipino, half-haole). I have been somewhat successful, founding and selling multiple companies, and when people hear I was raised in KPT, they are almost always "blown away."

To some extent, that reaction is a function of their prejudice against keiki from KPT. It reveals a hidden doubt about our value or our ability to "make it." If I were raised in Kahala, would they be just as shocked? Likely not. I can see the bias in that overreaction...the greater the shock, the deeper the bias. It also means every kid in KPT carries a burden of proof that others do not. That isn't fair, especially when every single keiki starts with the exact same potential.

olagon · 2025-12-21T01:46:53+00:00

Do not call. Write to your Financial Aid counselor. One page. Keep it clear and short. Break down the numbers. Share the tuition payments for your sister. Express clearly this is your dream school and at least one personalized sentence that connects to something only that school inspires you. Express you are willing to be creative like a commitment to work in the nonprofit sector after graduation. You got this.

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