The hedge fund billionaire D E Shaw has “applied his fund’s risk-averse, quantitative approach to nearly every aspect of his life”, including his children’s college admissions, deploying “a remarkably elaborate and expensive pattern of philanthropy to seven of the most renowned universities in the country.”
… the Shaw Family Endowment Fund donated $1 million annually to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford and at least $500,000 each to Columbia and Brown. The pattern persisted through 2017, the most recent year for which public filings are available, with a bump in giving to Columbia to $1 million a year in 2016 and 2017. The foundation, which lists Kobliner as president and Shaw as treasurer and secretary, has also contributed $200,000 annually to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2013.
… investing in multiple colleges is a classic asymmetric bet — one with minimal risk and massive potential upside.
– The Wall Street Billionaire and the Ultimate College Hedge
The article as a whole is a look into Shaw’s family staff’s hiring and working, and worth a one-time read.
Ps: both of Shaw’s college-going kids got into Yale, one of the colleges in the donations list.