September 17, 2021

Steve Schwarzman: Harvard Admits Its Biggest Mistake (Doubting My Sheer F*cking Awesomeness)

It still keeps them up at night.
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Earlier this week, news broke that Blackstone founder Stephen Schwarzman will donate $150 million to his alma mater, Yale University, to finance a state of the art student center that will be "designed to draw together students and faculty from all of Yale's schools and colleges and...will enable virtual engagement with the outside world in a dynamic way never done before at Yale." Obviously this is hugely exciting for everyone in New Haven, but for another institution of higher learning, it represents a painful reminder of the biggest mistake made in its 379-year history: passing on a young Steve Schwarzman.

Schwarzman, the billionaire co-founder of Blackstone Group LP, said a former admission dean of Harvard College later told him it was a mistake to have rejected him as an undergraduate applicant. “He wrote me a few years ago saying, ’I guess we got that one wrong,’” Schwarzman said Tuesday in a Bloomberg Television interview with Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle in which he recounted his application. “My number-one choice was Harvard and I didn’t get in,” Schwarzman said, adding that he called the dean from his high-school pay phone to ask him to change his mind, which was “like dialing God.”

Speaking of desperate phone calls, Schwarzman didn't get into more details but records show that Harvard's current dean of admissions called him at 3AM last Thursday, asking for at least the 11th time if he'd just consider applying again. You can never have too many degrees and an M.A. from its Graduate School of design would round out his résumé nicely.

In other news, look for a brand new building erected in Gothic architecture style just over the limits of the Harvard campus, coming in 2022, called The Steve Schwarman Suck It, Bitches Student Center, open to all Cambridge/Boston area undergrad, excluding those of a Crimson persuasion.

Schwarzman: Harvard Admitted Rejecting Me Was a Mistake [Bloomberg]
Landmark gift from alumnus Stephen A. Schwarzman to establish first-of-its-kind campus center at Yale [YN]

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