I appreciate your zealousness for MIT but your response doesn't mean that it hasn't happened at MIT nor other revered places of higher learning in the past, just that it hasn't been made widely known. The people I associated with at Cal I thought were above this kind of behavior as well, but apparently not. I would be sad to hear about this for MIT or any other college. However there's a lot of deals that happen behind closed doors, and sadly, it could be more than we think given all the press we've heard about college admissions these last few years.