What was his GPA at MIT? Did his parents jobs get his exams marked higher?

Can't tell if you are being earnest but as someone who majored in CS at a HYPSM, I can tell you there is literally no chance that this occured.

I know kids who definitely got in because of parents money, but it certainly did not impact their grading.

I would exclude MIT from that list, but the rest of those schools basically have a huge reputation for grade inflation -- i.e., once you get in, you won't be given a bad GPA because you're paying so much. Grading people legitimately based on competence would piss of the parents/donors too much. Curious to hear your take on this.

My impression is that grade inflation is definitely a thing, I am not so sure that it is for the reasons you suggest (pissing off parents/donors/people paying for degree).

What grade inflation really means is that for many, if not all, majors at a school like Harvard, you can take a path of classes that will end up with you completing your major and having a high GPA.

That said, there are certainly classes that will be much less nice to you when grading and have a self-selected group of students. My guess is that if JS has enough people from, say, Harvard, they will know the difference between a student who took hard upper level courses to complete their major vs. just the simple basics.

In terms of why this grade inflation is so prevalent, one reason I think is that faculty want to have students in their courses/run a "superstar" course, and students select classes with the easiest grading policy. Schools like MIT (and Princeton as well) specifically combat this and so are known for grade deflation.

I was being sarcastic because I'm pretty sure it would not impact it in anyway.

Does it matter? He did an undergraduate physics degree, the only time his name appears on Scholar is in a book of his mom or a letter from one of their colleagues, and when it was over he promptly went to some quant company that gobbles up these graduates by the busload (and spits them out again). The least important part in all of this is the grades, or possibly even what undergraduate he did.

Gotcha and thanks for being upfront about your reasoning.

I'll let others decide on whether they find that reasoning convincing!

You "got" a different poster, though.