Well, the bribes paid in this scandal were on the order of a few hundred thousand dollars paid per admission. Another way to look at it is to look at the total

Well, the bribes paid in this scandal were on the order of a few hundred thousand dollars paid per admission. Another way to look at it is to look at the total cost of fully private preparatory primary and secondary schooling for a child, in programs that groom them to maximize their chance for admission (what a lovely childhood that sounds like). That's probably about half a million dollars, give or take, depending upon where you live. So I'd guess it's somewhere in that ballpark of 200k-500k. I don't know what the median size of donation-based admissions is though.