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The Children Who Didn't Get In
The 1909 Deed Says "Poor Children." The School's Own Website Says: IQ of 80 or Higher, No Serious Behavioral Problems, Parental Availability Score, Geographic Preference, Competitive Admissions, and "Being Accepted Can Be a Source of Pride." Here Is the Gap Between What Milton Hershey Wrote and What the Trust Enforces.
THE CHOCOLATE MACHINE — Post 6 | February 2026
"The Managers must admit as many qualifying children as capacity and income permit."
— Milton S. Hershey, Deed of Trust, November 15, 1909
Post 1: The Gift — What Milton Hershey actually said. What the trust actually heard.
Post 2: The Surplus — 91 years of "embarrassingly large" accumulation
Post 3: The Board — Same people. Two boards. Multiple scandals.
Post 4: The Sale — $12.5 billion, 55 days, 10 trustees departed.
Post 5: The Billion Sitting Idle — $1.2 billion. $900 million reclassified. The math.
Post 6: The Children Who Didn't Get In — The criteria. The gap. The human cost. ← YOU ARE HERE
Post 7: The Maneuver — Catherine Hershey Schools: genuine mission or sophisticated optics?
Post 8: The 116-Year Question — What enforcement would require. And why it probably won't happen.
What the 1909 Deed Actually Requires
Original 1909 language: "poor male orphans" — later amended by Orphans' Court to include girls (1977) and social orphans (children lacking adequate care from at least one parent).
As restated (1976 Deed): A child deemed poor and healthy by the Managers, who, in the opinion of the Managers, is not receiving adequate care from one of his or her natural parents, is of good character and behavior, has potential for scholastic achievement, and is likely to benefit from the program then offered by the School.
The enrollment mandate: "The Managers must admit as many qualifying children as capacity and income permit."
Geographic priority: First, born in Dauphin, Lancaster, or Lebanon Counties. Second, elsewhere in Pennsylvania. Third, other U.S. states.
Age: 4 to 15 years old at enrollment date.
What the deed does NOT require: A minimum IQ score. A specific behavioral threshold beyond "good character." A parental availability ranking. A competitive admissions process. An assessment of whether the child fits "program parameters."
What the School's Own Website Actually Requires
The following is drawn directly from the Milton Hershey School's own admissions pages — mhskids.org — as published in late 2025. These are the school's own words, confirmed by the school's own website.
FIVE MINIMUM CRITERIA (all must be met):
1. Financial need (income relative to Federal Poverty Level)
1. Age: 4-15 at enrollment date
1. IQ: score of 80 or higher on an IQ test
“demonstrated capacity to learn within the parameters of
MHS academic programs, with or without reasonable accommodations”
1. “Free from serious behavioral problems likely to disrupt the
classroom or student home life at MHS”
1. “Overall, have the ability to participate in and benefit from
the MHS program”
ADDITIONAL FACTORS (applied even if all 5 criteria met):
“Need is one of the most important factors. It is anchored by
a scale for parental availability. The highest priority is
given to children who do not have a biological parent available
to care for them.”
GEOGRAPHIC PREFERENCE:
Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon Counties first
Rest of Pennsylvania second
Other U.S. states third
ENROLLMENT LIMITS:
“MHS may need to limit enrollment by grade and gender”
COMPETITIVE FRAMING (direct quote from school website):
“Our admissions process is competitive, and being accepted
can be a source of pride for our families.”
DISCRETION:
“Even if an applicant meets the minimum admissions criteria,
MHS still considers a number of additional factors in admissions
decisions, in its sole discretion.”
The Gap: What the Deed Allows vs. What the School Requires
The 1909 deed, as restated, specifies that children must be "poor and healthy," "of good character and behavior," with "potential for scholastic achievement" and "likely to benefit from the program." These are broad, humane standards — deliberately so. Milton Hershey did not write a competitive admissions rubric. He wrote a mandate: serve as many poor children as possible.
The school has translated that broad mandate into a multi-layer screening process that narrows the eligible pool at each step. Some of those screens are reasonable. Some are concerning. All of them have the effect — whatever the intent — of reducing the number of children admitted below what a more expansive reading of the deed would produce.
THE DEED’S STANDARD:
“potential for scholastic achievement”
No minimum score. No standardized test. No IQ floor.
THE SCHOOL’S STANDARD (from mhskids.org):
“To be eligible for admission, children must attain a score of
80 or higher on an IQ test.”
WHAT AN IQ OF 80 MEANS:
An IQ of 80 is at the 9th percentile — meaning 91% of the
population scores higher. Children scoring below 80 are typically
described as having borderline intellectual functioning.
They are not intellectually disabled (that threshold is ~70).
They are not cognitively average. They are at the lower end
of the general population distribution.
WHO SCORES BELOW 80:
Children in poverty are disproportionately likely to score
below average on standardized cognitive tests — due to factors
including nutritional deficiency, lead exposure, trauma,
under-resourced schools, and unstable housing.
The children most likely to need what the Hershey Trust offers
are among the most likely to score below the school’s IQ floor.
WHAT MILTON HERSHEY SAID:
“potential for scholastic achievement” — not a specific IQ score.
Not a percentile rank. Not a standardized test.
The deed’s author described a qualitative judgment, not a numerical cutoff.
THE VERDICT:
The school has translated “potential for scholastic achievement”
into a specific IQ floor that the deed does not require —
one that disproportionately excludes the children in deepest need.
THE DEED’S MANDATE:
“Managers must admit as many qualifying children as capacity
and income permit.” — not a competitive process.
A mandate to maximize, not to select.
THE SCHOOL’S OWN FRAMING (direct quotation, mhskids.org):
“Our admissions process is competitive, and being accepted
can be a source of pride for our families.”
WHAT COMPETITIVE ADMISSIONS MEANS IN PRACTICE:
Children who meet all minimum criteria can still be rejected.
The school receives “many more applications from students
than it can accept” — per its own website.
“Your application could be discontinued at any step in the process.”
The school exercises “sole discretion” on additional factors.
THE STRUCTURAL CONSEQUENCE:
A trust with $23 billion that the deed says should admit
“as many as income permits” is running an admissions process
designed to make acceptance a competitive achievement.
Pride is the byproduct of scarcity. Scarcity is a choice.
With $23 billion and $1 billion in unspent income,
the scarcity is not financial. It is structural.
The school chose to make admission a source of pride
rather than a maximum-scale entitlement for qualifying children.
The Parental Availability Scale: Prioritizing the Most Desperate
The school's "parental availability scale" is the admissions factor that most directly implements the deed's intent — prioritizing children who most need what the school provides. The highest priority goes to children with no biological parent available. Children with one parent absent or unable to care for them receive higher priority than children with two parents who cannot adequately provide.
This is a reasonable implementation of the deed's spirit. Milton Hershey wrote the original deed for orphans — children with no parents at all. The scale honors that original intent by placing the most parentless children at the front of the queue.
But the scale also has a structural consequence: it creates a priority ranking system that, combined with enrollment caps, means children with two living parents — regardless of income, regardless of household stability, regardless of the depth of their poverty — are systematically deprioritized. A child in extreme poverty with two struggling parents ranks lower than a child in moderate poverty with one deceased parent.
The deed says: poor children, lacking adequate care from at least one natural parent. The scale implements that standard. The question is what happens to the children who rank lower on the scale — not because they are less deserving of the school's mission, but because the school's capacity is fixed at 2,100 and the queue is longer than the school.
STEP 1 — MINIMUM ELIGIBILITY:
Financial need + Age 4-15 + IQ 80+ + No serious behavioral issues
- Ability to benefit from MHS programs
Children screened out here: unknown (not publicly disclosed)
STEP 2 — PRIORITY RANKING:
Parental availability scale (no parent → highest priority)
Geographic preference (tri-county PA → highest priority)
Children meeting Step 1 but ranked lower: still potentially rejected
STEP 3 — CAPACITY CONSTRAINTS:
“MHS may need to limit enrollment by grade and gender”
Even qualifying, high-priority children may not get a spot
if their grade or gender is at capacity
STEP 4 — SOLE DISCRETION:
“Additional factors in admissions decisions, in its sole discretion”
No public criteria. No appeal process documented.
The school decides. Conclusively.
RESULT:
School receives “many more applications than it can accept”
Enrolled: 2,100 students
Not enrolled: unknown — not publicly disclosed
Applications rejected per year: not publicly disclosed
Waitlist: existence acknowledged, size not disclosed
WHAT IS NOT DISCLOSED:
How many children apply each year
How many meet minimum criteria
How many are rejected despite meeting minimum criteria
How long the waitlist is
What “additional factors” in “sole discretion” include
The Children the Deed Describes — and the School Doesn't Serve
There is a specific child the 1909 deed was written to serve. She is seven years old. She lives with her grandmother in Dauphin County — her mother is incarcerated, her father unknown. Her grandmother works two jobs. The household income is below 150% of the federal poverty level. She is bright but has had inconsistent schooling because the family has moved three times in two years. Her IQ, tested in second grade during a period of housing instability and family trauma, came back at 77.
She does not qualify for the Milton Hershey School.
Not because Milton Hershey would not have wanted her there. He gave his entire fortune for children exactly like her. Not because the deed excludes her. The deed says: poor children, lacking adequate parental care, with potential for scholastic achievement. She is all three.
She does not qualify because the school has established an IQ floor of 80 that the deed does not require. Her score of 77 — three points below the threshold, measured under conditions of trauma and instability — places her outside the eligibility criteria that the school, in its sole discretion, has established.
She is not a hypothetical. Children in exactly her situation exist in Pennsylvania. They applied. They were screened. They did not get in. Their names are not public. Their number is not disclosed. But the criteria that excluded them are published on mhskids.org, in the school's own words, available for anyone to read.
The IQ floor reflects genuine program constraints. The Milton Hershey School is a college-preparatory and vocational boarding school. Its academic program has standards. A child who cannot function academically at MHS’s level would not benefit from attending — and might be worse off than in a setting better matched to their needs. The 80 IQ floor is not arbitrary cruelty. It reflects a genuine assessment of what the school can serve well.
The behavioral screen protects enrolled students. A residential school where children live in homes of 8-12 students requires behavioral stability from all residents. One student with severe behavioral dysregulation can harm the entire cohort. The behavioral screen protects the children already enrolled — who are themselves the school’s primary mission beneficiaries.
The competitive framing may reflect honest capacity constraints. The school may genuinely receive far more qualified applications than it has capacity for — not because it has chosen to limit capacity, but because 2,100 spaces is what currently exists. A competitive process with “sole discretion” may be the only practical way to allocate scarce spots among many deserving children.
What this post does not claim: That the admissions criteria are designed to exclude children. That individual admissions officers are acting in bad faith. That the IQ floor is motivated by anything other than program fit. The argument is structural: the criteria, whatever their intent, narrow the eligible pool below what the deed’s mandate requires — at a school with $23 billion and $1 billion in unspent income. The criteria reflect a capacity constraint. The capacity constraint is a choice.
The Number Nobody Will Publish
The Milton Hershey School does not publish the number of children who applied and were rejected in any given year. It does not publish the size of its waitlist. It does not publish how many children met minimum eligibility criteria but could not be accommodated due to grade or gender capacity limits. It does not publish how many were rejected on the "additional factors" applied in the school's "sole discretion."
ProPublica's 2021 investigation confirmed that the school "receives many more applications from students than it can accept." That sentence — from the school's own website — is the only public acknowledgment that there is a gap between demand and supply.
The gap, at $23 billion, is a choice. The school has the income to serve more children. The 1998 Pennsylvania law allows it to spend up to 7% of assets annually by a simple board vote. The deed mandates admitting as many as income permits. The school chooses not to expand capacity to match income — and declines to publish the number of children turned away as a result.
That number — the children who applied, qualified in some measure, and were told the school had no room — is the most important number in this investigation. It is the direct measure of the gap between Milton Hershey's four words and the trust's 116-year response to them.
The trust has chosen not to count it publicly. Or if it counts it privately, it has chosen not to share it.
In Post 7, we examine the trust's most recent response to this criticism — the Catherine Hershey Schools expansion — and ask whether it represents genuine mission fulfillment or a sophisticated reframing of what "as many as possible" means.
PRIMARY SOURCES FOR THIS POST:
Milton Hershey School admissions website (mhskids.org/admissions/admissions-criteria/, mhskids.org/recruitment-and-admissions/eligibility-criteria/, mhskids.org/admissions/application-process/): All admissions criteria quoted directly — IQ floor (80+), five minimum criteria, parental availability scale, geographic preference, grade/gender capacity limits, “sole discretion” language, “competitive” framing, “source of pride” quotation. All direct quotations confirmed from the school’s own published pages as of late 2025. The Second Restated Deed of Trust (1976): Beneficiary definition — “poor and healthy,” “good character and behavior,” “potential for scholastic achievement,” “as many as income permits.” Comparison between deed language and school criteria: author’s analysis of published documents. ProPublica/Spotlight PA (2021): Confirmed “receives many more applications from students than it can accept” and competitive admissions framing.
ON THE HYPOTHETICAL CHILD:
The seven-year-old described in this post is a composite hypothetical — constructed from the documented admissions criteria to illustrate their application to a real type of child. She is not a specific named individual. The scenario is factually accurate to how the criteria would apply: a child with an IQ of 77 tested under conditions of trauma and instability would not meet the school’s stated IQ minimum of 80, regardless of other circumstances. The hypothetical is clearly labeled as such.
WHAT COMES NEXT:
Post 7 documents the Catherine Hershey Schools — the trust’s $350 million preschool initiative, court-approved, currently serving hundreds of children — and asks the question the trust’s defenders have not fully answered: does serving 900 children in day-care preschool programs honor the deed’s mandate to admit “as many qualifying children as income permits” to the residential school itself?
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