Columbia University-5.4%
Yale-6.1%
NYU-16.2%
Brown-7.1%
Georgetown-14.4%
Of the nearly 4,000 colleges in the US, only two of them with Stanford & Harvard have a higher acceptance rate than the application to be a sperm donor.
Average income of $12,000 a year.
$70 per “donation”
90% of donors being ages 18-25.
The job is pretty simple and pays $1,000 monthly for something many are doing for free everyday or even multiple times a day.
But to see such a low acceptance rate for something so simple, I wanted to see what is going on.
I recently applied to be a sperm donor online, was accepted passed the first stage of application process and spoke to a rep at the donation center for about 15 minutes to get an idea of the challenges.
These were the reasons I found for why people get rejected.
Reason One-Location
The US only has 20-25 sperm banks and while many places exist to do the “work”, they are still pretty limited.
Sperm banks don’t like using various people due to wanting a controlled pool. They know many who apply cannot get access to the banks regularly, so about a quarter of men get rejected purely from not living close enough.
Reason Two-Age
90% of sperm donors are 18-25.
The reason is two parts.
- It’s very rare adults who’d match family history requirements would be willing to donate, so the target market tends to be college for donors.
- Sperm count with that age group is the peak and people post 40 are so unlikely to hit the proper sperm count, they’d likely get an auto rejection.
For me, I’m over 25, but at the age where I’m in the worth a shot category. Meaning if I proceeded, they’d run some test and likely samples to figure out if my count works.
On the age factor though alone, that is over half of applications rejected.
Reason Three-Genetics
I actually applied with two different groups.
The one that said yes was a long paper.
The one that said no was a short paper.
The short paper asked height, hair, STD’s and if I had any illnesses.
I have a full head of hair.
I have no diseases.
I’m 90% sure I’m STD free.
I looked up the group and apparently anyone under 6’2 gets auto rejected.
Being 5’11, I’m out.
For the longer form group, the only reason I think I was given a yes on round one was three parts.
First being I was top percentile for SAT scores among donors, second had no family history of baldness and third was my dad being a doctor, which I read was the most in demand professional background among donors.
I also learned that what a donors parent or even grandparent did as a career can be key to getting accepted. It’s extremely unlikely an actual doctor, investment banker or lawyer will want to donate, so sperm banks rely on their kids to make that sale.
So… Thanks dad?
Reason Four-I’m not gay
I actually didn’t know this until doing research, but a quiet secret is sperm donors have to be straight.
Reason is a pretty unethical bias towards gay men with STD’s, which is similar to why for decades, gay men couldn’t donate blood. Which, those actually still hold to some extent, where gay men can’t donate if they’d had sex in the last 90 days.
Apparently 5-10% of applicants are actually gay and some even want to donate to have kids in a different form. Also just quick cash like everyone else.
Final thoughts
I don’t actually plan on donating sperm “okay still mildly on the fence”, but find the process amusing.
From popular media, I really always assumed it was just a simple process of whoever wants to make a free 50-100 bucks can come in and do it.
Found out it’s actually a process where 95% of people are rejected and age, region, family history, sexuality and more get factored in.
It’s basically like having a kid in real life, but even more cold rejections happen.
I also only made round one, which would mean after an in person physical and a background check, I’d still have about a 50% chance of rejection from here.
Kind of an amusing thing to learn though.