This takes the cake. Parents wealthy enough to “donate” a building instead decide it’s a good idea to bribe and cheat their kids into top Universities. It’s not enough that their wealth can buy the best private schools, tutoring, prep courses, ghost writers, etc.
Story here: In what is being called the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted, wealthy parents, Hollywood actresses, coaches and college prep executives have been accused of carrying out a nationwide fraud to get students into prestigious universities, according to a federal indictment.
I don’t want to be a copywrite violation but a mash up of this an other stories had
parents paying a college prep organizaton to have people take the SAT/ACT tests on behalf of their kids in a facility where the proctors were on the take. (One kid scored 20 out of 36 on the ACT, then negotiated to get a 32.)
Set up fake profiles so they looked like athletes, and were admitted under looser “athletic” standards. Some select coaches appeared to be in on it and took hundreds of thousands in bribes
Others got their kids diagnosed as some kind of special needs, in order to get test accomodations such as longer time to take the tests and in a separate private testing section.
This just pisses me off. I went to podunk rural schools, the only SAT prep was a practice test book, you wrote and proofread your own damn essay, and I didn’t find out what AP meant until my first day in the dorms when my classmates grilled me on how many AP credits I had (I was like WTF is AP?). Now, I fully admit to doing the middle class thing of marrying a tiger mom, moving to a great school district, having tutors, doing the ACT summer course, the university application preparation course, campus visits, etc. Many (most?) students can’t afford to do these things, much less bribe, cheat and steal their way into University and displacing someone actually qualified.
Entitled shitheads that deserve some jail time, be branded felons, and for once not be able to use their wealth to escape consequences.
well it seems it was all organized by one main fixer and his flunkies and according to what a legal guy said on fox news is there going after the organizers and the college people
There waving the rico around act to get people to turn on the upper levels
the parents will likley get fines and embarrasment
I’m not sure that these parents had “donate a building” money. Certainly the money involved in this scheme was a couple orders of magnitude less.
Makes me wonder, is the distinction between legal bribery and illegal bribery in this case, the distinction between giving the money directly to the university v. giving it to people who were scamming the university? Seems the former is legal as church on Sunday, as long as it’s all just an unstated understanding. But like I said, the former also seems to have a price tag that’s a couple orders of magnitude greater.
Another thing that struck me was that there were eight universities that the parents were trying to get their kids into:
But only three of these - Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown - are really ‘elite’ universities, whose diplomas will open doors practically anywhere. The rest are good schools, I’m sure, but such cachet as they have is much more regional. The idea of parents paying big bucks and committing felonies to get their kids into USC, UCLA, USD, Wake, or U. of Texas just blows my mind.
The parents are dicks, but I’m not going to pile on the kids too much. In some cases they legitimately didn’t know. The transcripts have one story of a mom telling the ringleader that her kid was on the college tour and when asked about his invented experience as a track star told the college that he wasn’t on the track team because he was unaware of the scam. In other cases, they specifically discuss keeping the kid in the dark.
But, even the ones who knew I have some sympathy for. I’m not sure that I would have had the courage, at the age of 17, to stand up to my parents on something like this. Maybe some people would have had that courage, but I can’t fault kids for something that I’m not 100% sure that I wouldn’t have gone along with as well out of misplaced loyalty to my parents.
This is a story that isn’t a story. It’s the plot-line of many movies: Dumb, rich kid can’t get into Harvard until daddy donates. The only thing surprising about this is someone paid a half-million to get their kid into USC. :smack::eek:
This isn’t about going to a fancy, amazing school so that you have a great launch in life and have lots of opportunities. It’s not long-term. It’s about having a traditional college experience–greek life and parties and all that, in a carefully curated environment full of your “peers” and no riff-raff. Beautiful people to frolic and play with for 4 years.
If you haven’t tried to get a kid into UCLA, USC, or UT in the last ten years, understand that the game has changed. If you aren’t a recruited athlete or, in the case of UT, fall under the auto-admission standard (top 6% of your class, in state), it’s a crapshoot at best. I said this in the other thread, but I’ve had kids with 1500+ SATs, 12 AP scores of 4+, impressive extra-curriculars, etc, get rejected from UT. I’ve had two kids in the last few years get into MIT and get rejected by UT. I’ve got one right now with a likely letter from Vanderbilt who got rejected by UT.
This may well be because half the slots are being sold one way or another.
Anyway, it’s not that they wanted their kid to go to Harvard. It’s that they didn’t want their kid to go to a local regional university, or a LAC. They wanted the Big Flagship experience. And to get that for a pretty mediocre kids requires some heavy intervention.
I am too. State law is 75%. However, what I can’t figure out is if that’s of admitted or enrolled students. There are two important caveats to auto-admission–
It doesn’t promise you a slot in a particular major. “Weak” top 6% kids are admitted to the School of Liberal Arts, and it’s not easy to transfer to say, engineering, after the first year. You are behind enough it’s going to add a semester or even a year because you have to take certain courses in order. And if you hit 150 hours, you start paying out of state tuition.
It doesn’t promise you any financial aid. UT isn’t great financial aid for anyone, but if you are an auto-admit with poor test scores, you aren’t getting much if anything.
With those two factors, it means a lot of students who are auto-admitted do not actually enroll–they go to another state school. So I don’t know if on the first day of classes, 75% of students are auto-admits.
I’m a UCLA alumna, and I don’t know if I could get in today. I read recently how many applied over the last few years, but I can’t remember the exact number. I just know I was shocked at how high it was. I took classes there during my senior year in high school, so I was considered a continuing student and didn’t need to apply again. I was automatically “accepted.” I never went through the application process. I’m kinda grateful now.
Edited to add: 113K applications for the 2018 entering class!!!