College Admissions Scandal

WOW. Just saw this live on CNN. There was and is a college admissions cheating scheme involving hundreds of people. The FBI and the IRS have worked on this and it is incredible. Check CNN.Com.


Quite an amazing story. 

I wonder how quickly it will get politicized. 


https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/12/us/college-admission-cheating-scheme/index.html

Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin among dozens charged in alleged college cheating scam


mrincredible said:
Quite an amazing story. 
I wonder how quickly it will get politicized. 

 immediately. I'm sure el Rushbo is already on the air blaming this on "Hollywood liberals."


didn't take long at all




Why didn't they do it the old-fashioned way and donate a lot of money to the University?  Cut out the middle-man.


nohero said:
Why didn't they do it the old-fashioned way and donate a lot of money to the University?  Cut out the middle-man.

admissions officers are apparently a lot cheaper than libraries


I think every parent in the world wants to give their kid the best honest shot at a good future. Honest being the key word.


If you think about your kid being the one cheated out of an opportunity- which you should do if you have the least bit of empathy or self awareness- you’d realize this sort of behavior is out of bounds. It doesn’t take a village, but I’ve always felt that having kids made it seem in some small way that all kids are your kids- “parent brain”. I think most people would recoil from the idea of cheating someone else’s kid.


Point of the ramble- this really is a big deal, not just someone wanting what is best for their kid. It’s repellant behavior. I really hope they get the book thrown at them.




Also, what’s up with the Z list at Harvard? 


I agree with JF. This is really quite damaging and the perps need to be treated like violent criminals. The pathetic thing is that if you have enough money for these bribes and your kid isn’t already a step ahead of their peers, getting them into Harvard or wherever isn’t going to help them. 


tjohn said:
I agree with JF. This is really quite damaging and the perps need to be treated like violent criminals. The pathetic thing is that if you have enough money for these bribes and your kid isn’t already a step ahead of their peers, getting them into Harvard or wherever isn’t going to help them. 

we need more affirmative action for privileged white kids with 1000 SATs


Isn't this what Jared's daddy did? Really, how is this any different?


cubby said:
Isn't this what Jared's daddy did? Really, how is this any different?

 Vast scale for starters 


nohero said:
Why didn't they do it the old-fashioned way and donate a lot of money to the University?  Cut out the middle-man.

 That's what I thought, but then I saw a headline where they were selling guaranteed admission for 6.5 million which I guess is cheaper than paying for building, right?  Also, everyone will know if you donate to get your kid enrolled.  That might have gone out of style.  These schemes, which include fake SAT scores, make your kid look like a smarty-pants.


nan said:
 That's what I thought, but then I saw a headline where they were selling guaranteed admission for 6.5 million which I guess is cheaper than paying for building, right?  Also, everyone will know if you donate to get your kid enrolled.  That might have gone out of style.  These schemes, which include fake SAT scores, make your kid look like a smarty-pants.

And which also include photoshopping your kid's head on an athlete's body to make them look like a super athlete.

I'm not sure if I'm shocked or not. I mean, for one kid's "side door entry" there have to be a lot of people who are comfortable with telling/creating a lot of lies. And it's your kid who has to 'play pretend'... a lot... and forever. 

How do these parents expect this will never unravel in an embarrassing fashion? I'm starting to think there are a more than a handful of actors who believe that as long as they (and in this case, their kids) are the great actors they fancy themselves to be, they won't get caught.  Or maybe they have lived in pretend-reality for so long that they think reality is... flexible.

My kid can't keep a gift a secret. So, should I ever be tempted to do such a thing, the likelihood that kiddo would do something to expose the whole fraud (or some real star on the team my kid pretended to play with), would prevent me from going through with anything like this.



how do you know the kids knew? Could they have thought (been told) that they were getting in based on simply their parents’ status? Or even just because they have amazing personalities or talents? I mean on some level they are aware their grades don’t match up but certainly they may not have been aware of the criminal activity, payments, etc.


the wider impact of this is really sad. It means kids who deserved it may have missed out on opportunities. To me, that’s the worst part. How would they ever “make that right”?


And why is anyone surprised?


Darn it this was my whole plan.

Now I have to have my kid work hard in school, participate in meaningful extracurricular activities and be a good citizen.


What's really sad is the outrage over this scandal compared to the lack of outrage over the other methods wealthy people have been using for decades to get their kids into exclusive colleges.


yahooyahoo said:
What's really sad is the outrage over this scandal compared to the lack of outrage over the other methods wealthy people have been using for decades to get their kids into exclusive colleges.

 One is dubious but legal and the other is fraudulent and illegal.


So what happens to current students who benefitted from this scam- expulsion? What about graduates? Do their  degrees get voided?


bub said:


yahooyahoo said:
What's really sad is the outrage over this scandal compared to the lack of outrage over the other methods wealthy people have been using for decades to get their kids into exclusive colleges.
 One is dubious but legal and the other is fraudulent and illegal.

Far more students have been screwed over the years by legal methods than by this scam.  


conandrob240 said:
how do you know the kids knew? 

In the example of Huffman's daughter, it seems likely her kid knew someone else would be taking the test. 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/college-admissions-scam_n_5c87d1e7e4b0fbd7661e15fd

ETA: Now that I'm reading again, in two of these example SAT cases, the student appears to have accommodations, like extra time. In other words, they may have a learning disability. For some learning disabilities (such as dyslexia) SATs may result in low scores for students who could exhibit much higher abilities in other mediums. In other words -- I'm starting to see how this route may have felt justified in some cases. 


Jackson_Fusion said:

If you think about your kid being the one cheated out of an opportunity- which you should do if you have the least bit of empathy or self awareness- you’d realize this sort of behavior is out of bounds.

Yes, it’s out of bounds. But although I got decent scores on the Self Awareness Test and the MPATHs, I can’t get too worked up about this on a personal level. The students who were thisclose to getting into one of these universities, only to miss out because some big shots cheated, almost certainly landed in other schools brimming with opportunity.


yahooyahoo said:


bub said:

yahooyahoo said:
What's really sad is the outrage over this scandal compared to the lack of outrage over the other methods wealthy people have been using for decades to get their kids into exclusive colleges.
 One is dubious but legal and the other is fraudulent and illegal.
Far more students have been screwed over the years by legal methods than by this scam.  

 I'm no defender of the ability to buy admissions with big donations to schools.  It may be wrong but its not a fraud or illegal.  It's certainly not a fraud on the school like this stuff is.  


I don’t understand the athletic scholarship thing.  For most minor sports, and especially major ones, the athletes have YouTube pages, their coaches know the NCAA recruiters, and it would be really hard to invent a fake athletic career, since recruiting goes through coaches and admissions.


My son does an obscure sport where there isn’t a lot of scholarship money, but when he competes there are NCAA recruiters there sometimes and they are all identified.  You also have to register with the NCAA to be athletic scholarship eligible.  If you google my kids name, and you were a coach, you could see how he has performed since he was 8.  It would be virtually impossible to photoshop and say your kid is elite at their sport unless the admissions and athletic departments were involved as well as the parents, which makes the schools just as culpable as the parents.


campbell29 said:
I don’t understand the athletic scholarship thing.  For most minor sports, and especially major ones, the athletes have YouTube pages, their coaches know the NCAA recruiters, and it would be really hard to invent a fake athletic career, since recruiting goes through coaches and admissions.


My son does an obscure sport where there isn’t a lot of scholarship money, but when he competes there are NCAA recruiters there sometimes and they are all identified.  You also have to register with the NCAA to be athletic scholarship eligible.  If you google my kids name, and you were a coach, you could see how he has performed since he was 8.  It would be virtually impossible to photoshop and say your kid is elite at their sport unless the admissions and athletic departments were involved as well as the parents, which makes the schools just as culpable as the parents.

The kids weren't going for scholarships.  They were using sports to get accepted.


Bribes were paid to coaches and athletic directors in exchange for making recommendations to admissions officials at the schools. I imagine the photoshopping was to give the coaches and athletic directors enough of a veneer of believability to fool the admissions officers. "I want to recommend Sally McAthlete for admission. I checked out her sports background and it's awesome. Here's a couple of pictures of her doing sports from all my research on her."

If the admissions officers trusted the athletic personnel, why should they go and do their own research? If there's a credible report on an applicant's sporting career that includes a couple of authentic looking pictures they probably were all like "Coach Bob McCoacherson knows about these things."  


Which is exactly how athletic scholarships work.  I just don’t see the need to go through all that. If you bribe one person, you have a lesser chance of getting caught than by bribing five people.


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