Feds uncover large-scale college entrance exam cheating plot

[Anonymous]

Test prepping, tutoring, accommodations, and affirmative action are not the same thing as cheating.

Admitting people who will affect the lives of many other people due to their position (e.g. a crown prince in one example) is not unfair.

Accepting large donations that benefit the entire school community with a wink that a dum dum kid will be admitted, isn't fair, but it's not cheating. Lower expectations for student athletes during admissions isn't fair, but because they attract more students/more money which helps the school community, so it's not cheating.

Paying someone to take a test, lying about achievements, falsely representing learning disabilities for accommodations, bribing school officials to assert that you are a student athlete, while doing nothing to contribute to your school community such as excelling at a sport or adding prestige, is cheating.

There is a difference between what is unfair, and what is cheating. I think it's super unfair, but not cheating, that other people have trust funds, safety nets, inheritances, private schools educations and connections that they can leverage for more privilege- while I just had hard work and a state school where I owed student debt, because that's what we could afford...but such is life. I have advantages too--it's relative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The one family paid $250k to get their son into USC and then he withdrew after one year.

Which family?

USC issued a formal acceptance letter to MACFARLANE’s son on or about March 23, 2017. On or about April 18, 2017, MACFARLANE paid CW-1 $200,000 via a check to the KWF charity. MACFARLANE wrote “Real Estate Consulting” in the memo line of the check.
479. MACFARLANE’s son attended USC briefly, but withdrew in or about May 2018. He did not play basketball at USC.

Thanks, and hahahahahahahaha for them. I scanned the whole 200+ page complaint but didn’t remember seeing that.

[Anonymous]

I'd be pissed if I paid $250k k-12 for my kid to end up at WVU or UMD not gonna lie. That sucks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm worried about this story because of how it is going to affect affirmative action.

This story, coupled with the lawsuit in Harvard, is all about the 'two tiers' that exist to get into schools--one the regular merit-based application and the other about 'hooks' that can get you in, be it legacy, donations, athletics and yes, affirmative action. Anything that is giving anyone a leg up is now suspect, and if you think affirmative action isn't going to be the 'baby with the bath water' you aren't paying attention. Those who oppose affirmative action are already using this story already in their assault on preferences of any sort.

Yea it's fun to watch some rich white people squirm, but longer term things are a bit more dicey.

What’s wrong with the caltech / Oxbridge model of admissions?

Not enough white kids will get admitted, their parents will howl about how unfair it is that they have to compete with Asian students who will work harder and study more, and the push will be back on for 'holistic' admissions but without any consideration for URMs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, one point of clarification on the crew/athletics front.

The kids never turned up for crew. So there was no oversight, and no coach or AD to notice the student was not "built like a rower" or whatever.

The "recruited athlete" piece was ONLY for admissions, to get the bar low enough that these kids could cross it.

Which, if you think about it, is amazing. These students had literally every educational and social privilege possible. Prestigious PK-12 private schools, essay coaches, admissions advisors, test tutors - and they still needed a lower bar to get into college.

That's shocking when you look at it.

These are kids who should have started at community college and lived at home. Their parents' egos couldn't accept that reality.

This scandal is so much more about the parents than it is about the kids. It's all about "saving face" for the parents among their peer group.

You can bribe your kid's way into Yale or Georgetown. But if he's not smart, he's not going to be successful at a hedge fund or law firm. In fact, your mediocre sum will become a ripe target for the much smarter and morally devoid individuals who travel in those circles.

My husband has worked at a hedge fund. You do not need to smart to work at a hedge fund (Except for the quants). You need a network - which many wealthy people have.

Let's not confuse intelligence with connections.

Exactly. This notion that bad behavior is somehow self-policing because the rich kid is just going to fail eventually, is naive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The one family paid $250k to get their son into USC and then he withdrew after one year.

Which family?

USC issued a formal acceptance letter to MACFARLANE’s son on or about March 23, 2017. On or about April 18, 2017, MACFARLANE paid CW-1 $200,000 via a check to the KWF charity. MACFARLANE wrote “Real Estate Consulting” in the memo line of the check.
479. MACFARLANE’s son attended USC briefly, but withdrew in or about May 2018. He did not play basketball at USC.

Thanks, and hahahahahahahaha for them. I scanned the whole 200+ page complaint but didn’t remember seeing that.

This dude was a senior executive at a Title Insurance company. Further proof that Title Insurance is a scam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Frank Bruni's op ed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/opinion/college-bribery-admissions.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

It may be legal to pledge $2.5 million to Harvard just as your son is applying — which is what Jared Kushner’s father did for him — and illegal to bribe a coach to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but how much of a difference is there, really? Both elevate money over accomplishment. Both are ways of cutting in line.

It may be legal to give $50,000 to a private consultant who massages your child’s transcript and perfumes your child’s essays, and illegal to pay someone for a patently fictive test score, but aren’t both exercises in deception reserved for those who can afford them?

I used a college consultant to help my child pick schools. The choices are overwhelming and understanding which schools are a good fit was helpful. The people who criticize test prep and college consultants always overstate what they provide to make them seem shady.

[Anonymous]

Serious question: are those parents who are lawyers going to be disbarred? I think a partner of one white shoe firm is caught up in this. A few others are clearly attorneys by training.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Serious question: are those parents who are lawyers going to be disbarred? I think a partner of one white shoe firm is caught up in this. A few others are clearly attorneys by training.

I hope so. This whole system is rotten to the core

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting fact. Georgetown allowed usage of their courts to hold a USTA tennis tournament a few years back to benefit a Wounded Warrior charity. I remember seeing one kid that was on G-town tennis team and participated in the tournament. He was definitely not a DI tennis material. I was kind of shocked by how bad he was and was told he was at the bottom of G-town roster. All G-town male tennis players didn’t show up for next round, so I wonder if this kid was one of the “bribe” kids. I am sure this been going on for years and more is yet to come.

No. These kids are called GPA booster kids. They have really high GPAs, they bring up the team GPS, they travel with the team and they get all the cool internships.

another way to play the system.

There are legitimate walk-ons on college teams or "lesser athletes" who are brought into the team by the coach. They're not necessarily "fraud" kids.

Why are you mad at the kids? Who made the rules about GPAs on athletic teams? NCAA? The college? Not the athletes.

Hate the game, not the players.

Also I think tennis can be a bit different- it’s not like a team sport where bench players are subbing in to the game. Players at the bottom of a tennis roster are probably only playing when their score won’t matter. For many marginal players who will not get a scholarship, it is not worth their time. So you end up with players rounding out the team that are a good notch below the starters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Test prepping, tutoring, accommodations, and affirmative action are not the same thing as cheating.

Admitting people who will affect the lives of many other people due to their position (e.g. a crown prince in one example) is not unfair.

Accepting large donations that benefit the entire school community with a wink that a dum dum kid will be admitted, isn't fair, but it's not cheating. Lower expectations for student athletes during admissions isn't fair, but because they attract more students/more money which helps the school community, so it's not cheating.

Paying someone to take a test, lying about achievements, falsely representing learning disabilities for accommodations, bribing school officials to assert that you are a student athlete, while doing nothing to contribute to your school community such as excelling at a sport or adding prestige, is cheating.

There is a difference between what is unfair, and what is cheating. I think it's super unfair, but not cheating, that other people have trust funds, safety nets, inheritances, private schools educations and connections that they can leverage for more privilege- while I just had hard work and a state school where I owed student debt, because that's what we could afford...but such is life. I have advantages too--it's relative.

Thanks.
Where do we place the amphetamines prescriptions on this continuum and the questionable ADHD diagnoses used to procure them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Frank Bruni's op ed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/opinion/college-bribery-admissions.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

It may be legal to pledge $2.5 million to Harvard just as your son is applying — which is what Jared Kushner’s father did for him — and illegal to bribe a coach to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but how much of a difference is there, really? Both elevate money over accomplishment. Both are ways of cutting in line.

It may be legal to give $50,000 to a private consultant who massages your child’s transcript and perfumes your child’s essays, and illegal to pay someone for a patently fictive test score, but aren’t both exercises in deception reserved for those who can afford them?

It's all deceptive.

A kid who has $500/hr tutors for the SAT vs a kid on Khan academy website.

It's all a game ... one big immoral game.

You are insane. Sat tutors are not charging anywhere near that. You do not know what you are talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Test prepping, tutoring, accommodations, and affirmative action are not the same thing as cheating.

Admitting people who will affect the lives of many other people due to their position (e.g. a crown prince in one example) is not unfair.

Accepting large donations that benefit the entire school community with a wink that a dum dum kid will be admitted, isn't fair, but it's not cheating. Lower expectations for student athletes during admissions isn't fair, but because they attract more students/more money which helps the school community, so it's not cheating.

Paying someone to take a test, lying about achievements, falsely representing learning disabilities for accommodations, bribing school officials to assert that you are a student athlete, while doing nothing to contribute to your school community such as excelling at a sport or adding prestige, is cheating.

There is a difference between what is unfair, and what is cheating. I think it's super unfair, but not cheating, that other people have trust funds, safety nets, inheritances, private schools educations and connections that they can leverage for more privilege- while I just had hard work and a state school where I owed student debt, because that's what we could afford...but such is life. I have advantages too--it's relative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Test prepping, tutoring, accommodations, and affirmative action are not the same thing as cheating.

Admitting people who will affect the lives of many other people due to their position (e.g. a crown prince in one example) is not unfair.

Accepting large donations that benefit the entire school community with a wink that a dum dum kid will be admitted, isn't fair, but it's not cheating. Lower expectations for student athletes during admissions isn't fair, but because they attract more students/more money which helps the school community, so it's not cheating.

Paying someone to take a test, lying about achievements, falsely representing learning disabilities for accommodations, bribing school officials to assert that you are a student athlete, while doing nothing to contribute to your school community such as excelling at a sport or adding prestige, is cheating.

There is a difference between what is unfair, and what is cheating. I think it's super unfair, but not cheating, that other people have trust funds, safety nets, inheritances, private schools educations and connections that they can leverage for more privilege- while I just had hard work and a state school where I owed student debt, because that's what we could afford...but such is life. I have advantages too--it's relative.

Thanks.
Where do we place the amphetamines prescriptions on this continuum and the questionable ADHD diagnoses used to procure them?

+1. There is a continuum, with a lot of grey area. Perhaps cynical, but maybe it's human nature to try to obtain more resources for your offspring. Maybe the main difference between the questionable ADHD diagnoses and accommodations and those who swept up in the current scandal is just that the latter have access to more money, power, and connections. (Along with a greater sense of entitlement that comes from being rich and/or famous, since they obviously thought they'd get away with it.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Test prepping, tutoring, accommodations, and affirmative action are not the same thing as cheating.

Admitting people who will affect the lives of many other people due to their position (e.g. a crown prince in one example) is not unfair.

Accepting large donations that benefit the entire school community with a wink that a dum dum kid will be admitted, isn't fair, but it's not cheating. Lower expectations for student athletes during admissions isn't fair, but because they attract more students/more money which helps the school community, so it's not cheating.

Paying someone to take a test, lying about achievements, falsely representing learning disabilities for accommodations, bribing school officials to assert that you are a student athlete, while doing nothing to contribute to your school community such as excelling at a sport or adding prestige, is cheating.

There is a difference between what is unfair, and what is cheating. I think it's super unfair, but not cheating, that other people have trust funds, safety nets, inheritances, private schools educations and connections that they can leverage for more privilege- while I just had hard work and a state school where I owed student debt, because that's what we could afford...but such is life. I have advantages too--it's relative.

Thanks.
Where do we place the amphetamines prescriptions on this continuum and the questionable ADHD diagnoses used to procure them?

+1. There is a continuum, with a lot of grey area. Perhaps cynical, but maybe it's human nature to try to obtain more resources for your offspring. Maybe the main difference between the questionable ADHD diagnoses and accommodations and those who swept up in the current scandal is just that the latter have access to more money, power, and connections. (Along with a greater sense of entitlement that comes from being rich and/or famous, since they obviously thought they'd get away with it.)

Oh wait, you're making me regret calling it a continuum! There is a chasm, a hard break, between what the FBI uncovered and pretty much all the other practices listed here.