His Father Paid $400,000 to Get Him Into Georgetown. Now He’s Suing the School.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yikes. Another aftershock from the college admissions scandal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/us/georgetown-expels-students.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

Georgetown University said Wednesday that it planned to dismiss two students connected to the college admissions scandal. Just hours earlier, one of those students, Adam Semprevivo, whose father has pleaded guilty in the case, sued Georgetown for threatening to expel him, saying that the university had denied him due process and that it should have been aware of misrepresentations on his application long before the Justice Department announced charges in the nation’s largest college admissions prosecution earlier this year.

Georgetown did not identify either student, but Mr. Semprevivo’s lawyer, David Kenner, said he had received an email from Georgetown informing him that his admission had been rescinded and that he would be dismissed.

Mr. Semprevivo, 21, who is from Los Angeles, just finished his junior year at the college in Washington, D.C. His father, Stephen Semprevivo, pleaded guilty last week to paying a college consultant $400,000 to secure his son’s admission to Georgetown as a recruit to the tennis team, even though the son did not play tennis competitively. According to the lawsuit, Adam has a 3.18 grade point average in college so far. He has not been charged in the case, nor have any other students, though several have received target letters from prosecutors.

Mr. Kenner said that dismissal was too harsh a punishment.

“It’s a life sentence,” he said. “He’s lost three years of his life, studying, getting good grades, doing everything that was expected of him.” He added it could be difficult for Mr. Semprevivo to gain admission to another college and that the dismissal could also affect his job prospects. “Potentially this will follow him for the rest of his life.”

Maybe he should change his name to something other than SempreVivo

You literally made me lol. Thanks for the laugh.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if Trump paid to get his daughter accepted. Probably not. He's too cheap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this shows you is that any kid with money can get good grades at any college. Even the dumb for high school bribed kids are getting high grades at Georgetown. Pretty pathetic.

Kid should be expelled and credits removed. It is too much of a gamble to try at this point unless the parent goes to jail and the kid gets nothing.

A 3.18 is NOT a good GPA. Most of you commenting must have been terrible students and/or complete idiots.

Ha! You can graduate with a lower GPA. Do you ask your lawyer, doctor, financial planner, boss, etc. what their GPA was?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm with Georgetown here. I also hope Georgetown and other universities find a way to rescind or revoke the diplomas of those who graduated before the scandal broke. It doesn't matter if they successfully completed their classes or not; their admission was still fraudulent. Students are legally responsible for the accuracy of their applications and cannot disclaim knowledge of the fraudulent schemes.

I don’t get this logic at all. Isn’t the actual work more important than how one got in? I made up an overseas high school when I never attended high school (grew up in a cult that didn’t believe in education beyond middle school). I graduated with a 3.9 GPA while fully supporting myself. I realize this is different than the privileged circumstances we’re discussing here, but I still think the kids should get credit for their work. I think it’s reasonable for colleges to expel them on a case by case basis but not to strip them of degrees or credits they’ve earned.

So what is the point of punishing those who cheated to get in? As long as they get away with it for four years, they're scot-free, but if they get caught before they get their diplomas, then the hammer comes down? That makes no sense either.

These kids could not have gotten in on their own merit, and they took spaces away from other kids. Maybe kids like you were, or like I was, or like a bunch of other kids whose parents did not or do not have the resources to cheat, lie, and steal a place from someone else. Lots of kids who deserve to get in -- and who also could have done the work -- got cheated out of a potential slot by all these students whose rich parents were willing to pay a fortune to guarantee admittance. I think there is a ton wrong with our gameable admissions systems, but I'm absolutely opposed to rewarding cheaters just because their cheats weren't discovered until they'd already gotten the piece of paper.

It is sensible that Georgetown asked the boy to leave. But stripping him of his credits, the coursework actually completed on his own merit too? 3.12 is perfectly decent. That's a B average, isn't it? It seems a bit vindictive to me. Just allow him to transfer his credits to another school so people can get on with life.

It's rather damning on the universities in a way that a low performer in high school can still pass through Georgetown with a respectable GPA.

I don’t know about Georgetown officials, but I’m not inclined to afford him the presumption that his application was his only fraudulent act, and that everything else about his college years has been completed on his own merit. Obviously daddy didn’t bribe people to make sure the kid got 3.5 or higher, but, at this point, why would anyone assume that all of his coursework was legitimate?

Exactly. Trust is hard to regain once lost. Sad if he did the work and that he trusted his father, but this is a dark cloud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now if the dad had cut the 400k check straight to Georgetown this kid would be wined and dined by the development office. The whole thing is sick and corrupt.

Yup. It's illegal bribery to get an unqualified kid in vs. legal bribery to get an unqualified kid in.

I'm with ya that the line is a fine one and we should eliminate the legal bribery, but that doesn't change a thing about illegal bribery.

You can consider it distasteful but as a private college, it is their prerogative to exchange a spot at the school in exchange for a large donation. The key point is that there is consent on both sides; there is no misrepresentation, no fraud.

In the illegal scenario, the school is providing a spot to a student, on the understanding that the student has specific credentials. But in this case, the credentials are fraudulent. That fraud is a crime. And that’s why it’s not okay.

[Anonymous]

These kids should be suing their own parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this shows you is that any kid with money can get good grades at any college. Even the dumb for high school bribed kids are getting high grades at Georgetown. Pretty pathetic.

Kid should be expelled and credits removed. It is too much of a gamble to try at this point unless the parent goes to jail and the kid gets nothing.

A 3.18 is NOT a good GPA. Most of you commenting must have been terrible students and/or complete idiots.

Ha! You can graduate with a lower GPA. Do you ask your lawyer, doctor, financial planner, boss, etc. what their GPA was?

The graduate schools they apply to certainly did. And yes, I judge if my prospective doctor graduated from the American University of the Caribbean versus Yale School of Medicine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this shows you is that any kid with money can get good grades at any college. Even the dumb for high school bribed kids are getting high grades at Georgetown. Pretty pathetic.

Kid should be expelled and credits removed. It is too much of a gamble to try at this point unless the parent goes to jail and the kid gets nothing.

A 3.18 is NOT a good GPA. Most of you commenting must have been terrible students and/or complete idiots.

Ha! You can graduate with a lower GPA. Do you ask your lawyer, doctor, financial planner, boss, etc. what their GPA was?

The graduate schools they apply to certainly did. And yes, I judge if my prospective doctor graduated from the American University of the Caribbean versus Yale School of Medicine.

And do you ask your doctor what his undergrad GPA was?

[Anonymous]

The don knew he was admitted as a tennis recruit even though he didn’t play tennis competitively. So he knew or should have known there was fraud. Why should he not have to forfeit the poisonous fruit of his fraudulent act?

That said, why didn’t Georgetown see that a tennis recruit never actually wound up playing tennis for the school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh FFS.

He knew he was admitted fraud.

His defense is: you should have stopped me from doing illegal things earlier

Having to transfer isn’t a life sentence. And it will only follow him because he committed a crime and then filed a lawsuit and went public.

And 3.18 isn’t really “good grades”.

All of this.

[Anonymous]

There’s a 99% chance a sketchy dumb rich kid like this has been cheating and buying papers for that 3.xx GPA.

[Anonymous]

Plenty of half-decent schools will take a full-pay rich kid transfer, even with the expulsion on his record. Just go finish your degree at Arizona State or SMU or Pepperdine or Loyola-Los Angeles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this shows you is that any kid with money can get good grades at any college. Even the dumb for high school bribed kids are getting high grades at Georgetown. Pretty pathetic.

Kid should be expelled and credits removed. It is too much of a gamble to try at this point unless the parent goes to jail and the kid gets nothing.

A 3.18 is NOT a good GPA. Most of you commenting must have been terrible students and/or complete idiots.

Ha! You can graduate with a lower GPA. Do you ask your lawyer, doctor, financial planner, boss, etc. what their GPA was?

The graduate schools they apply to certainly did. And yes, I judge if my prospective doctor graduated from the American University of the Caribbean versus Yale School of Medicine.

And do you ask your doctor what his undergrad GPA was?

Better yet, should probably ask if they or someone else did their undergrad class work for them. Wouldn’t be hard to fake that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if Trump paid to get his daughter accepted. Probably not. He's too cheap.

I don't think it's a coincidence all of his kids attended Georgetown and Penn; transferring to and fro, Tiffany ended up at GULC (after wanting to attend more prestigious T10 law schools).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nope, he should not be able to keep the credits. He knew his application was fraudulent so he should not accrue any benefits as a result of the fraud - starting from the moment the fraud began.

They can't strip him of the credits. If he goes to another university, that other university makes a decision about whether to accept the transfer credits. They will basically always do so EXCEPT that there are typically limits on how many classes one can transfer, whether they can transfer courses in the major, etc. In other words, it's not Georgetown's decision about whether he keeps the credits, though it may be difficult for him to transfer after three years of study and have ALL of the credits count at the other university.