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Actresses, prominent business owners charged in nationwide college admissions cheating scandal

Just getting to the thread... anyone using this opportunity to derail/bitch about affirmative action yet?

No. Please don't entreat for folks to do so. That's so very not what this thread is about.




Fine, then call them out.

"Why does whoever "they" are (obviously rich people with 6 or 7 figures to waste to get their kid into the right school) implicate 'liberals' versus just the assholes who engaged in the act. I'm not a hypocrite because I didn't do it or approve of it. I imagine I'm in the 99% or so of liberals who also don't approve of bribery and fraud to get spoiled rich kids into the school of their choice."

But do you approve of the myriad of other practices that get woefully unqualified minorities into schools ahead of kids that actually have the grades?

It's all wrong.

I like the system here at Texas and Texas A&M. If you finish in the top 7% of your high school at Texas, or the top 10% at A&M (soon to be top 8%), then you are automatically admitted. Or, if you score a 30 on your ACT, you can get in as well. If you don't meet those requirements, you can attend their satellite schools, and if you have a 3.5 GPA after your sophomore year (higher in some majors), you can transfer in.

That ensures diversity of opportunity for admittance, but it makes no promises once you get there. Both schools are tough, especially in the legitimate majors, and the freshmen classes get weeded out quickly. Still, both schools are over 55,000 students because graduates from both do very well post graduation. And it's a big state.

There are some legacy programs that can get kids in, but my daughter said they don't typically do well and are gone quickly. Not many take that route anymore.

Red:
Please take that line of discussion elsewhere. That's not what this thread is about.
 
...I like the system here at Texas and Texas A&M. If you finish in the top 7% of your high school at Texas, or the top 10% at A&M (soon to be top 8%), then you are automatically admitted. Or, if you score a 30 on your ACT, you can get in as well. If you don't meet those requirements, you can attend their satellite schools, and if you have a 3.5 GPA after your sophomore year (higher in some majors), you can transfer in....

....Both schools are tough, especially in the legitimate majors, and the freshmen classes get weeded out quickly. Still, both schools are over 55,000 students because graduates from both do very well post graduation. And it's a big state.

There are some legacy programs that can get kids in, but my daughter said they don't typically do well and are gone quickly. Not many take that route anymore.

Insofar as some of the defendants are in TX and yet participated in the cheating scheme, it's fair to surmise that either (1) their kids' performance wouldn't have allowed them admission to a top TX school like UT Austin or (2) that the parents or their kids didn't want to attend UT Austin or a similar high quality state school.

CA has a similar program, and UCLA and UC Berkeley are two of the many fine state schools in CA. There again, the parents apparently knew their kids wouldn't meet the standard required to gain admittance there.
 
But do you approve of the myriad of other practices that get woefully unqualified minorities into schools ahead of kids that actually have the grades?

No, I don't.

I like the system here at Texas and Texas A&M. If you finish in the top 7% of your high school at Texas, or the top 10% at A&M (soon to be top 8%), then you are automatically admitted. Or, if you score a 30 on your ACT, you can get in as well. If you don't meet those requirements, you can attend their satellite schools, and if you have a 3.5 GPA after your sophomore year (higher in some majors), you can transfer in.

That ensures diversity of opportunity for admittance, but it makes no promises once you get there. Both schools are tough, especially in the legitimate majors, and the freshmen classes get weeded out quickly. Still, both schools are over 55,000 students because graduates from both do very well post graduation. And it's a big state.

There are some legacy programs that can get kids in, but my daughter said they don't typically do well and are gone quickly. Not many take that route anymore.

As a general rule, yes, I do like that system if that's how it operates, with clear admission guidelines open to everyone.

What I have said at #30 is I don't see a fundamental difference between the affirmative action for minorities that you condemn as cheating others with the grades, and "legacy" programs, which is just another form of affirmative action for rich people. If we want merit based admissions, let's make them merit based for all, not merit based for poor people but give rich, mostly white, kids a preference if daddy or mommy went to that school.

It's really absurd how we talk about the two cases differently. There's STILL discussion about Obama and 'affirmative action' might have helped him get into colleges, then elected. Well, the President before him, Bush II, was an affirmative action baby his whole life, just for kids of wealthy and powerful white people. We accept that as somehow normal and unremarkable for rich people to get all kinds of preferences, but if Obama or Elizabeth Warren got some "affirmative action" based on race or gender, SCANDAL!!! that's years in the media focus. Jared Kushner's daddy gives $2.5 million the year before Jared applies to Harvard - media half life of 15 minutes. Trump inherits $hundreds of millions and gets preferences every day of his life starting at birth - ho hum....
 
From "Actresses, prominent business owners charged in nationwide college admissions cheating scandal":

Dozens of people have been charged in a nationwide college admissions cheating and athletic recruitment scheme, federal officials announced Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling said 50 people have been charged in the alleged scheme, including 33 parents who “paid enormous sums” to guarantee their children’s admission into elite schools.

Prominent entertainers, business owners and college coaches are implicated in the scandal that involves boosting SAT scores and bribing college administrators, according to the criminal complaint.

Prosecutors say parents paid admissions consultant William Singer, of Newport Beach, Calif., $25 million from 2011 through Feb. 2019 to bribe coaches and administrators to label their children as recruited athletes to boost their chances of getting into schools.

According to information provided by FBI/DoJ officials in the press conference aired live on CNN, the parents, on average, paid between $250K and $400K for Singer's services. (I can't find the live coverage online, only an article.) The maximum sum spent was ~$6M.

The NY Post reports that one parent paid $500K to have "their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team — despite the fact that they did not participate in crew — thereby facilitating their admission to USC." Other parents paid to have an associate of Singer's to obtain a given SAT exam score.



What I find most astounding about this cabal of college entrance corruption is that it appears a fair quantity of the parents who participated in it spent sums that, were they done the way wealthy folks have for ages ensured their academically mediocre kids admission to prestigious institutions -- by making a generous donation -- they'd have spent about the same sum and not be facing prosecution.

I mean, really. If one's got half a million or more to "blow," donate it to help fund a teaching award, endow a chair or help renovate a wing or hallway or something. The school will admit one's child in return.
We like to pretend this is a nation of laws, or so the myth goes.

I wonder if it ever was?
 
We like to pretend this is a nation of laws, or so the myth goes.

I wonder if it ever was?

It is a nation of laws. These people, all of them fairly comfortable and at least one of them is an attorney, broke laws and have now been indicted for doing so.
 
LOL hilarious... this has been going on for over a century and NOW they want to do something about it? For **** sake the guy in the White House got himself and his kids into "big" schools with bribes.....Bush Jr got in, and so on. It is common knowledge that the rich pay for their kids access to so called good schools regardless of test scores and in some cases actually pay said schools to give their kids good grades /wave Trump.

No one knows how Obama got in. Probably a foreign student minority admission.
 
What happened when those that received ‘athletic scholarships’ were found to have limited talent in the sport?

The indictment is here. https://www.justice.gov/file/1142881/download

It's not clear what happened to the athletic recruits. Maybe they were designated "walk ons" and no one paid any attention when they didn't show up for practice, etc. :confused:

Back in the ice ages, a friend of mine went to Wake Forest, which was a golf powerhouse at the time, but as a walk on. He was a good golfer but not in the elite levels. He encouraged me to try the same thing because he said the golf team had a bunch of money, and that funded something like a dozen walk ons and the golf coach completely ignored them, but they got free golf course access, free range balls, etc. If all that coach had to do was burn a worthless "walk on" position for a six figure bribe, no one would be the wiser.
 
Money is speech, why should this be illegal if corporations and foreign money can buy our politicians and be protected as free speech, yet people can't use their money to buy hteir kids tuition? I'm not saying I agree with it.

This is no secret, the rich elite get whatever they want. Get arrested, they get out. They can even commit murder, fraud people out of their life savings, and get nothing because they can buy their way to freedom. Nothing new here.

Right and left should be fursious about this. Instead, we still have brainwashed tonguing the rich's ass
 
No, I don't.



As a general rule, yes, I do like that system if that's how it operates, with clear admission guidelines open to everyone.

What I have said at #30 is I don't see a fundamental difference between the affirmative action for minorities that you condemn as cheating others with the grades, and "legacy" programs, which is just another form of affirmative action for rich people. If we want merit based admissions, let's make them merit based for all, not merit based for poor people but give rich, mostly white, kids a preference if daddy or mommy went to that school.

It's really absurd how we talk about the two cases differently. There's STILL discussion about Obama and 'affirmative action' might have helped him get into colleges, then elected. Well, the President before him, Bush II, was an affirmative action baby his whole life, just for kids of wealthy and powerful white people. We accept that as somehow normal and unremarkable for rich people to get all kinds of preferences, but if Obama or Elizabeth Warren got some "affirmative action" based on race or gender, SCANDAL!!! that's years in the media focus. Jared Kushner's daddy gives $2.5 million the year before Jared applies to Harvard - media half life of 15 minutes. Trump inherits $hundreds of millions and gets preferences every day of his life starting at birth - ho hum....

We can agree that unfair legacy programs are bad, and affirmative action programs that put minorities ahead of more-qualified white students are just as bad, too.
 
Hey, it worked for Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, too.
 
WTH are you talking about. I am the one who introduced the "issue" by creating this thread and I've been quite clear about my position on the matter.
Your position 7th that it isn't a very big deal that parents are using their wealth to pay for their kids to cheat their children's applications to get them accepted.

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Hey, it worked for Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, too.

"It" didn't work anything like this for any of them. But if you're going to make a dumb comparison, don't forget Trump, Jared, and Ivanka.

FWIW, the indictment is pretty fascinating reading. I'm pretty shocked at how open the fraud was, and that it involved head coaches at some pretty elite schools. Seems likely a few people in the upper reaches of the athletic departments would have to also be involved as well.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1142881/download
 
No. Please don't entreat for folks to do so. That's so very not what this thread is about.

I know. It was 5 pages long and I was making the prediction of what the derail would be.

For me this issue is just a no brainer. It's been going on forever and it's just a modification on the "legacy" programs already in place. One is just more honest than the other about being an incestuous aristocracy factory.
 
"It" didn't work anything like this for any of them. But if you're going to make a dumb comparison, don't forget Trump, Jared, and Ivanka.

FWIW, the indictment is pretty fascinating reading. I'm pretty shocked at how open the fraud was, and that it involved head coaches at some pretty elite schools. Seems likely a few people in the upper reaches of the athletic departments would have to also be involved as well.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1142881/download
I'm finding it difficult to believe the schools were not aware of it going on.

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I'm finding it difficult to believe the schools were not aware of it going on.

Why? What do you mean by "the schools"? Administration?
 
From "Actresses, prominent business owners charged in nationwide college admissions cheating scandal":

Dozens of people have been charged in a nationwide college admissions cheating and athletic recruitment scheme, federal officials announced Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling said 50 people have been charged in the alleged scheme, including 33 parents who “paid enormous sums” to guarantee their children’s admission into elite schools.

Prominent entertainers, business owners and college coaches are implicated in the scandal that involves boosting SAT scores and bribing college administrators, according to the criminal complaint.

Prosecutors say parents paid admissions consultant William Singer, of Newport Beach, Calif., $25 million from 2011 through Feb. 2019 to bribe coaches and administrators to label their children as recruited athletes to boost their chances of getting into schools.

According to information provided by FBI/DoJ officials in the press conference aired live on CNN, the parents, on average, paid between $250K and $400K for Singer's services. (I can't find the live coverage online, only an article.) The maximum sum spent was ~$6M.

The NY Post reports that one parent paid $500K to have "their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team — despite the fact that they did not participate in crew — thereby facilitating their admission to USC." Other parents paid to have an associate of Singer's to obtain a given SAT exam score.



What I find most astounding about this cabal of college entrance corruption is that it appears a fair quantity of the parents who participated in it spent sums that, were they done the way wealthy folks have for ages ensured their academically mediocre kids admission to prestigious institutions -- by making a generous donation -- they'd have spent about the same sum and not be facing prosecution.

I mean, really. If one's got half a million or more to "blow," donate it to help fund a teaching award, endow a chair or help renovate a wing or hallway or something. The school will admit one's child in return.

From one of Page Six's articles on this, and the student in question made plain to all her "followers" that she was going to college for the party experience:

Before Olivia Jade went off to college in 2018, she generated controversy by posting to her popular YouTube channel that she didn’t “really care about school” but wanted the “experience” of “partying.”

“I don’t know how much of school I’m gonna attend,” she told her nearly 2 million subscribers, according to Yahoo News.

“But I’m gonna go in and talk to my deans and everyone, and hope that I can try and balance it all. But I do want the experience of like game days, partying…I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.” Lori Loughlin's daughter cashed in on student status after alleged bribery scheme

The students' parents paid $500K in bribes, and here is how it worked for them: "Court documents allege she and her husband, designer Mossimo Giannulli, 'agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team — despite the fact that they did not participate in crew — thereby facilitating their admission to USC.'”
 
Hey, it worked for Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, too.
I don't know about those, but I do know it worked for Trump.

There is no way in hell his grades got him into the university he graduated from.
 
I don't know about those, but I do know it worked for Trump.

There is no way in hell his grades got him into the university he graduated from.

What do you know about Trump's grades? I don't know anything--link me up?
 
Hey, it worked for Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, too.

Are you saying that their parents distributed bribes? That Warren, Obama, and Bush 43 cheated on their ACTs/SATs? Because this about bribery and cheating rather than about being a legacy or affirmative action of some other accepted practice by which some students are given a boost when applying.
 
Legacy programs exist all over the nation. I was just talking to a friend who said that his uncle could get him into law school via the legacy program and that he would not even have to take the LSAT. Consider the uproar when affirmative action was passed. AA was an attempt in good faith to get more diversity in higher education, improve the lives of minorities and give kids who did not have a chance something to hold on to if they tried their best. Legacy programs have no such higher ideals or goals, they are simply highways for the rich to remain in power. This is how private schooling in the UK has been done for centuries insuring that the upper class remains the upper class. Shame on these schools and parents.
 
I'm finding it difficult to believe the schools were not aware of it going on.

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yup... someone took the money that wasn't going through normal channels.
 
Why? What do you mean by "the schools"? Administration?
I find it hard to believe they didn't notice that kids coming in as student athletes were not on the athletic teams very long or that kids with high sat scores were struggling to keep up academically

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I find it hard to believe they didn't notice that kids coming in as student athletes were not on the athletic teams very long or that kids with high sat scores were struggling to keep up academically

This is about acceptance into the school rather than about performance once accepted.
 
I find it hard to believe they didn't notice that kids coming in as student athletes were not on the athletic teams very long or that kids with high sat scores were struggling to keep up academically

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There are plausible scenarios which can explain such change. It may be injuries, or personal problems which contributed to a loss of focus, etc. Besides, there are many students who did not earn their entrance as a result of their high sat scores or athletic skills. Many kids of alumni secure a position inside else universities because of their parents' academic performance. Such kids usually graduate with an average of "C" (see Bush).
 
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