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

[MTAtech]

Rich people have been "donating" money to elite schools for as long as there were elite schools, to get their "C" grade children into these schools and to assure their passage. At Dartmouth, the names of buildings have alumni family names and so does the Berry Sports Center (a $5 million gift.)

 

[pamak]

Rich people have been "donating" money to elite schools for as long as there were elite schools, to get their "C" grade children into these schools and to assure their passage. At Dartmouth, the names of buildings have alumni family names and so does the Berry Sports Center (a $5 million gift.)

Nooooo!

They donate their money because they are compassionate and believe that charities are the solution for helping common people receive any type of service. This is why the US is one of the countries with the highest rates of donations and highest rates of poverty and inequality...[sarcasm intended]

 

[trouble13]

This is about acceptance into the school rather than about performance once accepted.

I'm aware of what it's about. I do not believe that the schools were completely blind to what was taking place right in front of them.

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[The Mark]

What do you know about Trump's grades? I don't know anything--link me up?

No one does except him, the schools he went to and the officials who work/worked there, and maybe a few others.

I'm basing my statement on his actions, which to me indicate an idiot who probably got C's at best.

 

[trouble13]

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).

But these are not legacy kids being talked about. These are kids who got accepted based on falsified academic scores and athletical abilities. Something like that would tend to show up once at the school.

Furthermore it wasn't just a single persons manipulation. It was a complex network of people involved making it happen and making it more likely others knew of it and turned a blind eye to what was going on.

On the chance they did not know, shame on them for a lack of oversite of their admissions programs. At the very least there should be a call for the universities to do a better job at policing themselves for cheaters and ensuring applicants have an equal opportunity to get accepted.

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[Fletch]

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.

$500,000 in bribes to get their kid into USC??

 

[Helix]

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

in a plutocracy, i'd guess that there's a ton more of this kind of thing going on than we ever hear about.

 

[Fletch]

No one does except him, the schools he went to and the officials who work/worked there, and maybe a few others.

I'm basing my statement on his actions, which to me indicate an idiot who probably got C's at best.

For an 'idiot' he has done quite well for himself. How do your accomplishments in life stack up to his?

 

[The Mark]

For an 'idiot' he has done quite well for himself. How do your accomplishments in life stack up to his?

Not comparable.

But I also didn't receive tens of millions from my father.

 

[AlphaOmega]

Not comparable.

But I also didn't receive tens of millions from my father.

Lots of people did and still didn't accomplish what Trump has.

 

[pamak]

But these are not legacy kids being talked about. These are kids who got accepted based on falsified academic scores and athletical abilities. Something like that would tend to show up once at the school.

Furthermore it wasn't just a single persons manipulation. It was a complex network of people involved making it happen and making it more likely others knew of it and turned a blind eye to what was going on.

On the chance they did not know, shame on them for a lack of oversite of their admissions programs. At the very least there should be a call for the universities to do a better job at policing themselves for cheaters and ensuring applicants have an equal opportunity to get accepted.

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I understand that they were not legacy kids. My point is that most people would not know this and the students' academic performance by itself would not stand out and trigger any suspicion by the regular university employee, including professors. I doubt that the people who are involved in the admission process have any time to monitor the academic performance of all those who are eventually admitted. Usually, such analysis will be performed by math experts who are not involved in the admission process, and even if there was an obvious discrepancy between the performance of students in SAT scores and their academic performance, and even if these math experts knew that these students were not legacy kids, they could not deduce fraud from such thing. We are talking about relatively few cases among hundreds of thousands of students. The noise would be too much and any such discrepancy between SAT scores and academic performance could be explained away as a result of causes other than fraud.

 

[Fletch]

Not comparable.

But I also didn't receive tens of millions from my father.

Lots of people inherit wealth from their parents and squander it. Whats the saying? Rags to riches to rags again in 3 generations. Hate the guy if you must, but you cant argue with his success in life, business, women or politics.

 

[Xelor]

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.

Red:
What?

 

[Manc Skipper]

Trump need not comment unless he supplies a list of educational establishments he attended, alongside his father's financial contributions to those establishments.

 

[trouble13]

Red:
What?

Sorry auto spell did that 7th=is

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[trouble13]

Trump need not comment unless he supplies a list of educational establishments he attended, alongside his father's financial contributions to those establishments.

Does that standard apply to you as well. Are you going to make your schools records available to the public since you are commenting on this topic

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[AlphaOmega]

Wasnt William Macy the leftist actor who was preaching about Trump and how dishonesty irritates him or some crap like that?

 

[Jetboogieman]

It’s all hardly surprising.

 

[Vadinho]

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 never bought into the idea that high SAT scores meant much, I know a lot of very brilliant people who sucked at testing. I remember feeling superior to them after I took mine. Later in life I realized it was all a mistake. Never underestimate a person with drive and commitment, they will outwork a smarter person that can regurgitate obscure facts every day of the week. Remember the word questions? For a while, the word jejune appeared everywhere. Anyone here use that word in a conversation outside of Woody Allen?

 

[trouble13]

I never bought into the idea that high SAT scores meant much, I know a lot of very brilliant people who sucked at testing. I remember feeling superior to them after I took mine. Later in life I realized it was all a mistake. Never underestimate a person with drive and commitment, they will outwork a smart person every day of the week.

Your nor my opinion of SAT scores is not the point. The universities use that as their standard. Whether or not it's a good standard is a different conversation from this one.

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[poweRob]

It’s all hardly surprising.

Nope. There are good schools doing good things and turning out good students to the world. It's still an aristocracy pipeline. From expensive boarding schools only the rich participate in to this back channel purchasing of seats in college, to the legacy programs promising seats no matter qualifications to the fraternity basement file cabinets of prewritten papers to help "brothers" pass classes so they can then have all their crony frat job hookups after college.

This is just one piece of that aristocracy pipeline and, like you said, hardly a surprise.

 

[Xelor]

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

Red:
???

• Did you go to college?
• What specific "they" (designate a job title) do you have in mind?
• Did you not notice that coaches were "in" on the gig? What do you think was going on? The football coach was sneaking in students as members of the crew team and praying the crew coach wouldn't notice, or vice versa?

These were universities, not swanky boarding schools or any other kind of institution that educates minors. (And FWIW, part of what's "prep" about prep school is their willingness to let students flunk out.)

As for whether a student of any prior academic background is struggling or not, nobody is going to notice such a thing because once one's admitted, nobody's who's teaching them is interested enough in their high school performance to bother looking to begin with.

The central administration won't notice anything until their exception processing software programs tell them to send the student notice that they're either suspended or expelled for academic reasons, or that the student's performance is exceptional enough to have earned him/her some sort of plaudit. It's college. The students are adults. Nobody is mollycoddling them. If they perform, they perform; if they don't, they don't. It's all up to the student and the consequences of doing either appear "out of the blue" and without warning. One gets all the warning one is going to get when one matriculates and if one accepts scholarships or other financial aid, when one "signs on the dotted line."

 

[eohrnberger]

I thought liberals were all about fairness. I guess it only applies unless cheating benefits them.

Indeed. As if these Celebutards from HollyWeird's children weren't already privileged enough?

Examples of 'White Privilege' ? Eh?

But I guess all's fair in the liberal / progressive indoctrination centers.

 

[The Mark]

Lots of people inherit wealth from their parents and squander it. Whats the saying? Rags to riches to rags again in 3 generations. Hate the guy if you must, but you cant argue with his success in life, business, women or politics.

I do not consider him successful in any of those areas.

And yes, I know he is president.

 

[Crosscheck]

Face it, if you have to pay $500,000 to get your two girls into an university you must really have two dumbasses for kids.