Home
Log in / Sign Up
    Private Messages   Advanced Search   Rules   New User Guide   FAQ   Advertise   Contact Us  
Forum -> In the News
College admissions cheating scheme
1  2  3  4  5  Next



Post new topic   Reply to topic View latest: 24h 48h 72h

WhatFor




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 12:48 pm
Anyone following this?

I feel bad for the kids of those implicated. I haven't seen enough detail to know if they even knew about it or necessarily were involved. And even if they were, how's a High School kid to know right and wrong if their own parents were teaching them to do the wrong thing?

What's going to happen to kids implicated in this? Are colleges going to throw them out if they're already attending?
Back to top

OOTforlife




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 1:01 pm
The article says "most of the students did not know their admission to the school was due to a bribe, authorities said." So that's heartening at least.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/w.....g.amp
Back to top

SixOfWands




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 1:02 pm
WhatFor wrote:
Anyone following this?

I feel bad for the kids of those implicated. I haven't seen enough detail to know if they even knew about it or necessarily were involved. And even if they were, how's a High School kid to know right and wrong if their own parents were teaching them to do the wrong thing?

What's going to happen to kids implicated in this? Are colleges going to throw them out if they're already attending?


I just saw this. There are allegations of people taking the SATs for these kids, and faking profiles.

But this is an old, old story. Daniel Golden wrote a story on it in 2006, called "The Price of Admission." For example, the book pointed out that Charles Kushner pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted. Coincidence? We'll never know.

But its not just Kushner, and what his family did isn't even unusual. Harvard gives priority to "legacies." Harvard also admits that it has a “Dean’s Interest List,” described as "a collection of applicants related to prominent people — most of them white and wealthy — put forward by the college’s fundraising arm. Applicants on the list are admitted to Harvard at significantly higher rates than unconnected students...." In a litigation currently (?) pending, plaintiffs argued that multimillion-dollar donations from family members tipped the scales.

Or as one website wrote:

Quote:
We’re often asked at Ivy Coach what amount of money will help your child gain admission to a highly selective college. Is there a magic figure? Yes and no. If your child has straight F’s, barely signed his name on the SAT, and has a few convictions, it won’t matter that you donated a ton of money to your highly selective alma mater. Sorry. But if your child is ballpark, is there a figure that can do the trick? Yes. Will we say it? No. At the end of the day, we give a ton of information away for free to students and parents…and anyone else interested in reading our blog. We aim to demystify the college admissions process to many. But there’s also a whole lot about the highly selective college admissions process that we don’t write about. We’re a business, after all.
Back to top

ShishKabob




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 1:06 pm
It's as old as it gets. I don't see why affirmative action is better. They are not getting in by their own merit either. I'm not a racist at all, I just see it as both parties getting in to college not by their own merit. Am I wrong?
Back to top

DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 1:06 pm
Legacy admissions have been happening for years. If you donate a new wing to the Chem lab, or if a parent and a grandparent and a great-grandparent have all attended Princeton (and donated to the alumni fund) chances are they'll look upon you favorably in the admissions process. If they don't, all those donations may dry up...

In schools where getting in is more difficult than staying in, these students generally can get by.

Not that any of this excuses outright cheating.

A whole bunch of Hollywood stars were implicated in bribing officials and coaches.
Back to top

Fox




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 1:32 pm
These elite schools clearly don't know how to effectively extort money.

Where is the Give-or-Get, Pledge-to-Raise, Annual Dinner Commitment, Grandparents' Club, or any of the other features so beloved in Jewish day schools and yeshivas?

Just taking money from people who can afford it in exchange for admitting their kids seems like a regrettable lack of imagination, ambition, or both. Very Happy
Back to top

ShishKabob




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 1:35 pm
Fox wrote:
These elite schools clearly don't know how to effectively extort money.

Where is the Give-or-Get, Pledge-to-Raise, Annual Dinner Commitment, Grandparents' Club, or any of the other features so beloved in Jewish day schools and yeshivas?

Just taking money from people who can afford it in exchange for admitting their kids seems like a regrettable lack of imagination, ambition, or both. Very Happy

Necessity is the mother of invention. They have no need to do this. No one is pushing them to the wall in this aspect. They are coasting along just find like this.
Back to top

SixOfWands




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 1:38 pm
Fox wrote:
These elite schools clearly don't know how to effectively extort money.

Where is the Give-or-Get, Pledge-to-Raise, Annual Dinner Commitment, Grandparents' Club, or any of the other features so beloved in Jewish day schools and yeshivas?

Just taking money from people who can afford it in exchange for admitting their kids seems like a regrettable lack of imagination, ambition, or both. Very Happy


Harvard's endowment is $39.2 billion. (Yale is second, with a piddling $27 billion. Slackers.)
I'd say they're doing just fine without hitting up granny.
Back to top

1untamedgirl




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 1:54 pm
Fox wrote:
These elite schools clearly don't know how to effectively extort money.

Where is the Give-or-Get, Pledge-to-Raise, Annual Dinner Commitment, Grandparents' Club, or any of the other features so beloved in Jewish day schools and yeshivas?

Just taking money from people who can afford it in exchange for admitting their kids seems like a regrettable lack of imagination, ambition, or both. Very Happy

I'm sure they have football and other sport games that are costing parents an arm and a leg to attend each game. Not to mention all the cost of pledging and living at a fraternity/sorority, the school presumably makes a ton of money from all of these as well.
If not then the taking money from the rich and giving to the poor is exactly what socialism is so in essence these schools are practicing socialism. Sure they have to admit some students who may not have been admitted without the donation but if it allows for poor, minority students (most of whom aren't even accepted on their own merits either but through affirmative action so it evens out) to attend for free then its all worth it. After all, money doesn't grow on trees and if you want the underprivileged minorities to attend for free then you have to make sacrifices and allow for some rich folks to pay for all of it and that will only happen if you accept their kids, otherwise they and their money will go somewhere else and who will pay for all those underprivileged kids scholarships?

That still doesn't answer as to why these rich folks felt the need to cheat. Frankly, I'm shocked at the names being thrown out there. Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman seem like such good, honest, upstanding people (the opposite of Trump as Hollywood would like us to believe) so I am shocked that they would be involved in something as scandalous as this. Makes you wonder what else is going on in Hollywood that we know nothing about (and they try to deflect all this by accusing Trump of engaging in all kinds of mischief to distract from their own criminal activity). Sad.
Back to top

Fox




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 2:06 pm
Fox wrote:
These elite schools clearly don't know how to effectively extort money.

Where is the Give-or-Get, Pledge-to-Raise, Annual Dinner Commitment, Grandparents' Club, or any of the other features so beloved in Jewish day schools and yeshivas?

Just taking money from people who can afford it in exchange for admitting their kids seems like a regrettable lack of imagination, ambition, or both. Very Happy

It was supposed to be a joke . . . clearly sounded better in my head than in pixels. Smile
Back to top

ectomorph




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 2:25 pm
Fox I thought it was funny
Back to top

nchr




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 2:29 pm
Everyone knows individuals buy their way into evedything including Harvard which is why it has a huge endowment fund. Personally I couldn't care less, not like anyone in my family will be affected lol.

Last edited by nchr on Fri, Dec 04 2020, 3:37 am; edited 1 time in total
Back to top

shoshanim999




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 2:43 pm
I'm wondering from a moral standpoint how different this is from the fact that virtually any yeshiva would give priority to a student whose family offers cash for acceptance. I agree taking the SAT is definitely the next level, but the idea us the same.
Back to top

ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 2:50 pm
ShishKabob wrote:
It's as old as it gets. I don't see why affirmative action is better. They are not getting in by their own merit either. I'm not a racist at all, I just see it as both parties getting in to college not by their own merit. Am I wrong?

I see three differences:

- affirmative action brings in students who were very very close to getting in on their own merit (students whose parents can afford to bribe the school usually aren't academic slackers either, but they don't have to be near-perfect);

- affirmative action is about correcting centuries of inequality. Letting students in because their parents have money is about perpetuating inequality;

- students who benefit from affirmative action mostly did more with what they had than other students. Who's better with cars, someone who can build a luxury car with all of the resources they could possibly want at their disposal, or someone who can build a passable truck using nothing but a heap of scrap parts and a blowtorch? And who's a better student - someone from an excellent prep school who got a 1530 on the SATs, or someone who came to America from a refugee camp in Africa three years ago who got a 1420?

But yeah, overall it's a similar idea - sometimes, the college is flexible on admissions with certain students in order to make the overall experience better for everyone. They value having the best resources and a diverse student body more than they value giving everyone an exactly equal chance in admissions.

I'm not actually sure what's right and wrong here. There are good arguments for both sides.

ETA - all the above is talking about the idea of colleges letting in the children of super rich donors - not to the idea of cheating, which is a different story.
Back to top

ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 2:58 pm
But really this is a whole different discussion from this news story... In this case, it sounds like the colleges had no idea this was happening and didn't benefit from it. It wasn't parents donating millions to the college, it was parents paying millions in bribes to coaches, test-takers, etc, who kept it all for themselves.

If the kids thought they got in on their own merit, this must be horrible for them.

But some of them must have known. If they were pretending to be star athletes in sports they don't play, they would have had to at least known not to say "what do you mean, when did I start playing tennis?" in the interview.
Back to top

DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 5:07 pm
1untamedgirl wrote:
I'm sure they have football and other sport games that are costing parents an arm and a leg to attend each game. Not to mention all the cost of pledging and living at a fraternity/sorority, the school presumably makes a ton of money from all of these as well.

Charging parents to attend football games and charging students to pledge sororities and fraternities is *not* where universities make their money.
Back to top

Cheiny




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 5:16 pm
WhatFor wrote:
Anyone following this?

I feel bad for the kids of those implicated. I haven't seen enough detail to know if they even knew about it or necessarily were involved. And even if they were, how's a High School kid to know right and wrong if their own parents were teaching them to do the wrong thing?

What's going to happen to kids implicated in this? Are colleges going to throw them out if they're already attending?


I’d bet some if not most of the kids know. Otherwise, how did other people take the tests for them??? And I’m sure they grew up feeling very entitled, as that’s how their horrible parents are, to be able to pull such a crime and think it’s ok jus cuz they have money,
Back to top

Cheiny




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 5:19 pm
ShishKabob wrote:
It's as old as it gets. I don't see why affirmative action is better. They are not getting in by their own merit either. I'm not a racist at all, I just see it as both parties getting in to college not by their own merit. Am I wrong?


Exactly, and the same with sports scholarships...why should being good at throwing a ball entitle you to free education and entrance into colleges???
Back to top

Cheiny




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 5:20 pm
nchr wrote:
I personally know several individuals who bought their way into Harvard. The academic community is aware of this. Interestingly enough, a State school like UCLA turned down a $2 million donation because they are different principles. Harvard has a huge endowment fund. Personally, I don't care about people paying to get in - that is perfectly fine IMO, but cheating on tests is a different story.


Paying to get in is ok? While someone who’s deserving might not? Can't Believe It
Back to top

1untamedgirl




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 12 2019, 5:33 pm
DrMom wrote:
Charging parents to attend football games and charging students to pledge sororities and fraternities is *not* where universities make their money.

Ticket sales for sports games are extremely profitable for colleges:
Quote:
Ticket Sales:
Ticket sales easily lead the way as the largest money-maker for top grossing college football teams in the US. The National College Athletic Association (NCAA) reported that over $1 billion worth of football tickets were sold between September 2016 and August of 2017 alone.

Tickets for top Division I college football teams are pricey, and die-hard fans are willing to pay the price to see their favorite team in action. Reports state that the average football ticket to a top Division I game runs between $100 and $450 depending on what game you want to go see.

Considering the average NFL ticket runs around $90, it’s easy to see how these universities make millions off of sold-out games alone.


https://today.citadel.edu/econ.....oney/

These are the top 25 schools that make the most money from their sports games-- https://www.businessinsider.co.....16-10

The parents also pay for hotel rooms and restaurants and whatnot all of it benefiting the entire town as well. Now if you only have poor people attending then the profits would go down tremendously as the parents wouldnt be able to afford to pay for anything extra so the school could potentially go out of business. That wouldn't be good for the school now, would it?
Back to top
Page 1 of 5 1  2  3  4  5  Next Recent Topics




Post new topic   Reply to topic    Forum -> In the News

Related Topics Replies Last Post
Paying for college
by amother
40 Wed, Mar 06 2024, 9:59 pm View last post
Frum college program for pre-health sciences
by amother
38 Mon, Mar 04 2024, 5:59 pm View last post
Job in healthcare field without college degree?
by amother
21 Sun, Jan 21 2024, 8:14 pm View last post
Law school Admissions consultant
by amother
3 Tue, Jan 16 2024, 10:06 pm View last post
Is Touro college all frum?
by amother
1 Fri, Dec 29 2023, 11:53 am View last post