@austinmshauri I just see it as condescending, not empathetic. Or easy pity. I’m not a bad person, I’m just saying I wasn’t better or more deserving than my peers who had nicer things and a less chaotic homelife. It’s sort of like a white savior thing, this easy self-serving empathy for the noble savage or the noble poor. It makes people feel good to feel sorry for poor kids. I think poor kids deserve the respect of being seen as the normal people they are. Poor kids should be allowed to have warts too.
I think it devalues the worth of the test scores. Apparently, a wide range of students can succeed at these schools.
Maybe I have to make a disclaimer first so that folks are not thinking that anyone who thinks this scandal indicates larger systemic problems in college admission, specifically, elite college admission, as being one of the proverbial “sour grapes”:
As a parent of an only one child, who is a hs junior, who is a competitive athlete seeking to be recruited by elite colleges, I believe the whole system is rigged.
Do I have a solution? Of course not. But I think being more transparent in the elite college admission process, getting rid of legacy, dean’s list, preferential treatment of race and/or athletic abilities, might be a good start.
Sorry but anyone that hasn’t gone through the system and is basing opinions on the experience of others they read about has little value to add to the conversation. Saying the whole system is rigged is so naive and uniformed.
Is it just me, or has this thread gone full circle and now just keeps going in circles and back to same thing over and over?
@austinmshauri - I agree with you. I was responding to, I think post 2322 or close (I am on my phone so hard to check)by @gallentjill where, if I read it correctly, it was suggested that administrators could help ease the transfer process (or words to that effect) of “innocent beneficiaries” ( that was my term, I believe). I don’t think they should just be kicked to the curb immediately but should be required to transfer. Just not sure what the process should be.
@blueskies2day, I think the question that hasn’t been addressed is what now? Should students currently enrolled be expelled? What about those who graduated? Can you dismiss some students but allow others to keep their degrees?
@privatebanker I meant no disrespect to students who get in on their own, my comment is directed towards the system. In fact, it’s unfair to merit admits as well, collective intellect and reputation is dragged down by peers who don’t deserve to be there but made it through quotas,connections or bribes.
Dismiss all. When a student submits a college app, he/she acknowledges that all information on the app (test scores, grades, ECs,…) is true and agrees to be expelled if any information is falsified.
Do people get upset when Obama’s daughter or one of Bush Junior’s kids got into Harvard and Yale? Or Bush junior himself being a gentlemen’s C student at Yale? What’s the difference between really famous people got into elite colleges and this scandal? The people involved in this scandal are not famous enough!
@Waiting2exhale that’s my personal message to my DCs: don’t be the best, but do your best. This is a different issue.
@parentologist That is an interesting post. I leave aside my views on affirmative action and real athletes. Hell, let even legacies in. But for heaven’s sake, universities, be transparent at about what your doing. The country club analogy is brilliant.
@austinmshauri Then maybe a new thread(s) for that. Because I just read through the new 100 posts since posting yesterday and it includes the same bashing and accusations then the same posters trying to clean it up with the same posts. I just don’t think this thread can turn around and be productive at this point, but just imo.
What is telling is most on here aren’t complaining about the public schools in on this (UCB and UCLA, etc.) where tax dollars are spent. People just love to hate or play victim and this is giving them a few days, and many posts to do that. A bad guy and a few bad people violated the schools through the side/back door, it doesn’t make them bad schools, or the 99.999999% of people that attend them less deserving.
For gosh sakes if anyone has a problem with elite schools, then don’t apply to them. There’s a whole lot of schools to choose from.
@makemesmart I think that transparency, or at least more transparency than there is now, would go a long way towards helping the overall situation. I think I said this before back on a thread about the Harvard lawsuit - and I know my numbers are off but roughly - if an unhooked ‘average excellent’ student thinks their odds of getting into a particular school are 15% they might go ahead and apply to that school as a reach, whereas if they knew the odds were really more like 3-5% they might decide not to bother with the time and expense of the application plus the heartache of getting rejected from that school. I personally don’t mind if Harvard or USC or Yale want to have some spots for alumni kids or children of famous actors or if they give a URM application a second look preferentially or whatever but I just want to know whether it’s worth my kid’s time to even consider a particular school. And I think bribing and cheating are awful so that’s a different thing.
I know what I hope comes to light from this scandal. I hope it makes more people aware of the distinct advantages the wealthy and, for want of a better description, the in-the-know crowd has in college admissions. I have no idea what goes on at elite admission time, but I sure hope the people choosing candidates are taking it as seriously as most of the applicants do. There are a lot of indications that it’s more than just a few coaches, college counselors and pushy parents who have distorted the system.
Neither of my kids were elite material. But, like many in our area, they had SAT tutors and the advice of good guidance counselors, not to mention every one of their friends was planning to go to a 'good" college. Both know lots of kids who either attend or were serious contenders for the top.
I don’t know anyone who really cheated, but boy is there a growing number of kids who are granted testing accommodations. Is it any wonder top colleges are trying to diversify their student body economically, geographically, etc?
As far as sports go, isn’t that a historic tradition? The ideal of the student-athlete and from back in the day, the ideal of the gentleman scholar?
@citymama9 No, you are not alone. I feel Lori Loughlin has born the brunt of this scandal because she is the person most people have heard of. Even Felicity Huffman, while well known, is not in the public eye as much as Lori Loughlin. On this thread alone she has been drawn and quartered. She, her husband and her children have all been mocked and vilified. What she and the others did was wrong and the courts will decide her punishment. I just hope the judge shows more fairness and compassion than the people on this thread have demonstrated.
@washugrad
I agree.
If I remember correctly, your DC likes Reed a lot, an excellent college that does not participate in NCAA athletic programs nor college rankings, yet Reed is able to make its campus lives vibrant, and its students competitive in post-college years. Why more schools couldn’t be like that?
@houndmom said:
I think it speaks to the fact that there are masses of “qualified” students wanting spots at these schools, but simply no place to put them all. They are qualified to handle the coursework; they are just not as stellar as students over whom they leaped to get in.
If you were to require recruited athletes to go through the “regular” admissions process “like everyone else” (presumably not like legacies), then the schools could not field competitive teams. Period. Sure, lots of folks are opposed to college athletics entirely and so those folks would not mind this outcome. But if you favor having Ivy League schools field competitive sports teams, then it would not be possible if the student/athletes were to face the same extraordinarily low, nearly random chances at admission. You’d have swim teams without anyone to swim the IM, soccer teams without goalkeepers or forwards, track teams without long distance specialists. Coaches have to be able to form competitive teams. This is true not just at the D1 level but at D2 and D3 as well.
This is an interesting case because it touches so many. Two main points…
The SAT/ACT cheating is not the universities’ fault and College Board /ACT will pay dearly for a process that allows kids with no disability to abuse the system and processes that allow a 36 year old for taking the test for the kids. We expect standardized tests to be fair and our trust was broken due to the ease and number of cheats. Hopefully much changes with the process.
The bribing of coaches / and staff to get kids in is the fault of the universities. Just like when a major store gets hacked the stores are sued for not having a robust process that is secure, I feel these universities are at fault for NOT making sure that kids that get in due to sports actually play and are recruited as such. That is a failure of the process and the universities let us all down by not designing a simple process to make sure fairness exist.
With every bad event there will be a positive change with the process. Too late for our kids but hopefully future applicants are better off.
I really really hope that employers are able to do the math; i.e., calculate the “guess-estimated” percentage of students admitted fraudulently and then determine the probability that the job applicant is actually one of those frauds.
The percentage is VERY low. And the best test of this theory (that the scandal will hurt the universities’ reputation) will be in next year’s college application cycle. Are applications down? Quality of applications down? I’m going to stick my neck out and say there will be no impact. Because although this is a horrible scandal, the “on the ground” impact was immeasurably small.
The lawsuits are absurd and frankly, to the extent that one can extrapolate from the admissions scandal to draw negative conclusions about our society in general, one could draw the very same negative conclusions from the filing of the lawsuits.
@Gudmom says: “
I saw middle class kids who worked WAY harder than I did for the same (or worse) grades. They were working to meet their parents high expectations; I was working to meet those of my teachers. The reward was the same. It felt good. Yes, I am very grateful I got the chance I did, but I’m still not sure I “deserved” it more than a kid who worked their butt off.”
I don’t understand your issue. So, you don’t think your childhood, or circumstances is deserving of praise. Ok. No one is saying it is from what I see. No one is making people like you out to be a martyr. I think the point is if someone without means happens to perform on the same level as someone with, its commendable. No one is talking about your character and whether you’re fun to be around.