Our daughter and her friends just lament the lack of honesty and humility shown when a girl they adore who has graduated, with ok stats, comes back for a visit and talks about how mich she loves being at X, how grateful she is to be there, how much fun it is and doesn’t say I know my dad (being a legacy and one of the most respected political figures in…) helped me get in.
They have a lot more respect for the really smart rich girl with the great stats who gets off the waitlist at X when her dad makes 6 figure donation and she gets off the waitlist, and says so.
“A neighbor of mine has her grandkid in fencing because the D of someone she knows was recruited for it. Ironically, this kid is white but lives in Harlem and started fencing in a free neighborhood program aimed at African-American kids.”
This program is probably the Peter Westbrook Foundation. They’ve trained many Olympic Fencers and World Champions of color
2277 "If USC “games” the rankings so much, why haven’t they taken advantage of this easy path to more applications and driving yield well past 50%?"
@jcwjnw99 – USC is a big time “gamer”. Pretty much everyone in the top 25 is a big time gamer. But how an individual school games will vary depending on circumstances.
USC is today a top 25 private. But they haven’t been top 25 for all that long. Most of the big time ED schools are top 15 privates and have been so for decades. So ED probably isn’t the gaming tool that USC could most effectively deploy. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see them roll out ED at some point – they are getting close to where that would work since their rank/brand has been going up.
But USC just isn’t at the level where they could easily lock up half of a high stat enrolled class via ED like you see at Duke or Penn or NW or Vandy. Kind of like ND (who also doesn’t have ED), a lot of people think about USC as a football school and are somewhat surprised to learn how selective it actually is. In 1996 USC was USNWR #44. 2006 was USNWR #30. In the glacially slow world of college rankings, USC being top 25 happened 5 minutes ago.
So USC’s formula is a little different, but clever and effective. So no ED. Large merit scholarship program (which is much more typical in the 20-40 band). Officially no EA, but they actually have de facto EA.
If you want to apply for USC’s merit schollies you have to apply RD by December 1. And winners are notified on Feb. 1 (ahead of the RD date). So while there’s no EA, the merit scholarship program is the USC version of EA. And USC’s early scholarship application deadline is very very carefully designed to attract cross-applications from Stanford SCEA kids. While Stanford SCEA kids can’t apply EA or ED to other privates, they do allow non-binding early private apps if tied to a scholarship. Voila!
USC also is one of the biggest in-transfer schools going among high end privates. USC typically graduates 5300 undergrads a year but only enrolls 3300 frosh. USC does that for many reasons, and CC to university transfers is an established thing in California. But it is the case that all those transfers never hit the USNWR books.
Not a criticism at all – all top schools are gamers. USC just does it in a particular way that works for USC.
If you accept the standards that their parents apparently live by, then I guess this is true. But I wouldn’t wish their “very nice life” on my worst enemy.
Well, I think it’s more relevant that the girls apparently accept those standards, and will probably float through the rest of their lives completely unaware of why others viewed them so harshly during this “difficult time of their lives.” Lol. Galling, I know.
@ShanFerg3 Please don’t leave “thread-nado”. We are a community and your voice is important. We are learning from each other. My position and views have evolved after reading many of the viewpoints that are different than mine at the time. After careful reflection and consideration.
Life is hard. And it’s hard for everyone, sometimes in different ways and at different times. And we all are in this trip together and it all ends the same way in the end.
Very few headstones mention college attended. They do say things loving father or mother. Or son or daughter. That’s the important stuff.
Life is a marathon not a sprint. And some start poor and end up as so called rich. And some start rich and end up poor. And none of that defines a life.
As an aside, I remember seeing a wonderful story on 60 minutes ,years ago, about fencing. One of our young countrymen wss considered the best in the world and was going to win gold for USA. A prodigy I think he was going to a top school. But what I recall he seemed like such a grounded and super smart kid. And his backstory was incredible. He was African American. And I remember telling my wife clear as day, that kid might be our President someday.
Hope his life turned out ok since then. Not sure if yourecall this story.
Some admitted students are likely development cases, but I don’t think it’s the scope you describe. Do you have links to sources saying fully half the students admitted to HYP are accepted because their parents are committed to making large donations?
Apparently, the FBI thinks there’s a large difference. The parents who wrote checks for Harvard’s fundraising drive presumably got thank you letters. The other parents are on the receiving end of arrest warrants.
Not surprised that womens rowing was the sport used for the USC fraud.
Basically, rowing doesn’t exist at the HS school level. For men in college, it is not a sanctioned NCAA sport (even at Harvard and Yale) and most often considered a mens club sport.
But womens rowing is a fully sponsored NCAA sport. It is popular at big time football schools as a title ix offset/compliance sport. You might be surprised that ND, Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, Kansas State, Oklahoma and Texas all have womens rowing teams like USC does.
Because basically no women row prior to college, womens crew is almost entirely a walk on sport. Zero experience required to join the squad and see how you do. Very little recruiting. And a huge drop out rate, since most of the walk ons don’t like it after trying it. For football compliance purposes, the athletic departments make sure to count the female rowers in the fall (before all the drop outs) rather than in the spring (when so many fewer are left).
So you can easily see how the womens rowing team would be the perfect cover to slip in some bribe kids like the Loughlin girls.
Knowing all of this, I do know some heli parent families that pushed their girls into some kind of pre-rowing program as a potential hook for college. The odds are just so much better than squash or fencing or field hockey. In one case, a family actually got their kids’ private school to start a girls rowing team. That family’s girl is now a rower in the Ivy League.
Folks will work all the available angles if the angles are legal. And a few will play illegal angles too.
The minimum level of academic skill needed to graduate from college varies a lot less across colleges than the level of academic skill needed to gain admission to various colleges. Yes, there are some schools where the minimum level of rigor is much greater, but they are outliers, and not targets of admission cheating.
@privatebanker thank you for the kind words. It wasn’t me saying I was leaving the thread. It was @17yeargap. I was asking her to consider staying.
I think the 60 minutes piece was on Peter Westbrook. I believe he is a 14 time world champion and 5 time Olympian. He is also an Olympic Bronze Medalist Sabre Fencer and the founder of the Peter Westbrook Foundation. They formed a partnership with the prestigious Fencers club (which is the oldest fencers club in North America). He was raised in a Newark NJ housing project and attended NYU. He’s raised millions of dollars through his foundation that has enabled him to develop world class fencers who previously didn’t have access to the sport. I know him personally and have a huge amount of respect for him.
I love this post and have quietly roiled with all the strident assumptions about who deserves what. In fact, I make a beeline for the bathroom if I feel the subject of “where my children are in college” gets too close. I hear myself: “no, my child really didn’t get extra time; you asked me that last week. Yes, I’m sure.” “No, neither of us are legacies.” “No, we’re not related to so-and-so. We’re bland and boring, and yes, privileged to have been able to provide our kids a good education, so I totally get that they didn’t get into this school and that one too, and please stop with the sidelong glance as if I slept with your husband. I didn’t and you don’t know anything about my children.”
Seems like we’ve become a culture so divisive, so in thrall of the material, that we dismiss each other because everyone “knows”. We “know” who’s privileged and who isn’t, who deserves and who doesn’t. Massive fraud has been likened over and again this week to the not-surprising concept that people will (legally) invest in their kids’ education when they are able, and that we have a real problem with a level playing field because of entrenched inequities that render the holistic process lacking. Fraud is something altogether different. And yet it’s such a fine metaphor for what has gone rotten in this country.
@LANYLA - How often, and for how long, are students expected to excuse their admittance to a given school nowadays? Your daughter’s friend says she loves her school and is grateful to be there - yet she’s lacking in “honesty and humility” for not specifying the asterisk that got her in (presuming there is one)? Maybe she doesn’t realize that some people expect to hear this kind of personal information nowadays.
This is a brave new world we’re in, but I’d consider it a drag to hear an explanation/apology for every admittance I’m aware of to an elite school. Doesn’t this fit under the category of “not really any of my business”? This friend is apparently thriving there - how much justification does she owe other people? If she was accepted without cheating or breaking the law, the school thinks she deserves to be there.
Someone sent me an interesting FB post. It was from the page of a professional writer. She said that she realizes she was part of the problem. Her story was quite eye opening. She detailed how she wrote essays for college apps, papers for undergrads, and graduate students up to PHd. She talked about how the rigging begins, and how it follows mostly mediocre men, some women all the way to the boardroom. Honestly after reading her story, it made me think about the NYT article some of you may remember that showed how POC start out upper class but don’t stay in that tier.
@austinmshauri Not tying to stir the pot. But the sailing program at Stanford did not need any donations. This was probably a way to launder the money.
Ten years ago or so, the Stanford girls squash team was playing a tournament in Hartford against national powerhouse trinity and midd etc.
In a conversation between a midd player and her opponent that day before their match waiting.
Midd player - “Where are you staying?
“Stanford player. “I don’t know, we just got here “.
MP “You must be beat. When did you leave to get here!”
“Stanford player “no it’s ok we just left a few hours ago and just landed, we were able to use a private plane today. “
MP “Wow. How was that?.”
SP. “It was really nice. My first time on a G4”
True story and pretty close to the words too.
Stanford getting a sailing donation as the coach said to help buy things “the team needed, it wasn’t for me” is a lie. He’s already pleaded guilty to avoid trial and cross examination.
Several of the parents mentioned in the indictment have children at other schools than those named in the indictment. Please give these siblings the courtesy of remaining innocent until proven guilty. At this point no one knows if the siblings used the services of Singer. Please do not ‘out’ them. The other 700 individuals involved will be named in due time.
I have no idea why this scandal should imply that public policy should shift to have a general tax on universities or elite universities (though we have already started to do that a bit with the tax on endowments).
Well if it is a lie then that too raises red flags regarding Stanford’s culpability. Are coaches at Stanford (or anywhere) really allowed to use program funds for personal expenditures without any administrative oversight? It is plausible that an administration would defer to coaches regarding the athletic ability of recruits in obscure sports like sailing, but it is implausible and improper if administrators turn a blind eye to the money flowing into and out of the athletic programs. If these athletic programs are permitted to function as personal fiefdoms, then the universities are inviting fraud.
“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.” @blueskies2day yup!
