The kids of the super-privileged do not have enough privileged connections to get desired jobs without needing to go to the college career center?
But she was recruited, not a walk on.
The story for the older Isackson daughter is extraordinary in a few ways. First, the timing is odd. Admission to UCLA would have required an application to be submitted on November 30, 2015, and admissions decisions were released in mid-March of 2016. Yet, the Affidavit item 246 says that the UCLA men’s soccer coach, Jorge Salcedo, didn’t receive the student’s soccer profile until May 20, 2016. The student was then accepted on June 28, 2016, much later than the normal admissions date.
Second, Affidavit item 247 says that the student-athlete admissions committee approved her admission. Does this mean there is a separate admissions committee at UCLA just for athletes?
Third, the UCLA women’s soccer coach, Amanda Cromwell, is not mentioned as being involved, but the men’s coach took a bribe of $100,000 to get the student admitted. Shouldn’t the women’s coach have had knowledge or some say in who got accepted as a recruit for her team?
Being kind is nice. It would be a positive comment. But it’s not enough. That’s not mocking. It’s the nature of the competition for elites. Just as you don’t get that Google job just by being kind.
The NBA example is good, but those are known names. I use, what if you were in charge of building the hs competitive math team? Would you just go by stats? Or look for the various strengths needed? What if the top stats kids included some who couldn’t be collaborative, show up to practices and meets, buckled under pressure? Whatever. Meanwhile, maybe another kid is a great manager, makes the right efforts, makes the team better, in ways? And has the math skills.
Plotinus, ime, there are so many potential points of failure in an app Think of the sections on the CA and supp and what the point is. I really like the age group. We talk a lot on CC about chances and not understanding what matters. But the mistakes are much more avoidable, if one thinks. Good example is Yale, we all know they like leadership qualities. But being a leader is not just any title, founding the pie club, staying in your comfort zone. We should all know H and S say it’s not an AP arms race. They say it repeatedly. Or that MIT is not looking for unilateral. They say it (and show it.) But how many times do posters go gaga over kids without any breadth? Or who think the number of YouTube followers is a tip?
Btw, an imperfectly written essay from a non native speaker (assuming the lang skills are solid enough to get through college classes,) can be ok if relevant, gives the right insights.
But back to topic. I feel recruiting gets too much power. Of course, there are so many great, academically strong athletes- and ethical, to boot. But this scandal shows a huge hole. The unis should close that. But it does not mean the rest of the process is corrupt.
I wish there was evidence here some are looking at what the colleges do say and show, instead of pulling up media articles about what’s purportedly wrong.
@OHMomof2 My point is that the other players may not have known whether she was recruited or a walk-on. @TheBigChef said that the other players must have known something wasn’t right because her athletic profile from high school was weak. But they probably just assumed she was a walk-on, just like the girl from Japan, presumably.
At my children’s high schools, the common app essay is assigned as classwork, corrected and graded by the teacher. Additionally, the GC reads it and makes comments. I think this is common practice at private high schools, which renders the essay pretty useless - the well off kids all submit essays that have been polished and vetted, which neutralizes its usefulness for admissions.
So what kind of essay will stand out? One that is well enough written, but demonstrates a challenge or experience that is exceptional in some way - one that is not necessarily all that polished, but rises to another level by its content or perspective.
This is somewhat common in the US at larger universities where some majors are more popular than the departments can handle, so admission to major processes in the second year (based on first year grades at the university) are used to keep enrollment within capacity limits (e.g. engineering majors at Purdue, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, Ohio State, Penn State). In a few cases, new first year students are admitted directly to the major, but face a high GPA weed-out to be able to continue (e.g. at Wisconsin, first year chemical engineering students need to earn a 3.5 technical and 3.0 overall GPA to avoid being dismissed from the major).
However, the type of cheaters in this scandal probably are not intending the more competitive majors.
When William Macy actor guy came out on the “Finding Your Roots” program, I thought he made a good impression. It’s too bad that a single act will splash a big stain on your image. Anyway, I know a wealthy family who did even less than an average family to help their kid get into an Ivy as a legacy because they were told by the high school counselors their kid attending an exclusive private high school in NY would have a great chance to get admitted there. After the rejection, one of the parents told me they regret not even helping him with getting an interesting summer internship or even reviewing his essays. But you know what, this kid went to another good college (not Ivy) and is doing great there, and doesn’t even want to transfer. So, just saying there are some wealthy families who feel it’s a bad form to use their connections to help their kids too much.
They probably want to do a full investigation and get everything pre-approved by their legal staff before either saying or doing anything specific with respect to a specific student whose parents may have lots of money to file lawsuits.
At some schools, athletic recruits first go through the normal admission process (where normal admission readers would likely see the sport achievement as an outstanding EC, rather than a special hook); if not admitted, they go to a recruited athlete admission process where they compete (with other rejected recruited athletes) for the limited number of spot for recruited athletes. Note that this type of process does give the coach incentive to recruit athletes who would be admitted under the normal admissions process, which would not use up a recruited athlete spot.
By challenges, we don’t mean in lifestyle, but how you saw a need and got involved, or an experience that grew you in ways relevant to the colleges.
But you would not choose someone for the math team simply because s/he is a legacy of someone who was on the math team a generation ago, right? Just like an NBA team would evaluate Steph Curry or Seth Curry by their own basketball skills, not because they are the sons of former NBA player Dell Curry.
And Steph Curry couldn’t even get a basketball spot at Virginia Tech, Dell Curry’s alma mater.
I agree. Randomness would also destroy all the unique character of all these schools. Columbia is not Dartmouth is not Princeton is not Brown. Williams is not Kenyon is not Pomona. All of them are great for the right kids. I have said that “fit” is a luxury, but I would hate to see it disappear. Why shouldn’t the schools have the leeway to choose the kids that will not only excel but enhance the campus environment they are trying to build.
@mdphd92 “The article also says something that I don’t quite understand. It says the “first choice [of the student] was USC, but because of a ‘clerical error’, Isackson’s fake athletic profile was diverted to the normal admissions process in February 2017, foiling Singer’s scheme”. Does this mean that the USC admissions committee could tell that an athletic profile was fake? Would a coach’s recommendation have been more believable without a (fake) athletic profile?”
To me, this says that USC admissions office does not allow in students with low academic credentials unless there is something else to make them worth admitting, and that something else is apparently not money (or at least not hundreds out thousands of dollars in donations) anymore. There might have been a time decades ago where having a parent willing and happy to donate $500,000 to USC would certainly get your application serious consideration the way the admissions officials at schools like Yale ethically (according to people here) give special consideration to the children of families who can donate a building. As everyone acknowledges, those applicants admitted from the special pool for children whose parents give extraordinarily high donations still have to be “eligible” based on having a minimum academic standard just like applicants admitted as athletic recruits still have to be “eligible” based on having a minimum academic standard. Lucky for both groups, being “eligible” isn’t a particularly high bar to meet.
It seems that the price to put your academically mediocre but “eligible” student in the special pile reserved for very rich students is too high even for families in the solid 1% now. But the price to put your academically mediocre but “eligible” student in the athletic recruit pile is still within their range.
Everyone agrees that the athletic recruits at schools like Yale and U Penn have to still be good students to be admitted. Since those students were perfectly “good”, why pay money to make them athletic recruits? Because simply being a good student with nothing else to make you stand out means you are unlikely to be admitted when there are thousands of more meritorious students deserving of the spot. But truly being outstanding in your sport – one whose athletic talents are beyond just “excellent” – can rightly be argued is “merit”.
But there is no such argument to be made for merit based on the size of your parents’ bank account and their willingness to donate an enormous sum to the university. That isn’t merit.
Federal and state privacy laws! Your right to ‘know’ is exceeded by their right to privacy until a final determination is made. And even then, all that may become public is the student is no longer associated with the college, i.e., no reason given.
(not to mention they need to follow their own UC campus guidelines/regs.)
“At some schools”
@ucbalumnus - what schools are these?
@observer12 The point I still don’t get is: why was Singer’s scheme foiled because the student’s athletic profile was accidentally sent to the normal USC admissions committee? Was it supposed to be hidden from the normal admissions committee and sent to another admissions committee instead? Why couldn’t the USC coach simply have said to the normal admissions committee not to read that application because the student was being considered instead for her (fake) athletic talents?
Regarding the lawsuit by students suing the university saying they wasted their application fee. Maybe someone can explain it to me because I am confused.
These students applied to universities knowing that these universities reserved seats for recruited athletes, big donors, and other students who meet their “institutional needs” and those students knew they did not meet any of those needs. Those students knew that some seats were reserved for recruited athletes and knowing they would not get one of those seats, still applied for one of the remaining seats. And their applications for the non-recruited athlete seats were considered fairly in the pool for non-recruited athletes.
It seems the only people who could sue are students who were athletically outstanding enough to have received one of the spots reserved for recruited athletes but didn’t get one.
If you ask me, the students should be suing the SAT/ACT test companies! They were told their test was graded fairly and it turns out that the SAT/ACT through their negligence allowed all kinds of cheating that meant that the curve of exams could have been wrong. Students paid the SAT/ACT fee believing that their test would be scored fairly because the other students taking the exam would take it under the same conditions unless they actually needed special accommodations, and that did not happen.