ACT administers a couple million ACT exams per year in thousands of test locations and multiple dates. It should not be that hard to fly under the radar. Maybe the kid was sick the day of the bad test…?
Standardized test cheating is often captured by the NCAA and the AD compliance department when a high profile athlete (hoops or football) is struggling to clear the hurdle to get into a big time big money sports program. Because of the circumstances, folks know to look for needles in a particular haystack.
Tough to do if you are a 5-star cheating to get onto the Gtown basketball team or the USC football team. Not so tough to fake into obscure places like Gtown tennis or USC womens rowing.
It is very strange that high schools, guidance counselors , teachers, coaches did not have a clue. A kid just does not advance academically and athletically out of nowhere to suddenly become competitive for top colleges. Who provided recommendations? Someone at their schools had to send transcripts, recommendations . The whole thing is very strange and sad.
Pulling strings to get a kid in college has been going on forever. I’m not really surprised by this, other than they were all very sloppy and obvious about it.
That’s because you didn’t read how it was done. The kids didn’t take the real test. Some of them THOUGHT they were but after they left the room the proctor bubbled in the answers on the real test sheet. More details are given in the conversation between CW-1 and Caplan quoted in the supporting affidavit.
Yes, the Caplan (partner at law firm ) facts seem particularly intriguiging. It seems that his daughter IS an athlete and took courses online. CW-1 said they could take more courses for her and get good grades in them. Caplan’s wife objected.
He wins the irony award. Googling reveals his daughter is a high school junior. IOW, she hasn’t been admitted anywhere yet.
Well, there is such cynicism about admissions from all quarters that the counselors and teachers probably just chalked it up to the schools wanting to admit rich kids or celebrities. Not that many school officials are going to to call up an admissions department and indirectly ask “what are you thinking!?”.
While I’m sure some of the kids did know, the feds seem to believe some actually had no idea, but their life will still be hell regardless. I would not want to be one of them walking around campus right now.
Aren’t there some students who have graduated…and presumably have jobs? What about them? Degrees revoked? What if they really didn’t know…and did their college work on their own merits? Those are the kids I really feel badly for.
The only thing that surprises me about this is that they’re getting exposed, especially the Hollywood folks. They must have pissed a bigwig off out there.
Yes and Frank Bruni’s book about college admissions should be a required parent read especially these rich, entitled parents. “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be”.
@coolweather I assumed it was because they either snail mailed or had their banks wire the money to the agency in question. Who knew, all they had to do was drive there and hand deliver the payment … hahaha!
@marinebioslo - “Yet again confirmation that getting straight As, 100s of hours doing community service, varsity sports and working isn’t what gets you into top colleges.”
Actually it proves that you need straight As, high test scores, impressive ECs and sports excellence to get admitted. Keep in mind that is exactly the attributes these students fraudulently claimed to have. The kids that really achieve such things are in fact the ones that get admitted.
You are using a tiny fraction of horrible people who stole abilities and identies they didn’t deserve or earn to validate a convenient belief that all kids that get in don’t deserve it.
The fact that this scheme worked ironically shows that it does take special talents or scores, or the very rare unethical rich parent willing to risk criminal prosecution based on parental vanity. Thankfully there are far more of the former then the latter.
@3puppies My daughter was an athletic recruit and for Division 1 schools who sign you, it generally happens in the fall and winter depending on gender and sport.
"I don’t understand the charge. Why they call it “mail fraud”? "
@coolweather – most crimes (murder, theft, assault) are not federal crimes. For a crime to be a federal crime, there has to be a violation of federal law so that the FBI and the US Attorneys have jurisdiction.
Typical hooks for federal jurisdiction are nefariously using the federal banking system (bank fraud, wire fraud), or the USPS/mails (mail fraud) or evading federal taxes (e.g. Al Capone) or doing something that crosses state lines (interstate commerce) or defrauding a university which receives federal funds for student financial aid.
Without a federal crime/jurisdiction, then this would be a case for the LA police and prosecutors.
If I were ETS, I’d cancel the scores from anyone who took the test at one of the suspect locations, with accommodations, and didn’t live there. And I’d tell the schools. I would let the students retake for free to demonstrate that they were capable of getting the scores they got honestly.
If I were a school administrator, I’d expel any student who benefited from this scam and who knew about it. I’d revoke degrees of anyone who benefited from the scam, knew about it, and had graduated. For those students who benefited from the scam but did not know, I would quietly help them transfer to a different school based on their college record, because I would not want to award a degree from Fang University to a student who got there fraudulently.