Sounds like bribery and cheating were standard operating procedure for this guy.
There may be, at some schools for some sports. And schools should take a look at their system to root this out. If the school wants to admit students of a lower quality (however quality is measured) because the students’ family made a donation, they can do that. But it’s not in the school’s interest to let anyone but the admissions committee and the development office make that decision. Schools should fire coaches who try to go around the admissions committee to get donations for their programs.
@GnocchiB Exactly. In one of the articles I read, Tobin blurted out to officials that he bribed his "dumb daughter’ into Yale. Really sad that a parent would think this way about their own child.
My younger kid is still in elementary school, and I’ve just been to an expo of projects by some of the kids. It’s very clear that for a number of them, a parent did most or even all of the work, and it struck me that that’s the start of the behavior that ends in something like the admissions scandal.
Agree. It’s also the root of why so many kids who are well qualified on paper struggle to work independently in college.
We see a lot of this at my kids’ school, too. My favorite example was in fifth grade one of the projects was to create a paper mache model of something that lives in the Amazon rain forest. The day the project was due, the school held an exhibit so the parents could walk through the rain forest diorama. We walked in expecting to see lumpy animals garishly painted - like our kid made. Nope. The first thing we saw when we entered the room was a full sized replica of an Amazonian warrior - taller than I am and with full ceremonial headdress and clothing. Gorgeous, but am I the only one that suspect it wasn’t the work product of a 9 year old? It was a very interesting exhibition… and very telling about the level of parent involvement. Guessing that less than a third of the models were made primarily by the kids themselves.
There are two reasons why, and neither has anything to do with legacy admissions, which MIT explicitly does not do. In fact, MIT parents get a nice letter in the mail when their children apply to MIT, saying something to the effect of “We are delighted your child has applied … Be aware that MIT gives no advantage to legacy applicants.”
The first reason is that a child’s intelligence is correlated with parental income. Correlation is not causation of course, and what we are seeing is the side effect of two causative factors. First, intelligent parents tend to have intelligent children because intelligence has a significant hereditary component. Second, intelligent parents tend to earn more. This correlation is low, but it is enough to have a child’s intelligence appear correlated with parental income.
The second reason is that wealthy parents can afford to support the activities that look good to colleges far better than less wealthy parents can. Whether the child is a recruited athlete, a violin prodigy, or a math contest winner, each of those activities requires a great deal of parental support and in many cases, a decent amount of money for coaches.
Taken together it is no surprise that MIT is over-represented from the wealthy.
@hebegebe “wealthy parents can afford to support the activities that look good to colleges far better than less wealthy parents can” – I agree with that, and it would be nice if schools started to acknowledge this fact (and to discount these activities). I know that some of them do in the context of activities involving travel (especially international travel), as I’ve started to become familiar with the term “Trips of Privilege.”
On a related note, I am a little horrified to see internet ads from places like Sotheby’s and NYT offering “summer school” classes – aimed at HS students – for exorbitant fees. These classes seem designed specifically to feed on the anxieties of wealthy and upper middle class parents looking to give their kids some resume fodder.
It must be frustrating trying to paint an accurate picture based on “If this” and “If that.” No idea where some get the idea 5% are special considerations. First, you assume there are that many wealthy donors with 17 year old kids in a given year. Not.
2nd, you forget usual pull is much more than the sums given directly to the conspiring coaches. 3rd, I know, and frequently quote, that at the number of these admits- the entire so-called Dean list at the tippy I know, is less than 1%. Less than.
@JoelShoe @hebegebe “wealthy parents can afford to support the activities that look good to colleges far better than less wealthy parents can” – I agree with that, and it would be nice if schools started to acknowledge this fact (and to discount these activities). I know that some of them do in the context of activities involving travel (especially international travel), as I’ve started to become familiar with the term “Trips of Privilege.”
At many of the info sessions we’ve attended for top 20 LACs and top 30 universities, admissions officers have made a point of saying that a part time job is an excellent ec and something that is highly valued. This gives me hope - I do think more and more adcoms are holding jobs in very high regard, which is a good thing for kids whose parents can’t afford to take them to tournaments/competitions/tutoring/whatever every weekend.
Portion of an excellent article on the cheating scandal and the bigger issues in the realm of snowplow parenting and college admissions in 2019. Taken in part from “Family Wealth Watch” online today,
“Many educators have tried to correct course. While she was a dean at Stanford, Julie Lythcott-Haims witnessed the snowplowing up close. She observed parents in near-constant cell phone contact with their offspring; parents showing up to help their adult children enroll in classes; parents contacting professors and meeting with their children’s advisers. Lythcott-Haims left the campus in 2012 to write “How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success,” hoping to reach parents earlier in the parenting game. That same year, Jessica Lahey’s book, “The Gift Of Failure,” aimed at helping parents navigate the middle school years. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni tried to assuage parents caught up in the college-admissions mania with “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania.”
In spite of attempts to get parents to chill, the pressure to protect, along with the rise of social media (which allows us to present a highly edited version of our lives to the world), has created a maelstrom of hyper-insecurity powered by ever more irrational ideas about “success.””
Sure, it’s more highly valued than going to the beach or mall every day after school. But more valued than a national math or science or literature competition? No chance.
(Hint: info sessions are marketing/sales meetings.)
Felicity Huffman and 13 others have agreed to plead guilty:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/felicity-huffman-others-plead-guilty-u-college-admissions-185848516.html
Am I the only one who thinks this should not be an offense that lands someone in jail? In what way does it serve society at large to use tax dollars to incarcerate these people?
In “Seeking Alpha” online today, Neuberger Berman, highlights what they call the real “college scandal”.
This is the burden of college debt which will cripple home ownership and economic prosperity for an entire generation.
They go on to say more, along with other economists. In the spirit of protection parents and friends feel with the “don’t drink and drive” sentiment. Dont let you family or children make such bad decisions in the midst of the admissions chase. Don’t let your children fall victim to the hype.
Higher education is a worthy pursuit and elite schools have a lot to offer. But not to the point of “ruinous household balance sheets” and future economic security. For parents or children.
The majority of us all live in a world of financial trade offs. Don’t be financially careless and exhibit willful blindness to the realities. Or as the scandal parents, criminal.
@katliamom It sends a strong message to those who would try to do this in the future. More so than “community service” would do.
A massive fine would send just as strong message as a few months in club fed, imo. I just hate how we’re so incarceration-happy in this society…
Actually, I think jail time is a good idea. They stole something-college spaces. We treat wealthy white collar criminals too lightly, in my opinion. Time to even things up.
Instead of jail, I think the guilty in this scandal should be required to wear orange vests, travel in vans with other criminal offenders to their local freeways and pick up trash and be forced to use those really ripe construction-site porta-potties (portable bathrooms) with of course gawkers taking pics which can then be posted on the Internet.
30 days of that should suffice.
“A massive fine would send just as strong message as a few months in club fed, imo. I just hate how we’re so incarceration-happy in this society…”
A local petty crook gets caught fencing a few hundred dollars worth of stolen good and he goes straight to jail. Rich people commit hundreds of thousand of dollars worth of bribery and fraud and they shouldn’t get any jail time? I don’t think so. They need to serve a nice solid stretch in a real prison, just like the other crooks.
A big fine and no jail time would be just one more perk that rich people can buy that the rest of us can’t. They buy a side door into Yale and another side door out of jail.
@JanieWalker That’s heartening to know. Not sure if it helped my daughter in the applications process, but she has held a job at a math tutoring center for about 1-1/2 years. It’s not particularly lucrative (she could make much more doing one-on-one private tutoring), but has been a great experience for her – it’s helped her become a better math student, and has taught her how to navigate having a boss, being on time, etc.