Sure, these kids were made to look good, but, as you correctly pointed out, admissions has the final say. Admissions needs to do their due diligence, follow their good instincts and chase down anything that doesn’t smell right. Unless of course they are getting something to make them look the other way. I have a hard time believing that admissions offices are totally clean in these, and other, cases like this one.
@chipperd - My point exactly. all these admission officers know what’s going on. — waiting for #MeToo moment for admission officers who openly comes out and says what shenanigans were going on inside that “conference” room!
@squ1rrel To use Mr. Singer’s terms, I think we’ve all been familiar with the “back door” methods for a long time, and I think we’ve known that “side doors” exist. I, for one, never knew how the “side door” worked - faking SAT scores and athletic profiles is new to me. I thought most ill-gotten acceptances were done in the traditional way: send your child to prep school, where you spread around both large and “soft” donations to ensure good grades and recommendations, the editor slot of the newspaper, the captain of the team, the “book award”, etc. Pay for a college counselor to put together a dazzling application, et voila.
The cheaters certainly deserve punishment, but they aren’t the only culprits. The system itself is culpable. It’s highly corruptible. It provides incentive to cheat. It made cheating possible by its opacity. It also purposely made cheaters indiscernible through grade inflation and frivolous majors/studies so everyone there appear “qualified”.
@LisaNCState : Yup. Those admissions officers work really long hours at times during the year. Most are on the younger side making $50,000-$60,000/year. Between the stars in that young persons eyes in dealing with a celebrity applicant coupled with a chunk of cash? All I’m saying is it’s entirely possible.
@chipperd - Also burn out rate among Admission officers is very high… never heard these younglings staying more than two years … they all go to private practice and start preying on parents and kids for their “expert” advice.
The entire point of SAT/ACT is to test the speed. Most questions become easy questions if you had 10 or 15 more minutes in each section. These tests do not capture deep thinking ability but ability to quickly learn regular level stuff. That is why you can do not so well on SAT but do well in colleges by being efficient with your time and work hard.
@Maya54 at least one of the schools involved is PUBLIC - UT Austin- as a Texas tax payer that has friends with well qualified students that have been “capped” I am livid!!!
I think a good way for Elite Colleges to have a transparent back door would be to say outright – our tuition is x amount and our minium admit criteria is this SAT score and this GPA.
If you are one level below the minimum score/GPA, we may be able to admit you if you also pay the tuition of a more qualified kid(s).
This would help the kids in the middle class hole - too poor to pay the sticker price but not poor enough for sufficient need aid.
Because at many elite schools, you have to actively try to flunk out. My nephew, a Yale graduate said: “It is hard to get an A, but it is harder to get a C”.
Students from our high school report that both Harvard and Dartmouth are easier than high school. Note that not all colleges are that way. Slackers should avoid rigorous places like MIT, Princeton, UChicago, Cornell, Columbia, etc.
The cooperating witness was probably Mr. Singer, who apparently already has plead guilty. He’s trying to keep his rear out of prison for even longer, by turning in his clients.
There is no honor among thieves.
@kaywallis - prison is a scary place! Anyone would have done the same. Waiting for admission officers #MeToo to turn on colleges …
I think every Division I school should be required to conduct an internal audit of all recruited athlete admits for the past five years. It wouldn’t be very difficult to determine if an admit was a legitimate athlete or not. If an admit never showed up on the team’s roster, that would be an obvious red flag and the coaching staff would need to explain what happened. Also, my kids’ smallish HS typically has a couple of athletes recruited to D1 sports teams every year. If you punch their name and sport into Google, you will come up with plenty of local new stories about them. If you can’t find any info about the kid playing their sport before college, that would be a red flag as well.
I also hope that ETS/College Board is doing an internal audit, looking particularly at students who had “extra time” at those particular centers and/or were proctored by the individuals listed in the indictment.
Presumably the Huffman daughter will have her scores voided - at minimum.
I wonder how many of these “athletes” were included in the team pictures but never showed up for a single practice? I also wonder how many of the teammates knew about these “athletes” and the fact that they only showed up for picture day?
This is a huge over-reaction due to a small number of people who are brazenly cheating. Even though there will be undoubtedly many more names coming out, they will still be a tiny fraction of 1% in the end.
The ACT was critical to me 30+ years ago when I came from a family with modest means and attended a poorly performing high school. Colleges were able to see my ACT score and realize I had potential, as the grades from my school indicated little. It was a key reason why I was able to get full-ride scholarships at the time, which was huge for me to attend college.
And put me firmly in the camp of saying that you don’t need test prep for these exams. I am now a full pay parent, even with two kids in college at the same time, and the only test prep my kids got were the ACT Black Book and the official ACT test book. A max of $40 per kid. Each took the test once, and did well enough they didn’t need to again.
it’s so easy to get accommodation from a psychologist. it’s sad that kids who need it will be lumped with kids who don’t and the majority of the kids don’t need it.
@hebegebe - when the acceptance rate is 4% (Stanford) even one student getting without merit is too many!
@websensation Actually the SAT measures a whole host of things including but not limited to, ones ability to reason. Speed isn’t one of those variables the SAT is designed to measure, but may be an unintended result. The ACT measures body of knowledge more than ability to reason.
I am glad that this thread doesn’t do anything to advance the “Chinese cheat like heck on the SAT but gosh Americans are culturally fundamentally honest” theme that has come up quite a few times in CC.