Like many of you, I’m really disgusted by the fake-accommodation issue. I believe that high schools should have to report the percentage of their students that received ACT/SAT accommodations in their school profile that goes to colleges. This would protect individual students’ privacy, but would likely cut back on the practice if the offending schools now have to report that 75% of their students got accommodations, for example.
Cheating to get into Stanford really hurts the deserving kid that gets bumped into a waitlist as a result, since Stanford is one of the very few top colleges that try to make itself affordable to middle class parents afaik.
@LisaNCState. How is it so easy? 5 hours of testing and evaluations at least. Then the tests have to show the disability. Maybe I am not following.
@TS0104 - agree 100 %. Parents will do anything to get that little snowflake into good school even though she/he doesn’t deserve it.
I have sympathy towards kids who need accommodation but in real life, no one gives you accommodations, and one has to perform if you work for Goldman Sachs or an Investment Bank … we should get rid of accommodations and let chips fall where they belong. Maybe those who have challenges should not be in ivy colleges and need a supporting college where their needs get addressed!
@Knowsstuff - Sorry to break the news but parents who can fake their kids picture to athletes will do anything! Paying of a psychologist is not a big deal for these people!
@sorghum Chinese cheating on SATs is a widespread thing??? I’m Chinese myself and I’ve always thought our high scores come from work ethic…
Never thought Asian parents would take it so far. To be fair, most of us work. We work hard.
I am not defending the cheating. But blaming the ACT/SAT here is like blaming a car that was used in a bank robbery.
If a student has testing accommodations, does College Board indicate that when scores are sent to colleges?
I also hear about a weirdly high number of kids in my area who “qualify” for accommodations. I’m also hearing about more parents demanding special treatment at school (quiet room, longer test times, etc) who may or may not have official College Board accommodations. Gee, wonder if that helps their kid’s GPA??
I think there’s a real possibility colleges will use this scandal as a way to justify holistic admissions. Kids are cheating on standardized tests and it’s very hard to tell if their GPA is legit or not …
There are many to blame here, besides the indicted and the students. The whole standardized testing industry, at all levels (SSAT, ISEE, PSAT, SAT, ACT etc etc etc), needs to do a top-down examination of their security.
At the testing center that my student was at, the examiners did not even ask for ID, much less biometric comparators. That’s shocking, but that’s just the entry into the test. It obviously can be further gamed from there.
That SAT/ACT did not pick up on how they were gamed seems remarkable to me. From reading the indictments, many of the tests were administered in just two centers in Texas and California. Surely anomalies from these two centers were off the meter and should have caused alarm bells to ring long ago?
This whole thing disgusts me to the core, when I see how hard my student has worked over the years. Perhaps schools (private grade/high schools, colleges, and grad schools) will examine their past, present,and future admission decisions far more carefully. As a parent, I sure will.
@squ1rrel This is digressing, but there have been multiple Chinese cheating scams uncovered. Most people work hard. Cheating is universal. This is so shocking because it’s so brazen.
@Knowsstuff said
I only know what happens in my suburban Chicagoland area, but with about 200 kids per public, affluent high school class with accommodations (~20%ish) there must be docs around that are ‘easier’ to get the diagnosis from. I expect that the accommodation rate in top city test-in/magnet schools is not even close…and what’s one of the main differences between the two schools----average family income.
@simba9, heck I’m not sure any undergrad degree is worth the top-level full-pay price of $280K, let alone bribes on top of that.
@websensation But it really does beg the question of why we should base college admissions on testing something that is not really applicable to college itself. Very little of college work requires speed. Very little real world work requires this kind of speed. A test that relies on speed not only tests the wrong thing, but it leaves itself open to all the fraudulent ADD/ADHD diagnoses.
And then you have this :
https://nusports.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=5488
This is Julia Louis - Dreyfus son at Northwestern on the basketball team. Was this bought? Don’t think so… He’s known to be a good student and look at his high school basketball stats. So sure being famous helps and she was an alumni but I am sure this scandal hurts people like him also.
I would love people like him to speak up. He wants to go into media… But it’s not his responsibility to do so.
I think though known colleges are looking at applicants closely now… I mean today. I hope this opens up spots for deserving students that are waiting for answers for admittance. Some good should come out of this. Maybe limiting donations or something if your kid applies to same college that your donation is for. Again, this is a wake up call to this industry. Like to see who else is being fired today. Good morning everyone!
I read this morning that there was also GPA fixing…students were enrolled in online courses, and had others take it for them, to boost their GPAs. So fake GPA and fake SAT/ACT.
I’m also really surprised (maybe naively so), to hear about parents on this site commenting about private school students getting testing accommodations. My dd’s private catholic school had zero kids with testing accommodations. That may be because kids with IEPs stayed in the public school system which had much better support services but that seems nuts that so many parent would be willing to cheat the system. I completely agree that with unlimited time, many, many kids would be able to boost their scores significantly.
IMO, one of the ways to “fix” the SAT/ACT problem is to have a one and done system, with students being required to take them in their home schools.
I still fail to see the benefit of faking a student’s way into college. It cheats everyone, including the student.
@hebegebe The cheating is only a tiny percentage if you exclude the huge number of kids fraudulently getting “accommodations.” Some of these private schools and public schools in affluent areas have 20% or more students getting extra time. Some as high as 50%. Extra time is an enormous advantage. And it is completely unfair to all the students trying to do this the right way.
. This is inaccurate. and additionally, the psychologist doesn’t grant the accommodations. The school and/or testing company does. That said, after the DOJ came down on the LSAC in a few litigated cases,the testing companies seem to have made accommodations somewhat easier to get. https://www.adatitleiii.com/2014/05/lsac-agrees-to-pay-over-9-million-to-settle-lawsuit-over-testing-accommodations-and-commits-to-substantial-injunctive-relief/
@1NJParent: “The system itself is culpable. It’s highly corruptible.”
Indeed. I also don’t see it changing because the current system benefits the schools (which is why they set it up this way).
The right thing to do is then not to take the college admissions process too seriously. Work on improving yourself, figuring out goals and reaching them. In the US, there are lots of paths.
Oh, and Oxbridge is much less corruptible.
The College Admissions Scam: A Sleazy Side-Effect Of Our Elite College Mania…
College/University elitism has caused families to lose their minds about higher education
"And here’s the kicker. Although attending an elite college gives graduates distinct advantages later in life, there are many higher education routes to the pinnacles of American success that do not involve an individual graduating from a top-tier school.
Want the evidence? My 2017 book, Degrees and Pedigrees, examined the educational histories of 344 of the country’s highest-profile chief executive officers, men and women who, as of 2016, led the largest and most influential public and private organizations in America. Included in the group were the nation’s 50 governors, the mayors of our 50 largest cities, the CEOs of the 30 companies listed on the DOW plus the CEOs of the 20 largest Fortune 500 companies not included on the DOW, the heads of the country’s 50 largest foundations, the 40 active-duty four-star officers in the uniformed services of the United States, the publishers of the 40 largest circulation newspapers plus the CEOs of the 10 leading TV news channels, and the presidents of the 50 top-ranked universities and liberal arts colleges (including ties) in the country."
“For the entire sample of 344 CEOs, 97% graduated from college. But only 36% of the executives who earned a college degree graduated from one of the top 50 colleges and universities. In every CEO category except the presidents of elite universities themselves, the majority received their degree from a non-elite institution. With respect to graduate education, roughly half of the CEOs with a professional or graduate degree earned it from one of the top 50 universities; the rest graduated from institutions of lesser repute.”
“The moral of the story is clear: While an elite college education conveys many advantages, it doesn’t have a corner on the market. Our premier CEOS attended colleges that served their needs more than glossed up their resumes. Let’s hope more parents learn that same lesson. It’s not so much where your kids go to college that matters; it’s what they do there that counts. It’s not proclaimed prestige; it’s personal pursuits that ultimately matter the most.”
Fair point about the accommodations abuse. But even here, it is not the testing companies that are encouraging accommodations, but rather that something deemed truly necessary for some small percentage of the population is being abused by others. I like the earlier comment that schools should report what percentage of the students get accommodations.