@Mwfan1921 , I live in an affluent area. My child has test accommodations for documented LD’s. I have always advocated for him, but I am a college graduate. I educated myself in our state’s education laws and talked with people about what was needed to get my son an IEP. Interestingly, my school district never insisted on any paid tests. All tests were done through the school, free of charge, as they are required to provide by law, because I submitted written requests for the the tests. It was pretty clear he was (is) dyslexic and dysgraphic, and that isn’t going to disappear. (Son no longer has IEP, but has a 504 and retains extra time for testing. And yes, he did have extra time on both the SAT and the ACT.)
My point is that, in general, more educated and affluent parents have the time and resources to pursue what their child needs. It’s not surprising that there is a correlation between increased numbers of testing accommodations and affluent areas.
I suspect that the most detrimental aspect of this scandal is that kids who really need accommodations are going to find it harder to get them. Many parents aren’t good at advocating for their kids, because they don’t know what they need to do in terms of getting their kids the extra services they need.
I’'m curious how many times the motivation was the parent’s desire to be able to say the child was going to an elite school and not a school like, god forbid, ASU vs. the child saying to the parent that is their dream school and they’ll just die if they don’t get in and the parent wanting to ensure child gets what they want and doesn’t ever have to experience disappointment.
I don’t think many of the parents in this scandal are thinking about grooming their kids to be a CEO. I think it’s more of an immediate gratification. “We’re special, my kids are special, my kids go where I say they go”
After graduation mom & dad provide a nice stipend to help the kids maintain their lifestyle. Kids go into family business or parent uses connections to set them up.
Happens all the time, on many different levels. Believe me it’s not just hollywood or super wealthy who support their adult kids … and brag about their kid’s success. I know lots of parents who help their kids drive fancy cars, live in premium apartments, etc.
I CANNOT believe that I wasnt alllowed to see my PSAT score because I flipped to another section during the test, but there are people out here having procotrs CORRECT their wrong answers??? This has to be a joke.
I too worry about the ripple effect of this whole scandal…with two Juniors taking SAT/ACT now and completing college applications in the fall. There will definitely be more scrutiny going forward and delays I suspect in SAT/ACT scores coming out. My daughter has an IEP and needs extra accommodations on the SAT/ACT – not sure how it is every where else, but in order to get accommodations, not only did we have to provide extensive psycho-educational testing/reports but it was our school’s Learning Disabilities Teacher who had to send the paperwork directly to SAT/ACT. I get why the privileged think money can buy anything…but it saddens me more to think of all the players likely involved – school teachers included.
If you guys think about it, most of these schools accept less than 2000 people a year. By the time legacy students, people with their last names on buildings, children of presidents and royals, filthy rich people, and kids of THESE CRAZY PEOPLE get into schools, where is the space for actual hard working people??
THIS is why the acceptance rate is so low. For you to be white, priviledged, filthy rich, have every advantage already given to you, already be on a higher playing field, AND then cheat your way into college??? The mediocrity!
With respect to the fake athletes–how hard would it be for admissions to verify that the student was indeed an athlete. It seems like it would be easy to pick up the phone and call the high school crew coach to see if a kid really is on the crew team?? Or do a google search to see if there are local news stories about the kid. Our small town paper has stories every week about what happened at a varisity/jv game.
Those scams are all aimed at getting into US colleges (wonder why?). There has never been a single case of cheating on Chinese college entrance exams (its Gaokao system) that I can find via online searches. Their exams are administered uniformly and simultaneously across the entire country and can only be taken once a year. I certainly don’t advocate their system, but it does tell you something. If they had adopted our “holistic” system, perhaps all hell would break loose.
@Mwfan1921. His school was the number one selective enrollment school in Chicago. Nscp. Not a lot of wealthy families just really, really nice smart kids from good families. Think the avg ACT that year was 31.3 avg. As you know you need something like 99.6 or higher to get in. Yes, public school, but I think you know that being from Chicago.
I only say this since my kids did go to a well known religious day school from elementary to 8th grade since our area of Chicago didn’t have developed schools at that time. It does now though. Families were very wealthy to normal people (like to think we are normal… Lol). The mayor’s kids were in my kids classes before going to Washington, Sam Zell has a building named after his father, Our new governor namesake donates a lot etc etc.
Looking back it does seem there was an increase of kids with “issues”. Like everyone had executive functioning/organization issues. In my day, we called that a really messy bedroom… Lol…
But the people we knew that kids had 504 /Iep all seemed to have real issues. No one wants to go from therapist to therapist since elementary just to score higher on high school college admissions tests either. It not like all of the sudden in high school they had some learning disability.
Edit: Heinel is the athletic director on the take. To admission’s defense, they are being told by senior staff that the applicant is legit, when the staff in question is in on it. It’s possible this scam only seems obvious in hindsight.
the elite schools deserve much of this scorn. If they were honest about the actual number of academic merit slots available there’d be a lot fewer kids wasting time and money applying to them. The illuminating part of the scandal is that hopefully unhooked kids who are white/asian will stop applying to these schools. Just what percentage of these slots are awarded on pure academic merit? almost none. Most of the unhooked kids applying are elected student government, team sport captain, straight As, and 99%tile test scores and there are probably 5-10X applicants per slot. 25% recruited athletes, 25% donors legacies, 10% URMs, 15% pell grant; My guess is that at most 25% of the slots are pure unhooked academic well rounded merit… (and when I say academic merit I mean involved in school and community, play a sport or instrument, not just class nerds)
It would probably be hard. If these parents are rich and powerful enough to bribe college coaches and support sham SAT proctoring centers, they’re rich and powerful enough to make their elite prep schools tow the line. Keep in mind that these elite prep schools are only elite because of their acceptance rates to the top schools.
The sad thing is that USNWR will still rank the top colleges as top colleges, despite the indications that a significant portion of their student body does not deserve to be there academically.
Philips Exter/Lawrenceville and likes must be thoroughly checked for their accommodations % … All these prep schools are the biggest culprit gaming the systems