As long as you have an admission systems which is predicated by how much money you have then there is always going to be the incentive for wealthy people to game the system. There is no incentive for the colleges to change things as it would mean a loss in revenue for them. 3 solutions which would go along way to solving many of the problems.
Have universities publish minimum admission thresh holds in terms of grades.
Limit applications to 8 per student
Relax time limits on ACT/SAT tests. After all it should be about what you know not how fast you can read.
This is an article about the student who was allegedly gloating with her mother and the proctor about getting away with cheating on the SAT. Her parents also paid for her to be a fake tennis recruit. She is currently a junior at Georgetown:
"Since her matriculation at Georgetown, Isabelle has declared her major in Spanish and worked as a tutor at Hoya Helpers, a program wherein Georgetown students tutor local public schoolchildren in Washington, D.C. In a blog entry written for a sociology class, she described herself as “very independent and not dependent on others when I need things.”
“I also find that I have a good moral compass,” Isabelle wrote."
She seems to be handling her coursework as she has not flunked out, and she is giving back to the community. She may have grown and changed a lot in the 3.5 years since she applied to college. She may feel bad about the cheating now. But Georgetown has a strict honor code so her days at the school may well be numbered whether she is sorry now or not (she did not comment for the article).
@elguapo1 - My suggestions college board/ACT must send how long it took the student the finish SAT/ACT … if it says 2 days or 6 hours … it must ring the bells for a red flag. Allowing 15 minutes more ok but double the time? or two days is ridiculous
Alright. If colleges don’t know who is given extra time on testing, it’s easy to see why that is an obvious target for cheaters.
I don’t have kids with learning issues, so please take these questions as information gathering - I’m not trying to offend. Wouldn’t colleges want to have an idea of how many admits were granted extra time? Won’t the same kids need accommodations once they get to college? Is that something that puts a strain on professors or resources?
And, no, the adcoms are not trying very hard to verify anything they don’t want verified!
@gallentjill. Yes. I know many are opposed to it but having extra time as part of the test would also eliminate a huge paperwork log jam for the testing centers and schools. Even where my son goes to Michigan in engineering they are more then willing to give extra time if someone asks for it. The head says it just levels the playing field and just not a big deal. Whether you solve a problem in 30 seconds or 1 minute shouldn’t decide your future… Unless your on the bomb squad, I guess…
@Knowsstuff - if everyone should be solving the same problem in the same time then why give an extra time? if you want to be fair … give extra time to everyone !!
It is not contradictory that a strong test taker earning a high score on his/her own with minimal test prep, while others (aided by wealthy parents) make use of extensive test prep and stuff like questionable disability accommodations to boost their scores to that level. I.e. some people like you and your kids are the ones who legitimately earned high test scores the way the tests are nominally supposed to be taken. But some others with high test scores got them with significant help, and were unlikely to have gotten as high scores otherwise.
I think that all of these top elite colleges that are involved in this scandal are not going to lose any applicants from this, since most kids will still want to go there. I don’t know why some of you are surprised by this. Throughout history, some rich people have used their wealth to influence others.
They should lose their degrees. All schools have honor codes, and each student signed off that the information on their common app with true and their own work.
@anon145 With all sympathy to your argument, I strongly doubt this will happen. If my own reaction is any indication, probably many parents are thinking how they can somehow exploit this development to get their kids into some of these schools. It’s still a supply and demand market.
@LisaNCState The point is that speed of problem solving presumably isn’t one of the metrics the professor cares about. Its a bit like disadvantaging a kid because he has bad handwriting. Who cares? Obviously, there are some fields for which speed is essential but is engineering really one of them? Is Steven King the world’s best writer because he can write books quickly?
@gallentjill - My point is if the majority of the kids are doing in the time allocated then why give an extra time? (my sympathy to accommodation kids however they should not be going to competitive schools and make their condition worst) or if you want to give an extra time then its should be recorded and must be sent to colleges … I hope you are ok with that …
What makes you think people need accommodations to work at those places? Real life isn’t like the SAT/ACT experience. I don’t think most colleges are like them either.
It’s not as easy to get accommodations as you think it is. For most people it’s a lengthy, expensive process especially if there are multiple children in the family who’ve inherited one or more of these disorders. Many parents don’t understand how the system works and even if they do the cost is more than most families can afford.
Where exactly do the chips belong? People can have learning disorders and still be highly intelligent. These students become doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, or one of many, many other rewarding professions. Why shouldn’t they be able to attend selective colleges to pursue those careers? If colleges can play a “supporting” role to these students why not the Ivies? Surely they have the resources to handle it.
If it is so easy and prevalent to bribe coaches, I am wondering if any bribery is going on with admission officers, even admission deans, although I admit the committee system would make bribery more difficult to work.
It would have taken an admissions officer less than 30 seconds to verify that the Georgetown tennis recruit’s stats were completely bogus.
I bet there will be an extra layer of scrutiny between the admissions departments and athletic departments at colleges moving forward - the admissions office will no longer blindly trust the coaches like they must have been doing up until this point.
