“The idea of the admissions department checking the local newspapers for proof of athletic achievement is, frankly, ridiculous. Do you think the LA times is going to have a story about Lori’s daughter’s high school rowing team, if there even was a team? My daughter’s high school didn’t have a team but 4 girls signed with D1 schools; they were on a private club team. I have no idea if there were stories about them in the paper. I wouldn’t expect the admissions office to figure out that it should check the county newspaper and not the big city paper to find a story about my daughter’s big game and there is no place on the application to attach the articles listing her, in one line, as a ‘first team All County’ member. They just have to believe the application or reject it, but they aren’t going to do a google search on every applicant.”
Why is it ridiculous? An unhooked kid has his/her application gone over with a fine tooth comb before they are admitted. Any chink in the armor, and they are on the reject pile. Google and 30 seconds is all you need to determine if a D1 recruit is legit. Admissions doesn’t even have to do it themselves. Farm the job out to an “Assistant Dean for Athletic Integrity.”
and to add what I said before … if the kid needs 8 hours or 2 days for SAT/ACT to complete then college board appointed psychologist (third party) must evaluate the kid (paid by high school )
@Lindagaf Unfortunately, accommodations for all sorts of exams and competitions (even in extracurriculars) is very much an everyday scam. There are all sorts of accommodations people manipulate for all sort of reasons, from disability to poverty and from wealth to race and what not.
Guess what, @CupCakeMuffins , life is never going to be 100% fair. It’s not fair that my son is dyslexic and dysgraphic. It’s not fair that some other child has some other challenge. You know NOTHING about the struggles my kid has faced for the entirety of his schooling. It’s not a scam if you have documented LD’s, which my kid does. You have NO idea what you are talking about.
There really can be no meritocracy as it relates to thinks like standardized testing. Forget people cheating to get accommodations. Kids of parents with means have the ability to be tutored to perform better on these standardized tests. Kids of parents without the means have to rely on their own motivation to use free materials to study hard. Yes they can still achieve strong results but I believe it is undoubtedly easier and more common for a motivated student to achieve strong results with the support of paid tutoring.
Now the student still needs to put in the work (unlike the cheating described in this scandal). Both of my kids went to the same SAT prep class which cost $900. My daughter took it more seriously and scored a 1550 while my son scored a 1450. I fully believe these scores are higher than what either of them would have gotten had they NOT gone to this prep class (although both were good students, my daughter better than my son, so I would have expected solid scores even without a prep class). And I fully believe that these results contributed to each of them receiving strong merit money from their respective OOS public flagships that they are attending. Therefore creating a nice ROI for the $1800 we spent.
And then of course there are all the other ways that the kids of parents with means can try to improve their app:
Pay to live in an excellent school district or pay for private school tuition
Pay for an essay consultant
Pay for community service trips to 3rd world countries (although many will say this does not improve admission results)
Pay for intensive athletic programs and/or selective academic summer programs to beef up EC/Awards section
So the deck is already legally stacked against kids who come from lower socio-economic brackets. I honestly think that is a bigger problem compared to the relatively small %age of people who are outright cheating to improve admission results. While everyone is rightly outraged at these wealthy parents who are literally buying their child’s way into a college, I think that the number of folks doing this pales in comparison to those taking the legal actions I noted above to better position their child.
@LisaNCState. I agree but there a more serious problem. You have kids with Cerebral Palsy and the like. There are blind kids that use brail but a lot of times the tests questions are read to them. There are some slow processing kids that the test is read to them also. This takes time and a lot of it. It’s not just about giving “extra” minutes. Most kids that don’t need the extra time don’t want to have to wait in the room an extra hour or so either.
I don’t have the answers either but I agree there should be changes in place, of course.
I wonder if FBI phones aren’t ringing off the hook right now. So many of you know schools with suspiciously high rates of SAT/ACT accommodations, some of these may be being ‘turned in’ right now. As a matter of fact, has anyone called the FBI with more information on this sort of possible cheating?
It’s never a good idea to attack without understanding other person’s intent. I’m talking about scammers, scam is when someone uses it wrongfully not when it’s medically/morally justified. Are you unjustly scamming the system? If not then this doesn’t apply to you.
@Lindagaf Thank you for this article. This is the indictment of holistic admissions right here:
Without the “back door”, there are no “side doors”. Defenders of “holistic admissions” like to equate it with affirmative action, but that’s buying the institutional line. “Holistic admissions” just means “zero accountability”, apart from some basic claims of “diversity” and the like.
Another thought. All these shenanigans, the donations, the bribes, the celebrity hook, the legacy hook, the hook for elite sports that most public high schools don’t have, make regular people livid. No one likes her own kids to be treated unequally and that is exactly what this is. This news story has generated a degree of outrage that I hadn’t anticipated from the facts by themselves. But it affects most people personally and where the heart is, that is with their kids.
A fair system, an equal system, would be to eliminate hooks for the wealthy. Schools would set a minimum qualification of GPA and test scores. Then blind applications with all identifying information removed would be chosen by lottery.
Employers should recognize that the only reason private elite schools are elite is that they are the schools of the wealthy and well-connected, not that they are bastions of intelligence.
The point with testing and with accommodations is that we want kids to be able to display their qualifications on the metrics that are actually important. Obviously, if you are trying to put together a team for speed-chess, you need a test that measures speed. On the other hand, if you are trying to put together a class of kids with the intelligence to do well on the classes they will actually be taking, most of that doesn’t require speed. There are numerous examples of brilliant and successful people who might not necessarily excel under time pressure.
I think the ACT/SAT tests as currently designed adds an unnecessary time pressure element, which is why people try to fake their diagnoses. If the tests were made a bit longer, time would not be a factor for most kids. If you don’t know how to answer the problem, or can’t interpret the reading, more time won’t help. Of course there might still be kids with special needs who need an even longer period, but that would not be a problem because no one would be trying to take advantage of it. If your kid is staring dumbfounded for 30 minutes, she isn’t going to do any better with three more hours.
At one point we thought about whether we should seek accommodations for one of my kids and she flat out said no. Her problem was not about running out of time. Extra time was not going to help. I could stare at a calculus problem for a month and not be able to answer it. On the other hand, whether I have 1 minute or 10 minutes will make a big difference in whether or not I can solve an algebra problem correctly. If you want to know what kind of math I understand, you need to give me enough time to solve the problems I know how to do.
The people helped most by easy standardized tests are people like my kids, who have a boatload of external accomplishments as well. And that is in large part due to them being in a high performing school system, and having a parent that understands what colleges look for in terms of holistic admissions. For that matter, going test-optional won’t hurt my kids the least bit.
The people most hurt by easy standardized tests are the diamonds in the rough at mediocre high schools, whose parents do not understand what elite colleges look for because most kids don’t even go to college at all. Math contests could very well be unheard of, and science fair participation is rare. Forget about research.
Let me provide a very concrete example. There is a series of math contests that qualify people for the US team on the International Math Olympiad (IMO). One of the major milestones is qualifying for USA Junior Math Olympiad (USAJMO), or the USA Math Olympiad (USAMO). About 500 people qualify annually, about half for each exam. In many years, over 1% of the nation’s total USAMO/USAJMO qualifiers come from just our local high school! Yes, it has many bright kids, but what it really has are bright and involved parents.
@damon30 , love how he euphemistically states that he “created a side door.” He’ll wish he’d never opened it when he is sitting in prison.
I am in two minds about holistic admissions. It’s intentions are good, and if it didn’t exist, how white or Asian would the elite colleges still be? I do mean that seriously, because the point of holistic admissions is, ideally, to level the field. It’s clearly not a perfect system though.
@gallentjill I agree that without the time constraints, particularly the ridiculous ones on the ACT, these tests would still be an effective measure of kids being ready for the rigors of challenging curricula at colleges. Worth noting though that this crook was getting extra time in order for the kid to be alone in a room with a crooked proctor. Different from giving uneeded extra time for an advantage.
@hebegebe I understand what you are saying and its a good argument for making the tests hard enough to distinguish among the very top. Its not an argument for time pressure.
@damon30 “holistic” is a B.S. phrase that does 2 things; 1) legal cover for the Universities for not taking pure academic students 2) keep encouraging unhooked white/asian kids with sub 33ACTs to keep applying to super elite schools
A doctor picked by the company who gives the exam can’t be considered an impartial 3rd party. Taxpayers at your local public high school aren’t going to pay for extensive, costly diagnostic exams. If you think they will go attend your next school board meeting and suggest it, but you should have a solid plan for what you think should be dropped from the current budget to cover the costs.
The students didn’t get into those elite colleges because they had extended time on the exams. They got in because their families paid to have someone else take the test or correct it when they were finished. Punishing innocent people isn’t going to prevent cheating.
@CupCakeMuffins According to the affadavit, some parents went to great lengths to keep their kids from knowing, typically with the sports scam variation. There were cases where the student asked why they were told during orientation about some sport that they had never done before.