@gallentjill “On the other hand, high stats and great accomplishments can still give your child wonderful opportunities in all the many excellent schools throughout the country. Top 50 ranked schools are quite achievable with hard work.”
The top 50 ranked schools if measured by “selectivity” have acceptance rates below 25%, approaching 20%. Wake Forest is outside of this group and yet is one of the schools used by the Singer organization.
One thing that surprised me was reading about how many of the “donations/bribes” went directly to the respective school athletic programs and not the coaches themselves? Are coaches expected/pressured to do fund raising for their own programs or they all just happened to be very passionate about their work?
A tweet I can appreciate from one of my favorite sports writers, Charles Pearce.
“I have covered college sports more or less my entire career. but I never thought I’d live long enough to see a recruiting scandal that involved the admission of athletes who couldn’t play.”
“@TheBigChef Not every kid’s accomplishments get in the local paper. My kid was a recruited athlete and did get recognized for her high school teams, but not her club teams which was at a much higher level of play.”
Honestly, in this day and age, I don’t think it would be difficult for admissions to confirm whether or not a D1 athletic recruit is legitimate. The complaint says Georgetown allocates 158 slots to athletic coaches. That’s a very manageable number, and the vast majority could be confirmed literally in seconds. High level club teams have their own web pages and anyone with an internet connection could confirm your kid was who he/she said they were. A few cases might require a little digging around (phone call to the recruit and/or his/her coach asking for additional info etc …), but it wouldn’t take more than a few days to finish the task. I’m not asking admissions to evaluate talent, just make sure the recruit is an actual athlete in the claimed sport.
A friend came out to defend Felicity Huffman. He can’t believe that what she has done is any different than a legacy student getting in or a legit donation to the college getting a student in. He questions how her actions are criminal and paying for a building is not?
Ahhhh the entitlement!
@DCNatFan “I wonder what will happen with the handful that are applying in this current cycle. Will acceptances be pulled?”
At least one of those kids is waiting to be admitted; I will be waiting curiously to see what happens, and even whether s/he’ll even opt to go to college this year, following all of the stress of this public spectacle. I’m fairly confident this kid falls in the “didn’t know” category, and is as much a victim as anybody who applied honestly.
@leigh22 Do you have a link to that? I’d love to read it.
Just curious…So what happens to the students admitted under these falsified applications?
You know what I’m thinking…Out, Olivia!
How about those whose place they took?
Oh, what a tangled web we weave…what a freakin mess…
@gallentjill here is a link https://www.cbsnews.com/news/college-admissions-scandal-david-mamet-defends-felicity-huffman-operation-varsity-blues-arrest/
@PurpleTitan @Nhatrang
CC thread from 2008 about test cheating in Vietnam
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/international-students/478855-cheating-at-ssat-testing-center-in-vietnam-p1.html
By the way, how did Felicity Huffman get away with only paying 15K to have her daughter’s answers changed? That level of bribery seems almost attainable by the middle class. Shouldn’t it cost something completely out of reach for the rest of us?
@gallentjill
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/david-mamet-pens-open-letter-felicity-huffman-corrupt-joke-universities-1194267
@1Dreamer says “While I’m sure some of the kids did know, the feds seem to believe some actually had no idea, but their life will still be hell regardless. I would not want to be one of them walking around campus right now.”
I bet none of them ever did much walking around campus anyway. Loughlin’s daughter is on record saying she just wants to party and doesn’t want to go to class. And she’s too busy making a buck with her “shopable” dorm room. I think ALL of the students of these scammers should be expelled immediately. They want another shot at admission? Fine. Sit there in the USC library with a REAL proctor and take your SAT over again. The real way. And you better score higher than the kids who got rejection letters the year you got in.
Someone way back in this thread posted a link to Key Worldwide Foundation’s tax forms. Did anyone happen to scroll through the Form 990? You can see all the schools/organizations listed that Key Worldwide Foundation “donated” to for 2014, 2015, and 2016. There are a few universities listed there that haven’t been mentioned, at least that I have seen, yet in the press. I’ll list all of them including the ones we’ve heard about but show the amounts.
For example, in 2016, Form 990 Schedule I lists “grants and other assistance to” among other places:
Chapman University $150,000
DePaul University $50,000
Loyola High School (in L.A.) $39,900
NYU Athletics $$83,181
Princeville Enterprises $100,000
Univ of Miami $60,000
Univ of Texas, Austin Athletics $252,500
USC Soccer $25K
USC Womens Athletic Board $50K
In 2015:
Baruch College $50K
Chapman Univ $175K
City of Houston $5508 (odd?)
DePaul Religious Studies Dept $50K
Loyola H.S. $37,970
NYU Athletics $51,200
Univ of Miami $40K
UT, Austin Athletics $294,000
USC Soccer $50K
USC Water Polo $75K
USC Women’s Athletics Board $75K
USC Women’s Volleyball $50K
Yale SummerTime Sports $250K
in 2014:
DePaul Religious Studies Dept $50K
Generation W (Jacksonville FL) $25K
NYU Athletics $203,998
USC Baseball $100K
USC Water Polo $100K
USC Womens Soccer $25K
@curiousmom07 Singer claims to have done this for hundreds of families. The unsealed indictments lists just a handful. You probably won’t have to wait long to find others!
@4kids4us “Someone way back in this thread posted a link to Key Worldwide Foundation’s tax forms.”
Please re-link? I’d like to see…Thanks!
@gallentjill, I am not advocating that Yale look like Caltech, but if you allow coaches to essentially sell admissions spots, this type of scandal could occur to your school.
It’s pretty much impossible for this type of scandal to occur at Caltech as the coaches there don’t have that type of power. Furthermore, kids like these would not want to go there because there really is no place for a kid who isn’t extremely bright and hard-working to hide at Caltech (while there are plenty at Yale).
(Yes, they could still fake test scores and GPA’s, but that by itself isn’t enough for Caltech, and in any case, if the academics at Yale are as rigorous as at Caltech, this type of scandal also couldn’t occur).
Oberlin and Sarah Lawrence are not Yale. I very much doubt there are folks who cheat to get their kids in to Oberlin, and if you have to cheat to get in to Sarah Lawrence (who admits probably nearly every applicant that they think can handle the work), then you’re truly sad.
I believe the number being reported is 761 families over maybe 11 years.
Lacrosse kids have a number if they pay the $35 to be a member of USLacrosse and get the extra insurance. It is not a ranking system and doesn’t even mean the kid has set foot on the field. If the parent is willing to pay $500k to the schools, I’m sure the parent would pay the $35 for a membership card.
But again, the admissions department isn’t checking on the athletic ability of the applicant. The admissions department isn’t judging if the coach is ‘wasting’ a slot or tip or scholarship on Johnny and that Billy would be a better player. What if the admissions office googles my daughter and finds nothing (which very likely would have been the case)? She really did play, she really did win coaches awards and academic awards, they just weren’t in any paper. If the college called the hs guidance office, the GC wouldn’t know either as ‘Defensive Player of the year’ isn’t put on the transcript. Often our name is spelled incorrectly and may have been in the paper that way (but really, not in the papers that often). A teammate claimed to be an All American, but I’ve searched for it several times and could never find anything. Does it mean she’s not an All American, does it mean that the granting organization was really bad at posting the names correctly (probably), or does it mean I’m a bad googler?
The Georgetown tennis coach obviously didn’t need the slots for real players and put together a team from students who got in on their own since he did this over a long period. The USC water polo coach was coach of the year for many years, so he was doing okay with the students available to him too. Most coaches don’t have extra slots to just give away. If a team needs a goalie, the coach better recruit a goalie and not just hope one shows up in the general student population.