the FBI says the investigation began when they uncovered a 400k bribe to the Yale soccer coach while working on an unrelated investigation.
I always thought that SAT/ACT had security in place to identify cheaters such as huge score improvements or similar answers. It seems to me, that someone taking an exam far away from their place of residence should trip some alarm bells. All of the cheating here took place at one test center in Houston and one in Los Angeles. One of these kids apparently lives in Greenwich Connecticut and flew all the way to Los Angeles last December to take the ACT. That should have tipped off the ACT people that something was fishy, especially considering the fact that she was the only one in the room taking the exam.
@sbballer A few posts back I posted the text from the Boston Globe report. #1311
I appreciate your taking time to type that long post. It is eye-opening to me to hear of the extent of folks trying to get accommodations for kids who, in your professional opinion, don’t need them. This isn’t happening in our local schools, but we are not in an affluent area where kids are aspiring to highly competitive colleges.
I think the idea of offering a timed and untimed version of standardized tests is a good one, with full disclosure of which version was taken.
Some may have thought my comments upthread implied that I don’t want to stop the cheating. I support full accountability and new systems to detect and stop cheaters. But I am not sad that I don’t have the resources to “buy” advantages for my kids - legal or illegal. They will be fine, no actually better off, in the long run.
to sum it up
backdoor = Bill Gates and the super wealthy.
side door = the key (this present scandal)
everyone else = work hard and hope.
Way up-thread somewhere someone asked whether any son or daughter of a US president did not go to a high-end college.
One example that comes to mind is Susan Ford. She graduated from high school while her dad was president and she enrolled in Mount Vernon College for Women which is now part of the George Washington University. I’m sure Mt. Vernon was a perfectly fine college, but I’ve never heard of it being on anyone’s List of the Elite. Susan Ford later transferred to the Univ of Kansas.
@privatebanker It’s not about who wants what and why, it’s about shady practices to defraud hard workers. It’s about adcoms preaching fake news to unsuspecting public school scholars. It’s about middle class assuming that they can afford their kid’s dream college without if they worked hard, earned well and lived frugally. Only to find out that in real life things don’t work that way.
How much if that was gender expectations of the time, though? My dad certainly thought women had less need for an education than men did, and he is about 15 years younger than Ford (and lived in same part of the country).
To be honest, I don’t know much about the current incarnation of the SAT. My D took the ACT and for her a few extra minutes might have made a difference. My guess is that it isn’t really true of the SAT or people wouldn’t be scrambling for extra time?
Isn’t Jack Buckingham and his younger sister currently at Harvard Westlake? Now that he’s spoken publicly what do you think they’ll do if anything?
oh no Stanford Students File First Admissions-Scandal Class Action
bring out the popcorn …
@Scipio: Susan Ford might have had better luck with admissions if she had changed her name to either Mercedes or Lamborghini prior to submitting her college applications.
@LisaNCState “why not the principal of the school verify and sign off for each student punishable by law?”
For a public high school with hundreds of seniors, this just isn’t practically possible.
@LisaNCState thanks for the link - I read the article but don’t understand. These are two students who currently attend Stanford suing because their status is tainted because of the cheating scandal? Aren’t they beneficiaries of the scandal? I’m confused.
sound like they are saying since a couple (many?) of kids got into Stanford by cheating . their degree is devalued and another point they are saying that they did not get into USC and yale 
I don’t know the answers either, but more time probably helps initially, until a certain point is reached where there is no additional benefit.
I think people scramble for extra time (again, excluding those with legitimate reasons) because they are seeking an edge, any edge, for their kids. I have heard enough middle and high school administrators speak of increases in those seeking accommodations, using words like ‘epidemic’ and ‘overwhelming’ to think it goes beyond those who legitimately need extra time. I have heard some teachers and admin attribute it to parents not wanting to believe their kid’s performance and learning style is ‘typical’ or ‘average’—teachers and admins are in a tough spot and can’t do anything when the student has medical test results that qualify them for accommodations, signed off by a doc.
They are claiming that their degree is now devalued 
Also the US attorneys are very clearly saying that the universities were the victims of these alleged crimes. It’s hard to see how they can be both victims and responsible at the same time.
@JanieWalker Apparently, these are Stanford students suing because they didn’t have a fair chance to get into Yale or one of the others, and that their Stanford degree is going to be considered less prestigious now because of the scandal. In reality, they were problem two students hand picked by some aggressive attorney wanting to be the first in on a potentially lucrative law suit. I doubt this suit will get very far.
@bamamom2021
I had no idea that this was going on. I was always aware that kids who went to privates had advantages when it came to Test prep, and that Tutors could be had, but had no idea that there was widespread gaming of the test taking system when it came to extra time. I am disgusted, TBH. Even more disgusted that the ones that tend to use this dodge are likely to be wealthy because of their ability to hire, and bribe, specialists and admins.