USNWR ranking just released their inaugural issue: 2019 Best Prisons for College Admission Cheats
Certainly the class action could be used to force every one of these colleges to return all the application fees they collected during the years that this scandal occurred. Could be quite a bit of money from just that avenue…
(Did not read all the pages in this thread - but as a HS class of 2020 wondering the following:)
Will this scandal have a positive impact on the college admissions in the near future (viz. admission cycle for next year). My wishful thinking is that the colleges will tighten the process a bit more and make sure that things like this will not happen again. I understand that the overall impact of bribes on the elite college seats maybe small - but when the competition is so fierce - especially for certain demographics - even one seat gone to an underserving candidate is too much. Hope this will spur the colleges to make the necessary changes.
Do you think it can happen and if so, how soon will it take for the colleges to take meaningful changes.
@LisaNCState - really, I’ll tell her mom if she wants to pursue that
Usually posters wanting to have tangential conversations do start a separate thread… In this thread posters are having to go back pages and pages to respond to some on topic comments. Its a request. Not trying to give the mods more work- but rather asking posters to consider these separate issues in separate threads. Whether or not one believes in extended time is really not relevant to this conversation. JMO.
@LisaNCState - if you were not aware of the existence of accommodations, there are many wonderful threads to be read in the Learning Differences forum here on CC.
“Olivia Jade was on the yacht of USC’s board chair, Rick Caruso, in the Bahamas. Jade is the YouTube personality on whose behalf her mother, the actress Lori Loughlin, is accused of participating in the admissions scheme.”
@MinnesotaDadof3 – This story just keeps on giving and giving.
Olivia was with her fellow USC frosh Gigi Caruso, another Instagram star and influencer. The yacht, named Invictus, is 216 feet long, sleeps 12 guests, 19 crew, and conveniently features an elevator, movie theater and beach club on board. Cost the dad an even $100 million. A week long charter goes for $600k.
Gigi appears to be a typical college kid at USC. A part time swimsuit model, she is the CEO of her own swimwear company (Gigi C Bikinis) which she founded while still in HS with her mom (coincidentally herself a former swimsuit model). Gigi’s Instagram is really something – vacations and photoshoots (i.e. work) in Malibu, Bora Bora, St. Tropez, Monaco, Bahamas, etc. Dad’s boat is featured prominently. No photos, though, of anyone studying or writing term papers.
In my next life, I’m coming back as a rich kid who attends USC. If I need some extra help from the parents to get me in, fine. It will be so worth it!!
Geez…we should all file a class action lawsuit for keeping us posting all day and not getting back to work since this is classic CC rage!!!
Anyway, I am not surprised and in Chicago we go through the college process in High School. Many of our kids apply to Selective Enrollment high schools. These are the top high school in Illinois. At the time my son’s high school was number 1 for like 15 years and had an avg ACT of 31.5. These are very smart kids from every area in Chicago and like every neighborhood. Mostly minority. We whites were the minority but you would never know it. Like everyone looked the same. These are great families and even better kids. To get in to the 2 top high schools you need to score in the 99.6% range and higher. Yes, these are the cream of the crop kids. Also it is weighed by district. We are in section 4 and its the wealthiest (Wrigley Field area), so my son had to score higher then some one in section 1,2,3 to get accepted. So yes parents hired consultants, tutors etc just to get higher scores on these tests, no question. The principals were allowed 10 students at their discretion. Mostly sport kids or some academic kids that didn’t test well etc.My son was being recruited for Chess to the number 1 Chess team in the state but he chose the number 1 academic school, which was a better fit for him. Over 18,000 kids applying for less then 3,000 seats. To get into the 2 top schools is harder then getting accepting into the Ivy schools. These are remarkable schools and run like private schools and are “true” college prep schools. Most of the people I know that kids didn’t’ get accepted went to some ritzy private schools.
People would say " use Susie she will get your kid into school x" but paying thousands of dollars for her service when we were paying that much for tutors, therapist, etc didn’t make sense. These were all smart kids just trying to become smarter to pass these admission tests for high school. So getting to the college phase was a breeze…LOL…
Our elementary-middle school had very wealthy families. People like our mayor’s kids before going to Washington and our governor’s namesake etc. Paying for tutors etc to get prepared for high school was considered normal. But it did seem strange that like everyone had executive functioning issues. My bedroom/desk was just messy but now its a condition…lol…organization skills like no one had. But both my kids went to a developmental optometrist (yes, it a thing and really works), had biofeedback, went to language specialist etc etc etc and we didn’t do it for the fun of it either. Everything in it’s own right helped. My daughter has dyscalcuia ,add and had other things. It not like we are making this up. So having records, bills and more bills and neuro-pysch test and retests and more specialists etc still wasn’t enough for getting extra time. We fought and at the last minute won that battle and it was needed. We could of just hired a education lawyer like some families do to get it, we didn’t .
As someone stated, extra time is not going to help anyone that doesn’t know the material. It is just going to help those that really need it. But getting extra time and having someone purposely cheat is sicking to me. I am glad this happened and exposed this “problem” .
You have schools like Michigan (my son’ at it and I love the school) that have feeder schools from some of the wealthiest schools like Detroit Country Day, West Bloomfield and Grosse Pointe Woods and even from Chicago from New Trier. So New Trier is like not even a top ranked school in the state and they are a direct feeder to Michigan but the number 1 school in the state sends like 8 kids there a year. (a lot of those kids to go Illinois, Northwestern and U of Chicago and other top schools also). I called Michigan Engineering admissions and asked this question and they said they are very aware of the wealth of this school and that they can pay the out of state fee’s. So schools need to start to look at their student profiles and start taking kids that are deserving and not just the wealthiest.
OK…I feel better now…thx.
USC = University of Special Connections
DS has always enjoyed math competitions and is decent at them (AIME qualified) but not amazing like some of the kids. One of DS problems has always been that he is not as fast as the tip-top kids. When he was doing MathCounts several years back I asked one of the college professors that was involved with a group of kids taking these tests why there was such a focus on speed. He indicated that it is all about math fluency.
I get that some kids need additional time but on some of the tests, time is a critical piece of the test so it seems unfair for accomodations to be easily granted. I fee certain DS would have better results if he had more time.
@gallentjill
Really? Neither schools, not the workplace, allow one to take unlimited time to do a test or chore. Time is a critical component to just about any job. In the world I live in, if I don’t meet deadlines repeatedly, then I get fired, and my job is way less time sensitive than many others I can think of.
If you don’t think that students (and we are talking 16-18yo’s here)who get extra time to take a test aren’t getting preferential treatment, and an advantage over other students, then I don’t know what to say to you.
USC, Yale University among colleges sued by Stanford students amid college admissions scandal
The University of Southern California, Yale University and several other elite colleges are being sued by two Stanford University students who claim they were denied a fair opportunity for admission and have had their degrees devalued due to the college cheating scheme revealed by federal officials Tuesday.
Erica Olson and Kalea Woods filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday, a day after federal authorities said they uncovered one of the largest college admissions scams to hit the U.S. The lawsuit seeks $5,000,001 on behalf of what the lawyers estimate will be thousands of plaintiffs who fit the criteria to seek class status.
The University of San Diego, the University of Texas at Austin, Wake Forest, Georgetown, Stanford, Yale and USC – along with William “Rick” Singer, who was called the ringleader of the admissions scheme – were also named as defendants in the lawsuit.
lols… grab some popcorn.
@bamamom2021, I’ve been on the other side of that table quite a few times. We live in a very affluent town with an excellent school system. My son was once described as severely gifted by a neuropsychologist. He used to tell dates that he was not good at anything – he was either great or terrible and alas, it was true. Severely dyslexic – reading and writing caused physical pain – but he was so smart most of the school curriculum was painfully boring (also ADHD, speech delay, …). Diagnosed in 2nd grade for some of it. He actually needed double time. When The College Board offered 50% extra time, his SPED caseworker was upset at all of the other families who work to get a diagnosis and then IEP/504, which causes the TCB and ACT folks to be distrustful.
@LisaNCState, using school psychologists sounds like a good idea but in fact would not work. In many school districts, the schools are clearly budget-constrained and SPED budgets are growing rapidly so the testers get explicit or implicit directives to deny SPED services (which of course are implied by tests). So, there is a problem with incentives. Let me explain.
My sister is a clinical neuropsychologist. She visited and spent some time with my son. She called me and said, “You need to get him tested. He will show up with a normal performance IQ and his Verbal IQ will be at least 50 points higher.” My wife’s family is almost all dyslexic. We went to the school, did the test, and got pretty much the results she predicted. Then, they said, “Well. Since he is doing so well, he doesn’t need services.” It turned out he was so bright that he would memorize a book by having someone read it to him, and appeared to be reading to them, but in fact could not read a word. At that point, we applied to a private school for kids with LDs and they told us, basically, that he was too bright. In order to get the services from the public school, I had to hire an outside person and then talk with the principal. I sensed that money was the problem – people would try to get the school system to pay for transfers to expensive private schools, for example. So I said, “Look. Your person and my person both agree the kid has a real LD and needs a certain kind of services (Orton-Gillingham, Wilson or equivalent). Precisely because my son has LDs, he is exhausted when he comes home, so I want to get this done during the school day. I am willing to pay for the staff and any equipment needed, I just want to want the remediation to happen as part of the school day.” She said, “I can’t set up a situation where your son gets services in school and little Johnny who also needs services isn’t getting them. So, write a letter that says the following to the head of Special Ed for the School District and then do xxx.” That worked and the IEP/504 were put in place.
In short, it was the financial issues that were scaring them from granting an IEP. When I showed her that I wasn’t after the money, she helped even though she couldn’t let me pay for someone and they paid to have one SPED person and my son’s teacher trained in Wilson. But, I did pay for whatever equipment needed he had (laptop with speech recognition software, etc.) I suspect that using only school psychologists would not work well for kids who actually need help.
My daughter had major league medical problems, which left hidden fairly severe ADHD. The private school to which we sent her for middle school identified the problem on their own and gave her extra time on tests without our asking or knowing (of course, no IEP). Her private HS again suggested she get tested and the extra time/Ritalin that followed moved her from a really anxious B student to a less anxious A student. Since she had no IEP and her workup was done by private psychologists, the ACT was skeptical. I went back through middle school report cards (in which the teachers wrote paragraphs) to find the evidence that the problem was there and then had the teachers write what they had observed to the ACT, which approved her 50% extra time.
So, I wonder if a better response is that private psychologists testing needs to be verified behaviorally by the teachers.
@sbballer : How about USC = University Simply Corrupt … or… University Send Cash?
interesting charge.
Im just interested in everyones take on this fact: The timing of this case, ironically, finds us on the eve of the most important date for college admissions i.e late march/early april Presumably, there are many IVY and IVY level schools who are about to release their decisions. Will this delay them? Will the admissions offices reexamine recruited athletes/ SAT disparities etc prior to releasing the results of the class of 2023? Whats your opinion?
Just what I forecast two days ago. Senator Wyden will introduce a bill to eliminate the tax break for donating to colleges before or during the admissions process for a child.
I think every known selective type school are reviewing applicants as we speak. No one wants lawsuits. I think there are going to be some very unhappy families /students in the next few weeks.
@richardsenic - agree with you. Ivy release day is Mar 28 (7 pm, I believe) and it makes sense that the feds would release this, once they had sufficient evidence, with time to let the schools do some vetting of their current RD pool (though its likely several of the current applicants in the scandal , including many yet to be named, were ED/EA applicants (depending on which they offer).
Interesting read… Many of these kids don’t have resources typical rich people got
What Does It Take?’: Admissions Scandal Is a Harsh Lesson in Racial Disparities
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/us/college-admissions-race.html
beautifully said by a student … this is what we need in our education system
“I’m not going to feel like I’m at a disadvantage compared to them because I know that I have character, I have values that they haven’t had to develop,” she said. “They’ve had things handed to them. Having things handed to you versus having to earn the things you have, they create two different characters.”
Not sure if this was shared yet:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/03/14/six-usc-student-applicants-linked-college-admissions-bribery-scheme-denied-acceptance/8yVrSYe1sxh2VGy1LGMbzM/story.html?s_campaign=bostonglobe%3Asocialflow%3Afacebook&fbclid=IwAR0V66PCw2dFr5nrjVQLoNJqTEr3Ykgh16LBQUAhl1uzuhQ8K-fau7UtCGk
Six USC student applicants linked to college bribery scheme denied acceptance