“Caplan went to Columbia. BTW.”
He went to Cornell undergrad and Fordham for law school.
You know, all of the discussions on this thread about how hard it has been to get accommodations has me thinking. Maybe it isn’t nearly as easy to cheat the system as I had thought. In this case, the college board had to be directed to do it by the FBI.
I wonder how many of those cases where the kids were bragging to each other that they got extra time they didn’t really need, were actually the understandable result of kids not wanting to admit or acknowledge an actual learning disability. Maybe, especially for a teenage guy, its a lot easy to tell your room mate "yeah I got all this time I don’t need, than to try to explain and admit to an actual learning disability.
This is huge, but what is it, really? It is just bribery of individuals. No different than what happens in the business world every single day.
The students and employees should be removed/fired, but what happens in great AMERICA? “LAWSUITS AND HERE THEY COME!”
This country is way too litigious already and students are already suing named institutions…I think that is bologna if punitive damages are given (they are being sought).
As someone else pointed out, kids undergo standardized testing their entire lives. For most people, they fall in the same percentile their entire school career. Then all of a sudden you take the ACT and receive a 35 and you think what?
“Look, I was a secret genius this whole time”. I am not buying that.
Absolutely! I can see the subway advertisements now. “Have you been injured in the college application process? Were you denied your rightful spot in the Ivy League? Call us at 1-800-IVY-MINE”
My son is a homeschooler, so I admit I’m not fully understanding this. What standardized tests do most students take before sophomore/junior year, where they themselves see the results?
Why the intense focus on accommodations and test scores? Those colleges in questions don’t really have very high bars for minimum test scores, especially for recruited athletes. No test score would get them into these colleges. They cheated on the tests because they couldn’t even clear the extremely low academic barriers for recruited athletes. This shows how unqualified these students are.
Normally I would agree. But if your child is a soccer star, and you made a special trip to Yale for your child to try out as a recent poster did, didn’t Yale waste your time and money?
I do not blame College Board or ACT for this present debacle. Goodness knows that in the last few years they have tightened security around the tests. How do they ensure that the proctor who sits in the room with those students, for hours and hours, is 100% honest? How do they ensure that every employee at College Board or ACT is not going to sell materials for their own benefit?
Shouldn’t we lay blame at the feet of the people involved in the illegal activity? Can we all agree that this is not the fault of College Board, or ACT, or USC, or Stanford, or Yale, but that it’s the fault of parents who were willing to break laws to get their kids into college, and the people who enabled them to do it?
Back to College Board/ACT, can you imagine the lawsuits that would occur if they didn’t make space for students with accomodations? As a parent of a kid with accomodations, I know I wouldn’t want my son in the regular testing room, being distracted by kids who would be getting up for breaks on a different schedule. I really feel for the kids going forward who are surely going to have a more difficult time getting accomodations, but who truly need them.
ETA: @hebegebe , by nature of the word “tryout”, I assume nothing would be guaranteed. So I don’t think that person is entitled to recompense.
Your time and money was wasted, but Yale the university was not in on the scam unless they knew about it, which they did not.
“Why are there more instances of bribery in some places than others? Because those places are more conducive to this type of activities, due to the general culture, the lack of regulations, supervisions, and transparency. It’s not just coincidence.”
Are you suggesting that Yale (where apparently the parents of two girls were able to buy their way in as tennis recruits) and University of Pennsylvania (where a parent could buy his son’s way into Wharton as a basketball recruit) are worse than Harvard and Princeton because they have worse supervision or transparency?
That seems false to me.
Those decisions are usually not yours alone, however. Most (probably 97% or more) people’s college choice, in particular, is limited by parental constraints like how much they are able and willing to pay. Some parents also try to force their kids to choose a specific college and/or major. And if your parents tried to cheat your way into a particular college (with or without your knowledge) as this thread is about, your college attendance is forever tainted. Of course, if your parents are big donors or alumni, you could get an additional boost to specific colleges. Initial profession or career can be influenced by college and/or major and therefore indirectly affected by parental constraints on college and/or major choice. Obviously, many people do not attend, or do not complete college for various reasons, the most common ones being money related, and that obviously affects choice of profession or career.
Some parents also want to choose their kids’ spouses, or heavily constrain their kids’ spousal choices.
Yes. Told them about cheating locally and did not seem to care. Nothing has changed.
wrong thread. sorry.
Skyeurope, our moderator, please do not close down this thread. I have looked at the other thread on the college scam and I do not see this question being addressed: how should our nationally-ranked college athletes handle recruitment in the age of unbelievable recruitment fraud? My son plays tennis, which is one of the sports most impacted by this horrible scandal. He will be eligible this next year to meet with D1 coaches. He’s high enough in the ranking to at least garner some interest, and he wants to move up another 50-75 slots and be a top recruit. But things will change because of this cheating that occurs in tennis and some other sports, as well. And I’d like specific feedback on that aspect of the scandal. The whole reason I come to College Confidential is to try to figure out how to help my kids achieve their academic goals, and now it seems that none of the past student athlete posts I’ve read will be as relevant or updated enough to help us make informed choices going forward. Meantime, I’m sure there are some college coaches on this forum and parents of recruited athletes who might have some advice.
In CA, it’s called the California Assessment of Studetn Performance and Progress (CAASPP) testing. I think this is the umbrella name and there are several tests given throughout the student’s career in school.
Does anything there are immediate implications to this? Are the decisions coming out this month impacted with last minute changes?
@Lostinsearch , I think it’s a given that admissions decisions from a number of elite schools are being affected as we speak. USC has already announced that anyone afilliated with the company at the center of the scheme will not be admitted.
USC says they denied admission to six students involved in the scandal.
I am sure someone’s application will be affected. We will never know who. But imagine an admission’s counselor saying wow I wonder if that SAT score doesn’t jive with the application. Do you think they will pull it? I do. I think they will all be a little more leery. Better safe than sorry and it may be sad for some kids.