@Happytimes2001 YES! I don’t live in a small area and my kid knows a lot of the kids who play her sport (XC/T&F) at at the varsity level for a bunch of local high schools. They see each other at meets for years. She’s very aware of who gets recruited and to which colleges. Conservatively, she could rattle off the top runners for 15+ other high schools.
We are on East Coast, so maybe it’s different, but she has said many times how tight the crew team is - it takes a tremendous commitment to take bus to river and maintain the high fitness level required to row. There is no way nobody noticed these kids never played the sports they were supposed to play in college.
@gallentjill I do feel bad for the daughter here. I mean, if she did not cheat in any other way but her SAT score was doctored without her knowledge, then I do feel really bad for her. Who knows, she just might have gotten into whichever college she wanted to go with her lower score.
@Happytimes2001 I don’t think anyone ever publicly announced that these fake athletes were admitted due to athletics and in most cases I don’t think the kids themselves knew. They most likely knew about the test score fraud, accommodations, etc. but at the end of the day did not know that they took a “crew spot”, they just knew they got in. The question is really should the admins have done some work to verify that those coaches used spots on were really athletes. I’m guessing no one thought they had to police their own head coaches. Even if they did try to independently verify in large metro areas there could be very little written about smaller sports.
In the Chicago area there is very little written about rowing or waterpolo (or swimming, or LAX, or high school age hockey) but there are plenty of athletes recruited in these sports. I have no doubt there are plenty of division 1 recruits in these sports that there is very little to nothing on the web about their accomplishments. My son was one of these athletes. He also had friends that were highly recruited athletes that never played in high school, they purely played club soccer or did club swimming. You have to dig pretty deep in Google to find anything about club only athletes in a major city, unless they are truly the top 1%.
Phil Michelson (not implicated in scandal) reveals he used Rick Singer for his kid’s college counseling (daughter at Brown)
Olivia Jade has been dropped by Sephora
Lori Laughlin has been dropped by Hallmark Channel
How would anyone who knew that these kids were fake athletes have found out about the fake athlete scam? Nobody knew but the student and/or their parents, the coach, and the admissions committee. How would the admissions committee be familiar with the names in some random sport in some random part of the country?
@ucbalumnus clearly you don’t understand the famous/wealthy, they certainly can’t suffer the embarrassment of their child going to a………….community college. The horror.
She had a 2100 SAT, a 32 ACT and “athletic skills”, which sounds like something short of recruitable. Personally, on the basis of nothing more than these facts, I’m surprised (i) that she got into Stanford and not USC in the first place; and (ii) that she thinks it’s a smart idea to sue over this.
ETA: @“Cardinal Fang” , I would guess that every admissions office from now on is going to institute some kind of fraud check, such as having a staffer Google every recruited athlete (there won’t be more than about 200 or so each year) and see if they find evidence (press clips, etc.) that the kid is the real deal.
@“Cardinal Fang” Among all the kids falsely recruited to play soccer, tennis, crew, etc not one knew and bragged about it? Wouldn’t they have to appear somewhere on a roster at some point? I just can’t believe that at all these colleges, the coaches have that kind of power that no one in admissions ever noticed anything was off.
At least some parents would have told their kid, “hey, if anyone asks, you’re a tennis player…”
@“Cardinal Fang” it would take five minutes to Google the student’s name, the sport, and the HS. My son plays a Div 1 sport, and just by searching his name, it is easy to find out that his athletic accomplishments are legitimate because local newspapers publish stories, scores, and sporting organizations post other information. Recruiting videos are online. If nothing shows up, it’s a red flag and admissions has to look into that student. The regional admissions officer should have crossed checked all of the athletic hooks - maybe they’ll make this policy going forward.
@DeepBlue86 - Who we to judge the merit of her case? She may have her heart set on it. Who knows her bf is in USC… maybe her childhood dream to go to USC … People reject Stanford too
One of the indicted parents is Bill Abbott, President and CEO of Crown Media, which owns Hallmark, which just terminated its ties with Lori Loughlin. So essentially one indicted parent is firing another indicted parent! I guess Bill Abbott is saying it was okay with him if he cheated, but not if his employee did.
They may not have been super smart, but most likely they were smart enough not to brag about committing crimes. And no, they wouldn’t have to appear on a roster. The coach sets the roster, and the coach was in on the scam.
@websensation I think the Caplan child is doing online school b/c of tennis. But if you google Caplan Greenwich you can read all about the family (Caplan’s wife is from a wealthy family in Greenwich, where they live).
To the person who asks why people don’t rat out kids accepted to elite schools for sports when there’s a suspicion that the kid made stuff up: I myself have heard whispers about a certain student at my kids’ school getting into HYPS with overly enhanced credentials (not sports). My kids go to a private prep school. All I’ve heard is whispers and only one small piece of information that I did verify, that calls into doubt the veracity of one small thing that the kid’s may or may not have even included on the application to one of those 4 schools I mentioned. It could possibly fall into the realm of “mere puffery” but could go deeper than that. The student got into the school early action. I’ve thought about mentioning it to the college counselors at the prep school, but decided not to. I’ve got a kid still going through the school and don’t want to do anything to rock the boat. What is being said could be completely incorrect. I’m not sure enough about anything to raise the issue. Perhaps someone with more concrete evidence will raise it.
ETA: most parents, if they are totally honest, would have no way of knowing what a kid (not their own) did or didn’t put on the application. Apparently even the college counselors at some of these prep schools don’t know because the kids can submit the common app without any oversight from the school.
I guess, knowing my fair share of spoiled kids, I think some would have run their mouths. And where were the assistant coaches? I mean athletic spots disappear every year …
… can’t stop laughing at this irony!