@havenoidea just saw the moderators suggestion. So just going to move on…
Yes. Assuming the applicant is over 18 they should be held accountable. If my spouse has been fudging our tax returns for years and I sign return I am accountable whether or not I looked at them.
“Serious question - are there any revenue sports in the Ivy League?”
No Ivy sports producing meaningful revenue. The Ivies got out of that business by…forming the Ivy League. And with rare exceptions (Yale ice hockey for example), the Ivies don’t generally compete at the highest level of college sports (although they do play in D1). But while Ivy sports are generally lightly attended and lightly followed, the Ivies take them surprisingly seriously. Harvard and Yale really care about who wins The Game (football) even though hardly anyone else does.
Ivies have very large (in terms of teams and headcount) athletic departments. And even though their athlete academic standards are the highest there are, those athlete standards are a bit lower than what applies to non-athlete students (hence the entire Ivy Academic Index system that tracks the athlete standards). There’s no such system in place for gifted student actors, poets, dancers, etc.
Given how preciously rare its seats are, it is notable that the Ivies allocate so much of their class enrollment to filling their big athlete rosters. In their own way, the Ivies care about and invest more in sports than Bama does. And elite D3s like Williams are even more nutso about sports. College sports (revenue and non-revenue; big time and small time) are a curious and unique feature of American higher ed.
@Tanbiko “Many of the Ivy League athletes are really great students.” Yes, the Ivies still demand academic quality from their athletes. And many Ivy athletes turned down better sports programs because they wanted to be student-athletes, and not athlete-students. (There is a difference.)
@ShanFerg3 says “being a recruited athlete is a different commitment than a general EC”.
You seem to be right about that and that’s what I find so interesting about this whole scandal!
Apparently, a student who starts a very successful marketing company while still in high school – so successful that corporations pay her money to promote their brand to the over 1 million other teens who they believe are influenced by her – is so significantly less likely to be admitted to a university than a recruited athlete that her family would spend 50 thousand dollars or more to create a false athlete profile and bribe a coach to designate her as a recruit.
I would think that most universities given a choice between 2 students – one who started a successful business in high school and another who was a very good rower or coxswain – would think the accomplishments of the teen whose instagram photos seem to influence thousands of other teens were more unique. But I would be wrong. It seems that having a lot of talent as a coxswain or a sailor or soccer player or tennis player are so much more valued that parents would spend enormous amounts of money to pretend their kid is something she is not instead of what she is.
@observer12 maybe an ACADEMIC institution prefers its admits to be interested in, you know, academics, rather than acting like a Kardashian?
(Probably not, though.)
@observer12 Do we know this girl’s parents even gave her the benefit of the doubt that her career as an influencer would have been enough for USC to admit? I think they just took the easy (and in this case, criminal) road.
@havenoidea I agree with your post.
A recruited athlete in a non revenue sport to top tier schools should have the same academic stats as a general admit because the mission of the university should be based on academics not some hobby sport that has limited participation due to artificial barrier to entry created by money like equesterian, women volleyball water polo, skiing, crew and sailing. These sports are used to justify enrollment of wealthier kids who tend to be white yet we complain about few additional black kids that get into some of these schools.
Most of these elite schools won’t establish sports like cricket, judo or tae kwon do, badminton, boxing, mma bc they know that white kids don’t do well in these sports. These expensive sports and legacy programs are designed to make sure the wealth stays concentrated in certain parts of society and basically along with legacy kids lowers the bar for progeny of the rich and famous.
I agree. But between playing a sport and running a successful business, isn’t the successful business more related to the academic experience in a college that has both a business and media school?
Except for pre professional sports — football basketball hockey and baseball - there are only rare examples of “non” student athletes. At least anyone who graduates.
Even, believe it or not, at the lowly non ivy league schools.
You’d be surprised to find that students outside of the Ivy League actually go to libraries and everything. And some play sports. And some play violin. And some play video games. They are all great in their own way. Let’s stop stack ranking all of our kids.
The student athlete discussion is silly. Any kid good enough to play a college sport and do well in classses is to be commended. They are all revenue producing btw. Every time they show up somewhere to fence or swim or play ultimate frisbee they are advertising their school. There’s economic value to that among more direct income generation. I don’t play the sports but I have both a sailing and lacrosse shirt form d’s school. Someone got paid.
On a side note. The ivy focus that threads take is tedious. It really is.
I almost wish we could go back to hating “all the evil rich people” for a few posts.
@observer12 I gather you did not watch any of Olivia’s youtube marketing efforts. If you had, you would see there is nothing remotely academic about them 
The Academic Index is not about ensuring an individual meets some academic minimum. But that the team as a whole, comes within one standard deviation when compared with the average AI of the school’s student body. Of course, there are athletes who get in based on athletic prowess only. Athletes who would not be admitted were it not for being recruited for the team.
Holistic means, for others, they need to offer more of what the college wants than just stats. We talk of other interests, commitments, perspective, maturity, other good they do. Your thinking matters. It seems the scandal kids would have had far less shot at an admit without coaches pulling for them. That mighty pull. The rest of the info swirling shows many without even the stats. Some of their comments are the sort that would get adcoms smacking their heads.
“The student athlete discussion is silly. Any kid good enough to play a college sport and do well in classses is to be commended. They are all revenue producing btw. Every time they show up somewhere to fence or swim or play ultimate frisbee they are advertising their school. There’s economic value to that among more direct income generation. I don’t play the sports but I have both a sailing and lacrosse shirt form d’s school. Someone got paid”
Hear, hear!
I’ll add, a VP of a Fortune 200 company once told me he LOVES to hire student athletes, because they usually have great time management skills. And they’re competitive and often work well within a team. These are all sought after qualities in business.
And no, I have no student athletes in my immediate family. I have no skin in this game.
The entrepreneurial talents of the Loughlin kid are pretty impressive I guess.
Problem is, the schools don’t specifically lower their admit standards to admit entrepreneurs (or writers or singers). So the Loughlin kid’s credentials wouldn’t work. The only reason why the scam would work is because the standards for a rower were lower than what they were for an entrepreneur.
The curious thing is not that USC would ask less of a star QB academically to be admitted. Starting QB at USC is a huge deal and there’s a lot of dough associated with that. The surprising thing is that USC will also cut breaks for kids on the womens rowing team.
Does anyone know or much care that USC has a rowing team? Or that Stanford has a sailing team? The obscurity of that rowing team is kind of what made the whole scam possible, combined with the fact that Stanford and USC (despite that obscurity) are still willing to allocate student seats so that those teams are more competitive.
@observer12: “I would think that most universities given a choice between 2 students – one who started a successful business in high school and another who was a very good rower or coxswain – would think the accomplishments of the teen whose instagram photos seem to influence thousands of other teens were more unique.”
I think it is a matter of character and presentation.
In looking at that vapid video of the influencer in question, wherein she states that she '[doesn’t] really care about school," one would presume that she speaks what she is/how she is/where her head is, and one cannot come away from viewing that believing her head has ever been in a place of deep thought. Well, I cannot believe such after viewing that video, anyway.
If a person often projects this idea of herself to the world, and it is not an act, imagine what one reveals to one’s parents and intimates.Such persons in her life might have real reason to be fearful that she might never be able to present herself in a favorable light as a student and thinker.
I hear you, she works at something about which she is passionate, and clearly is able to have others believe she has something enough that they want to “follow” her. Why should that not count for something as deeply as the stats and awards of the student-athlete, you ask.
Maybe she was never a student.
@katliamom You mean you don’t find “make up is my passion” to be intellectually inspiring? 
Sadly, that youtube marketing was pulling in legitimate advertisers and money. I would be incredibly disappointed if I ever saw my daughter presenting herself in that way.
Ha! You caught me out as I have never seen them. It just struck me as ironic that those kind of very expensive college advising firms like Singer ran also seem to be good at helping students to start charities or organize charitable events or start organizations that encourage literacy which all seem to be ultimately in the pursuit of college admissions. Lori Laughlin’s daughter just started what seemed to be a rather successful business (for a teen) and she didn’t do it to get into college.
I don’t really think she belonged at USC. But I think her success in being able to influence tens of thousands of teens over social media seems a better hook than rowing crew, even if she had legitimately rowed crew throughout high school.
You dont go to a highly academic college to influence other party girls. The point is not making a lot of $$ talking makeup. Nor would she be an “influencer” if she didn’t fit and exceed popularist notions of beauty. We arent talking about a positive influencer…more a sales promoter. Dont need college for that. USC doesn’t “need” her.
It’s a college.
There is the innocent spouse rule, so you may not be liable. Some of these kids may have just signed where they were told to sign. They may still pay the price if they just signed an app prepared by someone else or ever submitted by someone else.
The Ivies do compete D1, at the highest level. They play in the lower level in football and do not participate in bowl games. Other than that, they want to win the national championships, want to be in March Madness, want the competition to bring it on. Yale won the national championship in men’s lacrosse last year.
clearly the Yale lax coach wasn’t wasting spots like the idiot volleyball coach. I think brown has had some great lax teams the past few years as well.