Since 1985, or the last 33 years, the Ivy League is 8-34 in the NCAA basketball tournament. Fourty-two NCAA games with 8 wins in 33 years isn’t really competing at the highest level. Not in basketball anyways.
I can’t get my head around Zadeh, the USC Dentistry professor with 40 years at USC (undergrad/grad/prof) USC faculty kids generally get admitted (if they meet the academic criteria), and they get free tuition (not board). He is not one of the so called ‘wealthy, entitled parents’ He paid a $100k bribe by refinancing his house and credit card payments spread over six months; he obviously didn’t have the liquidity to afford the bribe and now he’s going to pay for it with his career, his freedom, his family etc. What a sad waste!
IMHO, an Instagram Influencer is an egocentric someone who wants to see their face all over the Internet because they want to be paid big $$$ by companies trying to sell products to anyone who is gullible enough to follow a shallow, narcissistic person.
a la the Kardadsian’s.
I don’t see why ANY academic institution would be interested in admitting such a person.
"USC doesn’t “need” her.
It’s a college. "
hear, hear!! Could NOT have said it better!!! =D> =D> =D>
The Ivies intentionally compete at a lower level of competition within D1. Except for some niche sports like lax, crew, ice hockey.
Harvard sports are quite different than sports at high academic schools like stanford duke nw vandy nd who play full bore scholarship power conference sports.
That lower level of play is basically the entire reason why the Ivy League was formed.
@momo2x2018 - Zadeh, and the other wealthy and influential parents involved, indicates that USC admissions plays it straight. There’s a reason why parents were trying to use this “side door” of athletic walk-ons.
Are there students admitted because an extremely wealthy parent donated ten million dollars? Of course, that occurs at all the top private’s. Most of these parents, while very wealthy, aren’t worth the hundreds of millions that can donate that much.
Every year, USC has to turn away thousands of legacy applicants, children of faculty, top 1% test scores, etc. They just don’t have the space to admit all of them. These parents aren’t used to their money, celebrity, and influence not ensuring admittance.
Those same advantages sometimes do not instill in their children the drive required to present themselves as a strong candidate for these elite schools. Their parents want them to succeed but become blind to their enabling behavior. Can you see any of these students doing volunteer work or holding a job as a teenager?
@momo2x2018 The Colburns too… he’s a physician! He’s not even rich by Palo Alto standards. Upper middle class, sure, but she doesn’t work. It is just so strange to think you would pay to cheat.
I too would be disappointed if my child decided not to work hard in school, but there’s always community college or the ever-popular “gap year”. You can just send the little mite to Europe if you are so concerned about popular opinion!
How do you know what’s in their applications? Have you seen them?
Either he is so dumb, or his kid is, or both.
“Saw this article about Mark Riddell that I didn’t even finish. “He is just a really smart guy”… 36 years old who took tests for teenagers for money and knowing that he is cheating?? His only career is cheating on a test which he first took 20 years ago?!”
No and this is possibly the tip of another scandal. Mark Riddell’s only career was not this side gig, he was Director of College Test Prep for IMG Academy, a very expensive athletic prep high school in Florida that is itself known for shady practices for getting barely literate athletes in to colleges.
The feds may be a little busy with Singer right now, but IMG is (or should be) a future target of investigation.
It’s behind a paywall, but anyone with a WSJ subscription should read the lengthy article it did on IMG approx a year ago. The article never accuses IMG of buying college admissions, but explores how odd it is that a Hollywood conglomerate operates this private school in Florida; oddly enough, some of the IMG formula does not sound far off of Singer’s. Here’s the description of IMG from the first few paragraphs of the article… “IMG Academy is an elite, for-profit boarding school—and the leading producer of top college and National Football League prospects. Families pay $75,200 in annual tuition, more than the most famous prep schools in the U.S. and Harvard University, to improve their teenager’s chances of making it.”
…
A robust market of affluent families sees IMG Academy as an alternative to a more-traditional high-school experience.
“We live in a different time,” says IMG Academy football coach Kevin Wright, whose father has coached high-school football in Indiana for more than 50 years. “The reality is that parents want to put their kids in the best situation possible, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
One thing that strikes me is how some of these “recruited athletes” apparently didn’t even play the sports in question. Wouldn’t this have raised a red flag? No one at any of these universities noticed that star athletes arrived and then didn’t participate in their sports? I’ve never played soccer, and imagine that would be apparent two minutes after I ran out on the field. Bizarre.
There is a lot of ignorance about learning disabilities. The #2 comment on post #454 shows it. A child with an accurately diagnosed learning disability has an average to above average IQ but falls below 10% in at least one area of learning. In this weaker area, a student is trained in using compensatory strategies to adjust and get the correct answer. It can take extra time to implement these strategies especially in a timed test which is why accommodations are a necessary tool to level the playing field. It is not about not being smart enough. There are students that truly need these services and hate to see the system being abused.
More from Stanford: (sorry if repeat of a post I my have missed)
“While former Stanford University sailing coach John Vandemoer pleaded guilty to accepting $270,000 in bribes from a bogus charity to “recruit” two teens with little boating experience, the college said Thursday it has discovered the program took in another $500,000 in donations from the same nonprofit linked to a third student who still attends the school.
…
This student received no recommendation from the head sailing coach but was admitted to Stanford and is currently enrolled,” the school said in a lengthy Q&A posted on its website. “The student has no affiliation with the sailing program. We are working to better understand the circumstances around this student and will take whatever actions are appropriate based on what we learn.”
I posted the following article here a few years back and I think it is time to take a second look:
https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/investment_manager.html
My theory at the time was that the obsession with elite admission was mostly driven by those in the bottom half of the top 1%. These folks fear their offsprings, without the ability and/or drive, will not be able to maintain their parents status and influence in society. As a result, they are prepared to do whatever it takes to keep them there.
Based on what is posted here concerning the parents’ occupation and education, I think my theory is still holding up well.
“The 36 year old was the test proctor and he changed the answers after tests were turned in.”
And as I mentioned in my post about IMG Academy, the 36 year old was Mark Riddell who was the “Director of College Entrance Exam Preparation” at IMG Academy, a $75,000 a year private HS sports academy in Bradenton, Florida. Before his bio was deleted from IMG’s website, it described Riddell helped student athletes gain admission to Stanford, Duke, Columbia, Dartmouth, and the University of Chicago, among others, while also creating the test preparation program curriculum at IMG Academy.
In the Singer case, Riddell is accused of actually taking SAT and ACT exams for Singer’s clients and also acting as a proctor at the Houston or LA test centers, where he would coach the test takers to change answers or he would change their answers after they turned in the tests. Riddell went so far as to obtain handwriting samples and practice students’ handwriting so his written test answers would not be suspicious.
If I were in the FBI, here are a few things I’d want to know:
- How and why was a Director of Test Prep for a private school in Florida hired to be a proctor in Texas or California?
- How did Singer - who lived and worked in California - come into contact with Riddell - who lived and worked in Florida- and know Riddell would be willing and able to fake test results?
- Do we really believe that Riddell was only faking tests for Singer's clients and not the students of the $75k a year private high school he was employed at, which has substantially the same clientele as Singer?
So who can I sue? 
My kid had a great interview with Cornell and didn’t get in. So they lead him on and “maybe” hurt his feelings. Hmmm… I will have to see what the lawyer can come up with.
Georgia Tech wait listed him… Hmmm… He had the stats and we flew out there for a tour… Maybe I can get my expenses paid back…? + 
“Everyday after school she practiced from 5-10PM, 5 days a week and for 8hrs on Saturday. When she arrived home she had to do her course work, papers, and study for exams. She caught sleep whenever she could, often times waking up 3 or 4 AM to finish work.”
This happens to be the description of the amount of time and work put in by an elite sports recruit, but could just as easily be the description of the work schedule of a low income kid who has to work to help support his/her family. While the effort and determination of the sports recruit definitely deserves respect, it is absolutely insane that it is more highly valued than the low income kid working at a manual labor job for minimum wage and even less glamour.
This is my objection to sports preference in college admissions. Not that the athletes aren’t deserving of respect - they are! It’s the choosing of one nonacademic pursuit (which favors the wealthy, by the way, since most of those sports are expensive and also preclude the student having a job) to glorify and prioritize above other ECs, jobs, actions, etc.
There are plenty of kids who aren’t athletes who are involved in endeavors that are just as time consuming and require just as much grit. Those endeavors should be recognized at the same level as a sports EC.
@milee30 Singer was one of the co-founders of the University of Miami online high school. I don’t know for sure, but that might be the connection between Florida and California.
“In 2000, Rick and three other educators created the first online high school, the University of Miami Online High School in which Rick and his team created a student population of over 18,000 students annually paying over $15,000 per year to attend until Kaplan College Preparatory purchased the rights.”
@Aussiemom - My problem and many others in the forum are that parents are taking advantage of this accommodation to cheat (case and point Felicity and who knows how many!). Singer knew this loophole and many others know this loophole and he exploited fully!
Sunlight is the best disinfection. The school must publish what’s the percentage of the kids are given accommodations (someone mentioned private schools are abusing -50% kids are given accommodations that’s ridiculous)
Personally, I did not know one can get EXTRA time in SAT/ACT and seems easy to do if one has money (Case and point Felicity and others) and one can’t challenge you since it’s under the disguise of a medical condition and one can’t question it.
SAT/ACT with school help need to address this problem as well
@LisaNCState. Once again it is NOT easy to get extra time. Of course when you go through the proper channels. I won’t belabor this since you have read all of our accounts of this. Felicity etc didn’t go through proper channels. Most of us don’t have $15,000 - $500,000 to burn for scammers to make something happen. I am assuming an educational lawyer for hire is not a cheap endeavor either.