Admissions Fraud

Yikes. This apparently implicates at least one Yale coach (women's soccer) and many others in a scheme to fake entrance exam results.

[www.justice.gov]

Chris '03
Yikes. This apparently implicates at least one Yale coach (women's soccer) and many others in a scheme to fake entrance exam results.

[www.justice.gov]

In one instance, prosecutors said, the head women’s soccer coach at Yale accepted a $400,000 bribe in exchange for admitting a candidate as a recruited athlete. The student didn’t even play competitive soccer, according to prosecutors. After the student was admitted, her parents paid a college admissions consultant $1.2 million.

The consultant, William Singer, is expected to plead guilty to racketeering and other crimes Tuesday afternoon. He allegedly facilitated the fraud through Newport Beach, Calif.-based the Edge College & Career Network LLC.

Chris '03
Yikes. This apparently implicates at least one Yale coach (women's soccer) and many others in a scheme to fake entrance exam results.

[www.justice.gov]

This is a switch! Usually it’s the coaches who bribe the “student-athletes.”

Why didn't they just directly bribe the school the way every rich parent of a stupid kid has done throughout history?

Trotsky
Why didn't they just directly bribe the school the way every rich parent of a stupid kid has done throughout history?

the real scandal inside their social circles is not going to be that they bent the rules for their kids, but because they did it with a coupon pic.twitter.com/Qop2WBgJaU

— Yianni Diakomihalis Fan Account (@Ugarles) March 12, 2019

That's great.

I knew some rich legacies at Cornell who couldn't find their ass with two hands and a map. I'm actually more impressed with them that they cheaped out, too.

Then there’s the various “crowbars” rich kids have to get in via the “front door”: private tutors, summers in France to help learn French, prep school extra-curriculars, etc.

It also would be interesting to know exactly how these kids compared to the typical profile at the college where they wound up. If they otherwise wouldn’t have been competitive for admission, then part of the scandal is that the “elite” school they got into has enough gut courses that the kid doesn’t bust out but can earn receive a degree instead.

Swampy
Then there’s the various “crowbars” rich kids have to get in via the “front door”: private tutors, summers in France to help learn French, prep school extra-curriculars, etc.

It also would be interesting to know exactly how these kids compared to the typical profile at the college where they wound up. If they otherwise wouldn’t have been competitive for admission, then part of the scandal is that the “elite” school they got into has enough gut courses that the kid doesn’t bust out but can earn receive a degree instead.

All the schools have enough gut courses for that. Don't kid yourself that ours doesn't. One of the lessons of the TM Landry scandal was that most of those kids with fake applications - the poor kids who didn't have all of the privileges of wealth - also did fine at college once they got there. And the TM Landry kids were much more victimized - their high school was fake and the scammers preyed on the desperation of the parents and bled them dry.

May Ezra forgive me for this unkind thought: Is there somewhere on campus a freshman man whose parents got Cornell to believe their long-haired, dope-smoking, Fortnite-playing kid was in fact America's greatest FOGO, and they even had a photoshopped image to prove it. And the kid can barely pick his clothes off the floor.

1. This is embarrassing, that no parent thought highly enough of Cornell to want to blow $500,000 on a back door way in. But they would spend money on USC or Northeastern.
2. You get older, sometimes your sense of moral outrage isn't as sharp. I'm seeing a continuum between funding a new dormitory, or endowed chair, and by coincidence your marginal HS senior gets in ... and just slipping a wad of cash to the sailing, fencing, soccer, whatever coach. The first is honorable, the second gets you hauled into the same court in Boston as the Boston Marathon bombers.
3. It is not every day that you might hear someone high up at Yale, Stanford or USC say, "We're the victim here."
4. When a school admits an Olivia Jade Loughlin because OJ needs a nicer photo background for her Instagram feed, it's hard to say that any one other applicant was thrown under the bus by OJ's matriculation when there are 5,000 entering freshmen (admit rate 13%, yield 40%).
5. All this underscores the inflated value people put on a select group of universities, which ironically makes them all the more desirable.

billhoward
1. This is embarrassing, that no parent thought highly enough of Cornell to want to blow $500,000 on a back door way in. But they would spend money on USC or Northeastern.

Wake. Forest.

ugarte

Swampy
Then there’s the various “crowbars” rich kids have to get in via the “front door”: private tutors, summers in France to help learn French, prep school extra-curriculars, etc.

It also would be interesting to know exactly how these kids compared to the typical profile at the college where they wound up. If they otherwise wouldn’t have been competitive for admission, then part of the scandal is that the “elite” school they got into has enough gut courses that the kid doesn’t bust out but can earn receive a degree instead.

All the schools have enough gut courses for that. Don't kid yourself that ours doesn't. One of the lessons of the TM Landry scandal was that most of those kids with fake applications - the poor kids who didn't have all of the privileges of wealth - also did fine at college once they got there. And the TM Landry kids were much more victimized - their high school was fake and the scammers preyed on the desperation of the parents and bled them dry.

Maybe so. But it still ought to be different.

What follows is a true story.

In the fall of my fifth year in Engineering a group of about six of us decided to sit in on a first-semester economics course for MBA students. The lecture hall had perhaps a few hundred students. We had the usual complaints engineering students have when exposed to introductory economics courses -- "Boy, this would be so much easier and better if the professor just used calculus!" -- and we were glad we didn't have to do the homework or take the prelims. Nonetheless, although we thought the course was difficult, it was not nearly as difficult as many of the engineering courses we'd taken. (Thermodynamics, Materials Science, Game Theory, and the optional, non-credit gateway course for the honors math sequence come to mind.)

Then, at the first class after the course's first prelim had been graded and returned, a student stood up and angrily shouted at the professor: "Professor, this course is ridiculous! In all my undergraduate years at Yale I never had a course with this much work or covering this much material in such a short time." To my dying day I'll remember the smiles on the faces of my fellow engineering classmates and their chuckles. We were all thinking, "Yalie wus!"

Trotsky

billhoward
1. This is embarrassing, that no parent thought highly enough of Cornell to want to blow $500,000 on a back door way in. But they would spend money on USC or Northeastern.

Wake. Forest.

UC San Diego was the one that got my second eyebrow raised.

RichH

Trotsky

billhoward
1. This is embarrassing, that no parent thought highly enough of Cornell to want to blow $500,000 on a back door way in. But they would spend money on USC or Northeastern.

Wake. Forest.

UC San Diego was the one that got my second eyebrow raised.

If, as Oliva Jade apparently was doing, the SoCal location made it an exotic jumping over location for her personal wellness, fashion and beauty posts. For a worldwide audience, San Diego sounds exotic.

Chris '03
Yikes. This apparently implicates at least one Yale coach (women's soccer) and many others in a scheme to fake entrance exam results.

[www.justice.gov]

More details about the Yale coach from the Hartford Courant:

Longtime Yale coach Rudy Meredith, who resigned in November, is accused of accepting a $400,000 check from the family of a Yale applicant he ensured would be admitted to the university as part of the women’s soccer team, according to court documents. Meredith, who is accused of working in concert with Singer, has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud, honest services wire fraud, and conspiracy and has been cooperating with the government’s investigation since April 2018 with the hope of receiving leniency when he is sentenced, according to the government.

Bribed around 2015, flipped to help the investigation in April 2018, resigned in November 2018.

RichH

Chris '03
Yikes. This apparently implicates at least one Yale coach (women's soccer) and many others in a scheme to fake entrance exam results.

[www.justice.gov]

More details about the Yale coach from the Hartford Courant:

Longtime Yale coach Rudy Meredith, who resigned in November, is accused of accepting a $400,000 check from the family of a Yale applicant he ensured would be admitted to the university as part of the women’s soccer team, according to court documents. Meredith, who is accused of working in concert with Singer, has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud, honest services wire fraud, and conspiracy and has been cooperating with the government’s investigation since April 2018 with the hope of receiving leniency when he is sentenced, according to the government.

Bribed around 2015, flipped to help the investigation in April 2018, resigned in November 2018.

"Yale: We may be unethical, but at least we're opportunistically disloyal!"

One of our own...

[cornellsun.com]

I think it is worth pointing out that anyone willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their kid into 'the right school' is not doing it to set up that kid's future. That kid probably has a trust fund that has him set for life. They are doing it so that they can brag about it to their superficial friends.

A fraternity brother of my son at Cornell had a terrible first semester of his sophomore year when he moved into the fraternity, and Cornell told him to take a semester off. Instead of doing something worthwhile, or at least travelling, he stayed in the fraternity house even though he was not enrolled for the second semester.

Why???

Because this way, his parents could keep it a secret and let all of their friends think he was still in school. Eventually they might have to say that he changed majors so it took him longer to graduate. A much more palatable story.

Wouldn't you know it was a Harvard grad taking the scam tests for the kiddies. Now he "regrets" doing it. Prospect of prison time does cause "regrets." He'll do wonders for the Attica tennis team, however.

[www.thecrimson.com]

[www.heraldtribune.com]

nshapiro
I think it is worth pointing out that anyone willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their kid into 'the right school' is not doing it to set up that kid's future. That kid probably has a trust fund that has him set for life. They are doing it so that they can brag about it to their superficial friends.

A fraternity brother of my son at Cornell had a terrible first semester of his sophomore year when he moved into the fraternity, and Cornell told him to take a semester off. Instead of doing something worthwhile, or at least travelling, he stayed in the fraternity house even though he was not enrolled for the second semester.

Why???

Because this way, his parents could keep it a secret and let all of their friends think he was still in school. Eventually they might have to say that he changed majors so it took him longer to graduate. A much more palatable story.

Do you know for sure that the parents were aware that their sun had been asked to leave school? I know of a case where a student was suspended for a semester or a year [can't remember] and stayed in Ithaca, living off the tuition check his parents thought he had written to Cornell. Since the tuition bills go to the student not mom and dad....

dag14
Do you know for sure that the parents were aware that their sun had been asked to leave school? I know of a case where a student was suspended for a semester or a year [can't remember] and stayed in Ithaca, living off the tuition check his parents thought he had written to Cornell. Since the tuition bills go to the student not mom and dad....

You may be thinking of another ECAC school on a hill where the parents wrote the checks directly to the offspring. (At least the rink is on the hill).
[time.com]

Time Magazine, 2014
22-year-old woman who failed to mention to her parents that she’d dropped out of Quinnipiac University did what many of us would do: she panicked. Then, she called in two bomb threats Sunday to try and cancel the university’s commencement ceremonies, the Associated Press reports.

Danielle Shea had not been attending the school all year, but her mother had been sending her thousands of dollars to fund her education. About 20 minutes before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, police say Shea called the university’s public safety department to report a “bomb in the library.” Then she called again to say, “Several bombs are on campus,” adding, “You haven’t cleared out graduation. That’s not a good idea.”

Memo to stressed-out students: Do not call in bomb threats on your own mobile.

billhoward

dag14
Do you know for sure that the parents were aware that their sun had been asked to leave school? I know of a case where a student was suspended for a semester or a year [can't remember] and stayed in Ithaca, living off the tuition check his parents thought he had written to Cornell. Since the tuition bills go to the student not mom and dad....

You may be thinking of another ECAC school on a hill where the parents wrote the checks directly to the offspring. (At least the rink is on the hill).
[time.com]

Time Magazine, 2014
22-year-old woman who failed to mention to her parents that she’d dropped out of Quinnipiac University did what many of us would do: she panicked. Then, she called in two bomb threats Sunday to try and cancel the university’s commencement ceremonies, the Associated Press reports.

Danielle Shea had not been attending the school all year, but her mother had been sending her thousands of dollars to fund her education. About 20 minutes before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, police say Shea called the university’s public safety department to report a “bomb in the library.” Then she called again to say, “Several bombs are on campus,” adding, “You haven’t cleared out graduation. That’s not a good idea.”

Memo to stressed-out students: Do not call in bomb threats on your own mobile.

Fantastic problem-solving. But that’s Quinnipiac for ya

dag14

nshapiro
I think it is worth pointing out that anyone willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their kid into 'the right school' is not doing it to set up that kid's future. That kid probably has a trust fund that has him set for life. They are doing it so that they can brag about it to their superficial friends.

A fraternity brother of my son at Cornell had a terrible first semester of his sophomore year when he moved into the fraternity, and Cornell told him to take a semester off. Instead of doing something worthwhile, or at least travelling, he stayed in the fraternity house even though he was not enrolled for the second semester.

Why???

Because this way, his parents could keep it a secret and let all of their friends think he was still in school. Eventually they might have to say that he changed majors so it took him longer to graduate. A much more palatable story.

Do you know for sure that the parents were aware that their sun had been asked to leave school? I know of a case where a student was suspended for a semester or a year [can't remember] and stayed in Ithaca, living off the tuition check his parents thought he had written to Cornell. Since the tuition bills go to the student not mom and dad....

Yes. His parents comment to him was something like 'We are committed to paying your room and board at the fraternity, so you can stay there' but the subtext was definitely that you are not welcome at home to embarrass us.

Cooperating Witness 1 (a.k.a. the "CW-1" in the transcripts) was being investigated for securities fraud and he dimed out the scam to get leniency.

This is he.

I for one am shocked that a 1%er douchebag would turn out to be a former Yale hockey player.

He transferred to UVM so presumably his kid would need a boost to get in.

Trotsky
He transferred to UVM so presumably his kid would need a boost to get in.

The classic transfer where you downgrade the social status value of the name on your degree in exchange for less playing time.*

* joke void if he had used up his eligibility at yale

An interesting and sad footnote. 1983 ILR grad and Princeton economist, Alan Krueger, commited suicide this past weekend.

According to the NYT, in 2014 he and a colleague published an analysis of the benefits of attending a highly selective college. “They found that, after statistically controlling for students’ SAT scores, economic background and college ambitions, the long-term financial returns are “generally indistinguishable from zero.” Students who are poised to succeed tend to do so even if they don’t get into the Ivy League.”

“But there was a crucial exception. There were strong benefits for the subset of black and Hispanic students, and for those whose parents had few educational credentials. It turns out that students who come from less privileged backgrounds benefit greatly from selective colleges. Elite higher education gives them social capital they didn’t already have.” But, of course, these students don’t have the family resources to cheat their way in.