My son during his high school valedictorian speech.
I am more than upset at the news that rich celebrities and CEOs were bribing university coaches and SAT administrators to get their children into elite universities. It just goes to show how corrupt our country is and that the life lessons I instilled in my kids about hard work and effort — turn out to be “fake news.”
My son was valedictorian with nearly perfect SAT scores, swam, was a musician, a school leader in Junior State of America, went to Boys’ State and the State Science Fair, to name a few of his accomplishments. Plus, he volunteered in our community from an early age. He was rejected by eight of the nine colleges he applied to — many of the same schools these celebrities and rich folks bribed to get their kids admitted to. My son was heartbroken. He said everything I told him was false. He thought if he worked his butt off, got straight As, volunteered in the community and did everything right, he’d have his choice of schools. But, no. Sadly the system is rigged.
Here’s the indictment of the university coaches from Yale, Wake Forest, Stanford, USC, UCLA and Texas with descriptions of how they defrauded hard working athletes who lost out on those spots.
They actually made fake athletic profiles for kids who weren’t competitive at the sports they were being admitted to on the collegiate teams. For example, at USC, a girl was accepted to the Crew Team, who had never once rowed. They faked a profile of her with Regattas she never attended and used photos of other people in boats where the face wasn’t clear.
Besides athletics, this Newport Beach “college recruiter” named William “Rick” Singer paid off people administering the ACT and SAT tests. The kids were given extra time to take exams because of faked disabilities or their answers were changed after the test.
This quote from the from the Associated Press story called “TV stars and coaches charged in college bribery scheme” by Alanna Durkin Richer and Collin Binkley is terribly upsetting:
Parents spent anywhere from $200,000 to $6.5 million to guarantee their children’s admission, officials said.
“For every student admitted through fraud, an honest and genuinely talented student was rejected,” Lelling said.
Here’s more from the story:
BOSTON (AP) — Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were charged along with nearly 50 other people Tuesday in a scheme in which wealthy parents bribed college coaches and other insiders to get their children into some of the most elite schools in the country, federal prosecutors said.
Authorities called it the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department.
“These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in announcing the $25 million bribery case, code-named Operation Varsity Blues, against 50 people in all.
The scandal is certain to inflame longstanding complaints that children of the wealthy and well-connected have the inside track in college admissions — sometimes through big, timely donations from their parents — and that privilege begets privilege.
At least nine athletic coaches and 33 parents, many of them prominent in law, finance or business, were among those charged in the investigation. Dozens, including Huffman, were arrested by midday.
The coaches worked at such schools as Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, Wake Forest, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles. A former Yale soccer coach pleaded guilty and helped build the case against others.
The person who was behind the college admissions scam is William “Rick” Singer from Newport Beach, CA. Here’s an article from CNN’s Sonia Moghe called “William ‘Rick’ Singer, the man at the center of the scheme, to appear in Boston court” that explains more about how the college admission scam operated:
William “Rick” Singer – the man who owned and operated Edge College and Career Network LLC (“The Key”) at the center of the collegiate scheme – will appear in Federal court in Boston today where he is expected to plead guilty.
A bio that appears on his website states Singer and team have coached, counseled and mentored over 90,000 adults.
He also wrote a book called “Getting In: Gaining Admission to your College of Choice.” In a description on Amazon, that book promises “easy to understand and simple to follow steps to improve the odds of getting in to the college of your choosing.”
One Amazon reviewer writes, “This book is a must — allow Rick Singer to wave his magic pixy dust all over your life. You will be changed for the better.”
(Photo / Steve C. Wilson / University of Utah) My daughter was recruited legitimately for swimming. In swimming, the times don’t lie.
What are your thoughts about parents bribing their children’s way into college? What lessons are these kids learning and how could the kids be kept in the dark?
