
Scoop: Silicon Valley VC out after hiring disgraced college “coach” - todsac
https://www.axios.com/silicon-valley-vc-chris-schaepe-college-admissions-lightspeed-522f89ce-abe5-4f18-aca9-a3722930d476.html
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hn_throwaway_99
OK, as I started reading this article I thought, "well, OK, maybe he really
did think everything was above board" until I got to the amount. $176,000 for
a "college admissions consultant"? Bullshit, if he didn't explicitly know
there was shady stuff going on I can't believe there wasn't at least a "see no
evil/hear no evil" wink wink.

But Jesus, what's up with all these super-rich people who either (a) have
totally incompetent kids or who (b) believe they have totally incompetent kids
to the tune that they need all these hundreds of thousands of dollars to get
into college. I always considered myself to have a privileged upbringing with
relatively-upper-middle class parents, but I had to pay for my SAT prep books
out of my own part-time job money.

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felipemnoa
>>but I had to pay for my SAT prep books out of my own part-time job money.

Serious question, why? Why would your parents not pay for something that is
school related. I can see paying for my toys with my own money, but if you are
middle class I would expect for your parents to pay for education related
stuff.

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asark
If your kid's able and inclined to pay for their own test prep books it's
probably better to let them do it. More likely to actually use it that way,
I'd guess.

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dawhizkid
This story makes no sense to me. Why would someone who has all the money in
the world to prepare their kid to get into the best schools pay $180k to get
their kid in a mid-ranked public school with a 40% admissions rate?

Like how badly unqualified could his son be to require that kind of assistance
to get into UT Austin (no offense, but this is not Harvard or Stanford we’re
taking about here..)

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bredren
If you're coming in from out of state, (presumably the family is based in CA),
public school admissions can be more difficult than for in-state applicants.

From what I remember even for in-state applicants, when admissions years are
big meeting the minimum requirements does not guarantee matriculation.

So it could be that the child had halfway decent scores but for a variety of
reasons wasn't likely to make it in on a straight application. 40% admission
means a most people are still getting rejected.

Or it could be otherwise.

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dawhizkid
I’m saying there’s no reason why the son of a wealthy VC should even remotely
need help gaming the admissions game of a public college with a 40% admissions
rate given the vast resources you should have had since your birth. The fact
that there was even a chance he could have not gotten in (which should be
difficult to do if you got above average SAT scores even from out of state) is
quite frankly shocking.

This must have been more than an “insurance plan” to ensure getting in.
Completely seriously his son must have been a legitimately terrible student or
actually not very bright at all.

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bredren
I think that is a little unfair to the kid, really.

I know a person who came from by all appearances a great background who made
poor decisions as a young adult and failed to achieve a lot.

But then their sibling went on to a top tier college, enter NY finance and
marry the child of a nobel laureate.

I also know someone who was raised by a single father who was abusive, but
went on to put themselves through a BS in engineering and has done well for
themselves at least professionally.

Origins do not dictate futures, and just because you don't get good grades
early on doesn't mean you aren't a promising person.

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dawhizkid
It’s more an indictment on the kid’s parents than the kid himself.

No idea what the VC was like as a dad, but what if he worked all the time and
never saw his kid growing up and come year 17 just try to buy his kid into
school to make up for not actually parenting...

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bredren
That's a lot of presumptions. It also could have been largely "normal" but the
kid wasn't exceptional, and they just wanted to make sure this happened.

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gph
I'm kind of curious what it means to run a non-profit as a front.

I sorta know from news/pop culture that a lot of rich people use non-profits
as a way of funneling taxable income into championing their own causes and
throwing galas for themselves. But it sounds like Singer was using it more as
a money laundering front? Or was he basically paying himself an exorbitant
amount to be an executive of the non-profit, while not really doing much?

Is it really that easy to abuse the non-profit system in the US?

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myroon5
His page was removed but still in Google's cache:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gxwL2X...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gxwL2X7ZxmoJ:https://lsvp.com/team/chris-
schaepe/)

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vondur
I always assumed if you donated that kind of money to certain private colleges
that you could get your kids accepted.

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bilbo0s
???

That's not a lot of money.

You donate USD50 Million, most schools are gonna make sure your kid, (and
through your kid, your family's money), keep going to their institution. At
less than say, 1 million? That's not really gonna turn any heads at a place
like USC or Texas. Probably would get you some time in the luxury boxes for
football and basketball games though. (At least, I would _think_ it would???
Unless football at schools like Texas, USC, Ohio State, Alabama etc is even
bigger than I think it is.)

But yeah, the guy or gal who donates USD50 Million plus...

You better believe at _any_ school, he or she will be getting his or her _OWN_
luxury box.

