
College Cheating Scandal: An Admissions Officer Speaks Out - jseliger
https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/college-cheating-scandal-an-admissions-officer-speaks-out.html
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hn_throwaway_99
I don't think it will really happen, but I can at least hope that this
admissions scandal will shine a light on the scam that the "meritocracy" is,
and I say this as a Harvard alum.

At any of the most elite universities there are many more qualified applicants
than there are spots. For example, Harvard could fill its undergrad ranks with
valedictorians alone, twice over. Thus, the fair thing to do would be to
either (a) drastically increase the size of the incoming classes, or (b) set a
minimum level of objective criteria (e.g. test scores, class standing, etc.)
and then just run a lottery from those qualified students.

But instead, the admissions offices at schools run a system much _worse_ than
random. It's a system that's highly subject to pay-to-play access (and usually
not the outright fraud kind, but more the endow-a-chair kind) while at the
same time allowing the universities to keep up the charade that it is all
merit based. Even if there weren't undo influence, the current efforts to
maintain "diversity" (and not just the racial kind, but the kind where we need
5 cello players and 7 chess club champions, etc) means the admissions criteria
is already completely arbitrary if you meet the basic (albeit still tough)
academic requirements.

The reason this won't change, though, is _the primary purpose of today 's
elite universities is to maintain social stratification_. If universities did
the fair thing and had a lottery for all qualified applicants, it would mean
they would have to admit that they are not the objective arbiters of
"potential" they purport to be.

~~~
zamfi
I thought by "pay-to-play" you were going to point out the other opportunities
to use money to perpetuate social stratification. It's not just "endow-a-
chair" levels of wealth that improve the odds, it's also:

\- Live in a rich metro area? Now you have access to things like internships &
research opportunities not available in low-SES areas.

\- Parents have high-status jobs? Now you have access to experiences offered
by your parents' friends and colleagues, for example, to do research at a
local university lab if your parents are professors.

\- Don't have to work summers? Now you can take a "finding yourself" trip or
volunteer to build housing in Africa or whatever it is these days.

It's much easier to engage in extracurriculars that show how great/community-
oriented/socially-conscious/talented at music/sports/research/debate/whatever
you are when you grow up in an upper- or upper-middle-class family in a
wealthy-enough neighborhood to parents with strong social and professional
networks.

This is the social stratification that's perpetuated by elite school
admissions processes, it's the top-20%, not the top-1%. It's not any less
dangerous, and in fact may be more so -- and the income numbers alone don't
tell the full story.

Lastly -- those wealthy enough to endow a chair don't need Harvard to
perpetuate social stratification, they will simply inherit enough wealth to do
so!

~~~
strikelaserclaw
like 15-20% of Harvard admits come from top 1% of household income. I think
like 35-40% come from households making more than 300k.

~~~
zamfi
Indeed: [https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/25/harvard-
income-...](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/25/harvard-income-
percentile/)

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cbsks
Nothing about this surprises me. Just another thing in the long list of ways
that wealthy people are able to keep their wealth, and pass it on to their
children.

I had college paid for in full by my parents, and they also were able to
provide a good portion of the down payment on my house. My parents aren’t
exceptionally wealthy, but they have been able to give my siblings and I a
very good head start on life. And if they were wealthier, they would have been
able to provide even more advantages to us. The whole system is rigged, and
has been for a very long time.

~~~
lwhalen
What's stopping you from going full Siddhartha, selling your house/earthly
possessions, and giving the wad to the first homeless person you see on your
way out of town to live your best ascetic life?

Caring for and providing as much of an advantage to your kids as one is able
is a basic human (one could even argue 'mammalian') behavior. I'm disappointed
that the narrative is trying to label such hard-coded behavior as everything
from 'evil' to 'frowned upon'.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> "I'm disappointed that the narrative is trying to label such hard-coded
> behavior as everything from 'evil' to 'frowned upon'."

The problem isn't so much that it is frowned up or declared evil, but it's
that we have somehow built the worst of both worlds: we are most definitely
_not_ a "privilege-free" meritocracy, but we like to pretend that we are. The
British aristocracy gave their kids all the advantages they could, too, but at
least everyone knew that system was unfair and the concept of "noblesse
oblige" came out of that knowledge. We've replaced noblesse oblige with "I got
all my success through my own brilliance so screw your lazy ass."

I'm not suggesting we return to an aristocratic system, but I am suggesting we
fully acknowledge the role of unfair advantage, and luck, in anyone's success,
in addition to their own skill and hard work.

One of the things I found most interesting about the current scandal is that
one of the parents paid over a million dollars to commit this fraud. With
numbers that big you have to wonder why they just didn't give a donation that
large - probably would have had a similar effect. I think one main reason is
that a donation would make everyone say "Oh, well your kid got in because of
your huge donation." (See Jared Kushner). Committing the fraud allows the
fiction that it was just skill and hard work that was the reason for the
acceptance to continue.

~~~
stickfigure
I think you have an overly rosy view of the aristocracy of old. That social
institution involved a hereditary monarchy, and you don't have to go very far
back before the term _divine right_ was being thrown around. Talk about
entitlement...

If you go back in history, I believe you'll find that most socially advantaged
people simply thought they were inherently better than others. "I worked
harder", whether true or not, is a better narrative.

~~~
EliRivers
_If you go back in history, I believe you 'll find that most socially
advantaged people simply thought they were inherently better than others._

That's true now, is it not? It's certainly a common view. People who are rich
deserve it; they are more deserving. They're better people. They must be,
because how else would they be rich? In the US meritocracy (and indeed, many
others), anyone who has done well must have done it through merit because
that's how the system works, so they must be a better person.

~~~
stickfigure
My understanding is that a few hundred years ago most wealth was inherited
land. Aristocracy was something you were born into. I'd love to see some
statistics, but I believe the percentage of "self-made" people is _much_
higher today.

Modern society may have its flaws, but I do think this particular historical
trend is positive.

~~~
EliRivers
Although the trend is now heading back towards that (in some places, including
the US and the UK); the wealth of your parents is a stronger indicator of
future success than it was fifty years ago.

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ewtddaxd
I find the nuance in the reporting to be quite fascinating depending on who
the perpetrators are.

When it was rich Chinese international students doing the cheating, most
articles would almost always allude to how it was cultural and how it reflects
on the general population.

Now that's it's rich American students, the reporting focuses on wealth and
class and how it's an isolated incident.

~~~
atomi
Well yeah. The poor certainly don't have the means to bribe Ivy League
schools.

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ausbah
>I saw these decisions flipped frequently for students from affluent
backgrounds, and rarely for students who’d applied for financial aid.

>Although our school advertised our “holistic” review process, our director
typically used test scores to screen applicants. His rationale was that these
were “riskier” students. The only time he didn’t? If the student could pay
full price to attend our institution, or a “full pay” student.

My main takeaway from this is a reminder on how reliant schools have become on
gigantic, bloated tuitions to finance a large part of, if not all, their
operations. Whee you need to keep paying for pricey administrators, new dorm
buildings, and other likely-not-vital-for-education pieces but your state
budgets have been slashed, endowment isn't paying out as much this year, and
lower income students don't have access to as many loans - of course schools
are going to put a preference for students from a wealthy background.

I think if you want to keep colleges fair, you need to keep their budgets more
bare bones and focused on the essentials of schools (teaching and research),
OR charge those who can afford the vast tuitions out of pocket with even
higher tuitions to offset the payments for more qualified, but less able to
pay students.

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bhl
What is the value of a college education? This is a contentious question that
I believe more and more people should be asking, and debating about.

Is the value in the education that one receives, or in the the network that
one gains access to? They're really both sides of the same coin: they both
represent opportunity.

Ideally, we could have both – just admit all the high-achieving students from
upper middle-class backgrounds. When there's no more space, just simply
expand: build some dorms, hire a few more professors, etc.

But in reality, where resources are already scarce, schools face a tradeoff:
do we admit the bright student from a poorer background, or the wealthier,
albeit not as academically-inclined, student? Here, admissions basically
become a zero-sum game.

I guess it boils down to an argument of whether intellectual capital is to be
more valued, or of social capital.

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iliketosleep
Students have slowly been reframed as customers - it's no surprise that
admissions may turn into form of customer screening.

~~~
Nasrudith
It is the Ivy League - there is no "turning" about it. Many practices were
goal-post moving to keep model minorities out including ridiculously biased
vocabulary in test questions like yaucht sailing vocabulary which is covered
nowhere in even the most in depth historical or literaty sources.

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raincom
I would rather hear from an admissions offer from HYP and Stanford, where
average admit rate is 5 to 6%. This guy worked for schools whose admit rate
ranges from 60 to 75%; so, the target for such schools is different from that
for HYP.

~~~
ashelmire
I heard exactly the same from a friend who worked in admissions at an ivy
league university. Applying for financial aid materially damages your
application. Ability to pay is factored in just like test scores. The rich
continue to get opportunities poor kids will never have.

~~~
javagram
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-
blind_admission](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission)

It seems like there are only a few dozen U.S. colleges (43 by my count) that
officially have need-blind admissions, so at any school not on this list
ability to pay should be expected to be a factor.

~~~
ashelmire
I can tell you that list cannot be trusted. The university I spoke of is on
that list, but seeing as someone who was in the room making admissions
decisions said they consider financial need, it’s clearly bullshit.

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Zigurd
It's shocking to read justification of the bribery and fraud in this case as
being just a manifestation of the drive to impart advantages to one's
offspring.

I have that same drive. I can't imagine living with a morality that would
enable me to pay bribes and falsify athletic achievement, or disability. I
can't imagine involving my children in federal crimes.

There are lesser unfair practices, such as the ones the admissions officer in
the article describes, and these should be fixed, too. But these lesser unfair
practices are different from committing federal felonies. Especially when you
are in technology entrepreneurial management, investing, or running a major
law firm. It makes one wonder how deep the ethical rot goes.

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forthwall
My family was part of that "full pay" segment of the population, at least when
I was in school - it makes me wonder if my skew to private college (vs public)
acceptances could be part of this, since I was an average student.

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3rdgender
Is it actually a bad thing if people who pay for it can get a good education?

Shouldn't we rather at the other end of the ladder, people who can't pay, and
see to it that they can get a good education?

~~~
jbarberu
In that case you could make it more transparent and outright make it a bidding
war over who gets in, rather than the whole charade of test scores and what-
not.

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sytelus
TLDR; The admissions are heavily affected if students expressed need for
financial aid. The OP worked at two schools, one that had little endowment
liberal arts college not requiring SATs. This one doesn't surprise me. The
other one is state college with 75% acceptance rate for in-state students.
This one doesn't seem like problematic. OP isn't clear which school he/she is
accusing of.

Overall, its well known fact that rich people's kid can chose great college as
they prefer. Everything from Stanford to Harvard have seats reserved for
donors.

~~~
yardie
I have friends that worked in admissions office of a state university.
Normally, admissions rate will be high for in-state students because college-
prep would have started long before application time. And through local
alumni, teachers, and counselors students will have a good idea which state
schools they’ll be accepted into. But out of state and international
admissions is completely different. When state budget cuts roll down that
admission rate jumps from 10-15% to 25% and up. And if you can pay full
freight that rate jumps to 100%.

When I found that out I was less shocked than I thought I would be. It just
confirmed thoughts that I observed but failed to see.

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buboard
Peter Thiel has been warning about education turning to exclusive clubs since
years ago. i dont know if much can change though

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strikelaserclaw
I read in an article somewhere that, American system heavily emphasis the
brand of an Institution, which is markedly different from European
institutions (Is this true?). This brand is valuable to people because they
believe that the outcomes in their lives will become markedly different based
on it. I think if we can somehow design a system which is indifferent to
pedigree of an institution and rather afford opportunity based on individual
merit (maybe university blind job admissions at the top companies), then the
need to attend prestigious institutions will lessen.

~~~
rchaud
European schools are taxpayer-funded, so students don't have to think as much
about 5-figure differences between in-state tuition at a public university and
full tuition at a private school.

The "pedigree" of US schools developed because the top schools have gigantic
endowments from rich alumni, which allows them to build better facilities,
hire top teaching talent and fund research. This is a cycle that is reinforced
by alums (many at successful companies) who choose to recruit at those
schools, thereby creating a new class of well-paid employees who're in a
position to contribute to the endowment down the line.

For some industries like investment banking and finance, it's extremely
important to do your undergrad at a "target school", where banks come to
campus directly to run info sessions and do preliminary interviews. Otherwise
you may not have a real shot unless you do an MBA, this time at a target
school.

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darawk
In this article, we report on the fact that businesses preferentially seek out
customers who pay more.

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eanzenberg
“75% in-state acceptance, 25% out-of-state” yet out-of-state usually pays
double? Are 75% of applicants “affluent”? I’m sorry but a lot of these recent
biased articles smell a bit of BS lately...

~~~
headsoup
Already accepted students on first pass are likely not then questioned, so
make up majority. The Deny/Check students that are affluent are subsequently
'reviewed' and allowed would be a percentage of the 75%

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test6554
It seems like there is a balance of meritocracy and capitalism which is fine,
but society should have a say in where that balance lies.

~~~
rchaud
Especially since the top American schools are not-for-profits and aren't taxed
on tuition fees received.

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wycs
Make the SAT so difficult that on average 1 person gets a perfect score each
year. Then do not allow any other criteria for admission.

To prevent bribery randomly sample 1% for a retest under much stricter
security.

If you must, lower standards for protected classes to even out demographics.

Rich people can afford to burn their children’s childhood on the enrichment
activities and “volunteer” work Harvard requires.

Standardized testing is by far the most fair way to do this. SAT prep is not
that effective and besides SAT prep is now available online for free.

~~~
dpweb
Here’s a solution. Make college free for all. Anyone with a HS diploma can get
in. But, you MUST attend the classes and do the work or you’re kicked out end
of semester.

Totally based on merit. No biases on income or anything else.

~~~
wangchungtonite
Who pays the utility bills? Professor and administrative salaries? Is anyone
allowed in just due to having a diploma? What keeps rampant cronyism and end
of year cost splurges to keep high budget levels for the next year? Who sets
the budget? How does enforcement work, government employees doing enforcing?

In short how do you pay for it given the already spiraling out of control
costs of higher education?

~~~
ndnxhs
All fairly simple issues that many countries have solved.

~~~
dodobirdlord
I suppose so, but it's worth noting that no other nation's tertiary education
system holds a candle to the United States.

~~~
titanomachy
Switzerland and England both have schools in the top 10.

~~~
em500
Those schools don't admit everyone, and certainly not everyone for free.

~~~
lozenge
I can't speak for Switzerland but all universities in England charge the same
for UK students with nothing upfront. Sure they don't have space for everybody
who meets the minimum but that's inevitable. There are no legacy admissions,
athletic admissions, positive discrimination etc. Everybody goes through the
same process.

