"In October 2016, Reuters published a series of investigative journalism pieces questioning the integrity of Chinese admission service company, Dipont. One of these articles, titled ‘Getting In: How a Chinese company bought access to admissions officers at top U.S. colleges,’ described how Dipont would offer admissions counselors either ‘business-class airfare, or economy-class travel plus a cash “honorarium,”’ to attend their eightday admissions workshop program in Shanghai.
Admissions counselors from colleges including Swarthmore College, University of California, Berkeley, University of Virginia, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, Carlton College, Colgate University, Indiana University, Pomona College and Vanderbilt University accepted the business airfare. Hamilton College, along with Carleton College, Lafayette College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Tulane University and the University of Vermont, confirmed that an admissions officer accepted the honorarium. Of those, the admissions officers from Hamilton, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and University of Vermont stated that they attended the workshops on their personal vacation time." …