The ultimate sanction for a fraudulent application could be a lifelong awareness that an entire degree could be rescinded. However, little in our cultural system carries penalties forward through this length of time.
One of Walton’s granddaughters (Elizabeth Page Laurie) “gave back” her degree from USC after she admitted to having her papers written by her roommate, and got her name stripped of a building at Missouri http://nypost.com/2005/10/22/degree-of-stupidity-wal-mart-heir-%20%20%20-cheated-at-usc/
I don’t think she needs a degree. She just wanted to go there and have a good time. So the admission to USC served that purpose.
She doesn’t “need” anything. She has lots of $$$$ . But she was a complete fraud and bought her admission and degree. Too bad she didn’t get a refund when she had to return it. Walmart’s return policy might have 
lostaccount: you’re mistaking my counter to your point about pushing out domestic students in favor of qualified internationals as somehow my tolerating cheaters. I’m with you and Jym. If they cheat, thrash 'em. I hope the testing services and the colleges employ every legal method they can to winnow out those princelings. Put the screws to them, I say.
However, I don’t want the discussion about foreign cheaters to be part of some big xenophobic discussion about admitting internationals as a whole. They’re valuable in many ways – for our students, for our colleges’ coffers, and hopefully, to foster better understanding on the foreigners of the US.
@T26E4, It depends on what part of NYS those domestic students live in. We live north of Manhattan so if my son hadn’t been accepted to the local SUNY there’s still a cc he could commute to, which is great because we can’t afford for him to dorm anywhere. I’m not sure what the situation is in more rural areas. On the plus side, any NYS resident who graduates from a NYS cc has guaranteed admission to a 4-year SUNY (not necessarily their first choice).
I’d always assumed that the full pay students allow our local colleges to keep the rates down for in-state students but I don’t know if that’s true. The percent of international students at the SUNY my son attends is in the single digits, so I don’t think it’s limiting to in-state students. And the exposure to different cultures is a good thing. I think the cheating hurts other internationals who may otherwise have qualified for admission more than it hurts NYS residents. But I do agree that there’s a possibility that low income NYS residents could face difficulties if 10% or more of our slots were going to international students.
I will say that it’s hard to deny that these foreign applicants do indirectly benefit some students. By admitting full pay overseas applicants (who often make sizable donations) I imagine a college can then afford to offer more financial aid to domestic applicants? I mean they have to make money somewhere.
That being said, I think it’s fundamentally wrong to ignore the massive amount of cheating, mostly unfair to other foreign applicants without the resources to compete with these fake perfect students. I don’t think colleges admit foreign students in lieu of Americans, they usually have an unofficial quota for international students and they typically keep it relatively low. For foreign students who attempt to play by the rules though, its a death sentence. It’s the same as going to the same high school as a bunch of wunderkinds when your good but not great, you’ll be compared to all those kids.
I also think it’s long term damaging for these kids that are admitted, often at the immense social pressures from the parents and country. I know someone personally whose parents insisted that she study in the US when she has little to no English ability, under the assumption that she would learn English while she was here. Guess what? Nope. She built a community around the other Chinese students, shares a house with them, shares text books with them and I’m sure they do, in fact, collaborate. She even asked me to help her write her final papers and make them meet word limits. I didn’t want any part of it, and while I could not report her for asking for help, I would report anyone in a heartbeat if I had proof of academic dishonesty. One of the major issues is the language barrier they form. Particularly with Chinese, as it is rarely spoken buy non-Chinese and culturally, most Chinese students would ignore cheating rather than report it, in my experience.
I always wonder though, what is the logic behind cheating? Like at what point are you going to be honest? It’s not like you can start a job and “cheat” your way through utter ineptitude. Unless of course you can??? At my job it’s pretty obvious who does and does not know their way around a kitchen.
I think we must all tread carefully along the line of villianizing foreign admittees and being blatantly ignorant of the gaming many of them pull in admissions. It’s very easy to blame the group, but in my mind some of this responsibility definitely lies on the institution. I’m not buying that these schools have no idea that these applicants are cheating and forging their way to a “perfect” profile…
When I first saw the 7 stars to hide the university name I figured the OP had to be talking about Harvard and thought the 7 stars was such a poor attempt at anonymizing, but then I realized Cornell and Caltech are also 7 letters. Oh wait, are we also including LACs? Amherst and Bowdoin are also 7. Damn, I guess OP’s trick worked.
Haha, yeah, I am clever like that;-)
To get back on track though, my original question was concerning verification of application info. I am not interested in vilifying international students. Having taken my kids all over the world, I absolutely want them to interact with foreigners. I do think colleges need to find a better way of verifying information. Certainly, US students lie on applications too. I have heard stories of a kid saying they were president of some club, then while being interviewed, they get asked a question about their presidency, and stumble. I naively assumed that once a long list of acceptances has been made, efforts would be made to verify any info that is important in an application. But that isn’t the case, it seems.
It is disturbing to me how little is done to verify information even in domestic applicants. At Dartmouth Bound they were very candid with us throughout and when someone asked if they verify claims, they said “absolutely not” (though they did say they check consistency for racial identification on tests, app and transcript…) I really consider this a little neglectful of them, especially at Ivy League schools where the title is so very coveted. Some of these families would probably literally give up their first born for admittance, let alone have moral qualms about application padding or downright fabrication. While the punishment is severe should you get caught, how can a school claim to deter cheating and lying if they aren’t at least passively screening? That kid from Harvard who snuck in only got caught out of blatant plagiarism and if I may say so, utter stupidity. Had he not made that massive, glaring mistake it’s likely he would have never been caught.
With these types of people, it’s usually not a matter of if they will make a mistake, only a matter of when.
It’s exponentially more difficult for a domestic applicant than an international applicant to fake things like a transcript or GC report. This drastically reduces the amount of meaningful fraud that can really exist on an application. Remember, we’re not talking about “saying you were the person to come up with the idea but really it was a group effort” type of fraud - that’s not really going to have an appreciable impact. We’re talking about lying about GPAs, test scores, national awards, etc. When it comes to US applicants, the high level of difficulty means they are simply too infrequent to be worth the money/time to systematically verify everything during admissions beyond LOR corroboration/application consistency. They always out themselves at some point anyway.