I think you have to let go and move on with your daughter. The process is such that you will never know whether those schools admitted the neighbor’s kid because of the faux charity or because of some other little detail on her application that made her stand out to the admissions committee.
I’m guessing your D will also get into a number of fine schools and she will be able to sleep well at night secure in the knowledge that she is an honest and honorable person. She wins.
Run your own race, live your own life, live with your own choices. Let others do the same. If everything becomes a competition or zero-sum game, you make yourself more unhappy than necessary (there’s plenty in our lives to actually make us unhappy without borrowing it from others!)
Much of life is full of perplexing “unfairness”. Let it go, or be dragged…
I know this may come across as trite, but it is not meant that way, because I have experienced the wisdom of this maxim, which my husband used to tell me when I lamented unjust gains by others:
“The best revenge is a life well-lived.”
The more people who report admission cheating, the more difficult it will be for cheats to get away with it. If you saw someone robbing a bank, you wouldn’t say not my circus, not my monkey, you would report it.
@sorghum, we see “fake” charities like this pop up when kids are doing bar and bat mitzvahs, all the time. Affluent and enabling parents arrange a charity that exists for photo ops. Most people know just how much heart and soul was actually involved.
I don’t doubt that the application charity was like that. I expect that Duke wasn’t deceived, but I don’t think they felt that an overstated charitable involvement rose to the level of fraud (or bank robbery).
Fake charities are expensive, and probably correlate negatively with FA. Just sayin’ 
A real charity capable of receiving tax-exempt donations would be registered with the federal government and could easily be verified by the admissions staff if creation of this charity was the key factor influencing admissions. Many students claim to be involved in fund raising efforts - this is a common EC. I think the OP might be over-imagining the role that this fund raising or donating activity played in the admissions decision.
THIS:
I’m pretty sure of it, actually.
By the way, 100% of my students
and 90% of them claim to have started some global initiative for the same, even when said initiative consists of selling 4 belts. “Having a website” is supposedly a great accomplishment.
“Reporting” (to whom? for what") some bogus EC charity on another student’s application isn’t going to get your own child into Duke or UCLA. Let it go. Outright fraud is something like bribing a GC to alter a transcript, or cheating on the SAT. Lots of ambitious kids (and parents) overpolish the EC apple but I don’t think it makes much difference (not that I approve).
PS the fact that the OP’s D “busted” herself for her ECs does not mean that it was a waste. ECs should be their own reward, just as doing well in school is its own reward. I really dislike the mentality that every worthwhile or beneficial activity in HS is a waste unless the student gets into an elite college. It’s not a punishment to work hard, to do well, and to spend one’s leisure time in interesting and beneficial ways, even if you don’t end up at Duke or UCLA.
OP, be proud that your D is not a fraud and can hold her head high.
Let go of this. Stop wasting your physical and emotional time on this. btw- invoking “god” is irrelevant to what happens- just your crutch. Get a life- independent on others. Move beyond such pettiness.
It sounds like they took a trip, but also did something charitable, which the kid used on her application. Unless it is a listed charity that has raised a lot of money or done a lot of work, it is highly possible that the colleges already considered this for what it was. Colleges know that a family who can afford to go overseas and “do good” is financially privileged and do not count that as strongly as you may think. Colleges also recognize that kids will put their charitable work in the best possible light. Unless you KNOW this kid misrepresented her charity as something it is not (said it raised millions when it raised a thousand), you should not get involved.
It is impossible to know the details of someone else’s application. This may have been what put her over the top or she may have taken a different set of classes than your kid, she may have written a better essay, or there may have been something else in her application that put her over the top. You are assuming it was the charity, but you really don’t know. Don’t let bitterness about this impact your daughter’s happiness at whatever schools she gets into.
People cheat on taxes, too. Shrug, and move on. Show your daughter how to live the values you (and your church) taught her.
Before I started this process a friend who already went through it told me to expect that the process won’t be entirely fair. There will be kids with $, connections, legacy status but with lower grades and scores that will get into schools that your own higher stat kid won’t. It’s an imperfect process. You just have to understand and make peace with that going in.
Sorry, but these threads tend to pop up this time of year, and barring absolute evidence of cheating, I would not advise bringing your suspicions (note that word: “suspicions”- you have no idea what the actual app looked like, or whether it contained false info) to anybody’s attention. Elite colleges have seen it all, and even an exaggerated reporting of a kid’s involvement in/creation of a charity is not THE THING that got this kid into Duke, Berkeley or UCLA.
I roll my eyes every time I hear somebody complain that so-and-so "ONLY got in because (fill in the blank: dad paid somebody; they lied about ECs; they were a minority; they knew somebody; whatever). There is rarely an “only” reason in elite admissions. Just focus on your own kid, and worry about real, provable injustices in this world. There are many. This isn’t one of them.
A 20 pt difference on the SAT doesn’t mean much. As for GPA, each school will recalculate, so you don’t really know what those numbers are. Charity aside, she must have had a strong application. A single ec is not getting you into Duke
I am in the camp that the charity had little if anything to do with the acceptances. These college admissions officers have seen it all - they know the vast majority of these “charities” no longer exist the day after decisions go out.
And if the family was in fact in a foreign country handing out clothes to those in need, then why do you take the position that it was a “fake” charity? Combining that with some family leisure time does not negate the value of the time they spent trying to assist those less fortunate.
I also think complaining to the high school guidance counselor is going to create more problems than you anticipate and it will likely be viewed as sour grapes. Remember it is a feather in the GC’s cap when students get good results. It likely will not change anything either, so you have nothing to gain and everything to lose.
I have friends who fudged Income for financial aid-they work for a friend who agreed to report a lower income if needed. Their daughter just told me she got into Georgetown with tons of need based aid. She reported “for some reason they think my parents are poor, and they offered me a ton of aid”. Total fraud and cheating, but they will not get caught, and their daughter does not know they did this. I am shocked by all of this and it has negatively affected our close friendship, as I hear them gush over their daughter’s great choices. My kids attend nice schools with great merit scholarships, but their choices were limited because we are honest with our FA applications. There are many people who cheat in a similar fashion, fake addresses or use Grandma’s address to attend a better High School, etc.
Because there are so many who cheat ^^^ does that make it OK? Because so many people cheat on their taxes, that gives them a pass?
Lying is lying. If the OP has real suspicions, the GC can investigate. Or the OP can write a signed letter to Duke, and let them decide to look into it, or not.
Standing by and doing nothing just encourages the applicant to employ more dishonesty in her life. Who wants to attend college with one more cheater? There are enough already.
Definitely not. condoning the cheating, I am mourning the loss of a close friendship because of the cheating. Also feeling frustrated by all the cheating I see in daily life, I tried to report cheaters lying sbout addresses to get into our high school and was told thAt our administration did not have enough manpower to investigate or prove cheating. Unbelievable, but the chaters all seem to look good on paper.
Side question - does it surprise you when people do stuff like this (or allegedly do stuff like this) and then talk about it?!?
:-S