Why is any of this so hard to believe when one lower Ivy had a $10,000 price tag within the past decade & this was widely written about & acknowledged by the school ?
$500,000 is a lot of money for a lower Ivy & if offered almost certainly will result in attractive options.
The incredible part of this story has yet to be addressed in this thread. Someone actually paid serious money to get their child admitted to a no-name Pennsylvania prep school.
And then hired the same consultant for the college application process.
Oh please. If someone is going to make a statement, they should be able to support it. IS what was written 12 yrs ago in “The price of admission:” still supported?
These two deserve each other. I love that the con got conned. I gotta think collecting any judgment will be massively impractical.
^@Publisher Just think about it: if the Ivy Coach has already gotten $750k for such minimum services they performed why would they spend $$$$$ to hire a lawyer and risk damage to their business reputation to “recover” the remaining $750k. The only reason they are so desperate is because it has cost them far more than $750k.
@Publisher I, for one, have no idea what widely-known 10k price tag you are referring to. Can you be more specific? 10k would seem far too low; full-pay families - who represent about half the students at the Ivies - would be lining up in droves for such a deal if it were remotely available and ethical.
The girl’s name is out there thanks to this lawsuit. She will have an interesting time once she arrives on campus in the fall. Not sure her mother was fully aware of the repercussions for her daughter.
Also, a large potion of the $1.5 mill could have been for Ivy Coach to act as a liaison between mother and schools. The mother may have written separate checks to both schools with larger donations.
I’m interested in what Dartmouth is doing to manage reputational fallout in response to this lawsuit. PR responses really interest me.
Yes, it was the University of Pennsylvania.
Rising seniors who attended Penn’s summer school were given a presentation at the end of the term by admission members of Penn’s graduate business school who moonlighted as educational consultants for a $10,000 fee. Everyone who hired them & applied ED to Penn was admitted.
Heavily publicized, this practice was acknowledged by & cleared by the university.
I think there will be a happy ending: Dartmouth is going to wash its hand and say “…the girl was qualified anyway, admitted…”; Ivy Coach is not out of the money anymore, and of course the mother ends up not having to pay additional… 
Family at D’s school is widely know to have donated 20 million PER year to an Ivy for their daughters Freshman, Sophomore and Junior years after her older sibling did not get into that school. Guess what. She got into her HYP level Ivy. Happens all the time.
I don’t know of any school where 10k would move the needle. I have heard that anything less than 1.5m is pointless for an ivy or top 5 LAC. But that might just be the insanity of our schools wealth and what you need to do to cut through the clutter.
And, this is in addition to the donations you need to make to your HS, so the CC can write how ‘supportive’ and ‘generous’ the family is on the counselor write up.
As someone else mentioned, I, too, was surprised that with all that money paid the consultant, that this student landed at a boarding school that is not well known.
Was this a full pay international student? Well qualified anyway?
Come on…all she needed to do was apply to a need aware school…as full pay…and not surprisingly, she would likely have been accepted.
@Publisher just gotta ask…how do you know so much about ALL of these different colleges and prep schools…and their policies, etc.
But @Publisher you have only been a CC member for a couple of weeks at the most…impossible to get THAT much info that quickly.
Plus…your posts are worded like you have first hand info about all of these topics…like this one.
Anyway…back to the thread…
This student…if qualified…would,have gotten accepted to college here anyway…as a full pay student. My opinion.
@thumper1: You do not have to be a member to read College Confidential.
I would love to see this case go to court, since it would require disclosure of all the “sausage-making” behind the admissions process for “Development” candidates. I doubt that will happen, but I hope the Vietnamese parents hold that prospect over the “Consultant’s” head.
I don’t think it is illegal to make a donation to a uni and I don’t think it is illegal for private colleges to pick and choose who they admit. But if the parents had a contract and broke it that is another story. I am very surprised that people think that the merit of admitting one student who brings money to the table is any different than the merit of an athlete or the merit of a brainy kid who brings the academic chops to the table.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
OK deleted several posts. I will reiterate that CC is not a debate society. As it is, I don’t see this discussion remaining open long at its present pace, however, I would suggest users refrain from further unsubstantiated claims; it does not bolster any argument.
Stardustmom I don’t think the lawsuit will hurt the D. Once kids are in college they don’t much care how others got there because they are all, well, there. The only kids who make might be ticked off are the ones who didn’t get in on gpa and standardized testing and they aren’t there to give the D a hard time.
I am hoping that is not debating…these days it is difficult to discern.