I was glad to see most of them involved pleaded guilty at least.
We have a local kid who turned down Stanford athletic scholarship as this came out. There were many factors but I’m certain some of this weighed heavily on the parents.
I too felt bad for the “normal” kids videos. As a parent all I can do is try to set my child’s expectations to be realistic from the start and not add pressure to them.
I haven’t seen the documentary yet, but as people were being sentenced and fined, I wondered why their fines weren’t at least the amount of their bribes!
They didn’t get their ‘donations’ back - the schools/coaches got to keep them and they got the tax deductions as they went through the 401c3 organizations.
Some of the fines were more than the ‘donations’ to Singer. I think Felicity Huffman’s payment to Singer was about $15k, and her fine was more than that.
I enjoyed the Netflix version and thought it was better than the one Lifetime did.
That being said, this story has been done to death.
When are they going to do with one with Harvard and their fencing coach?
I actually really enjoyed it yet felt so sad over it all. This whole prestige thing and at one point they implied this only helped that schools prestige because “look what celebrities are willing to do to get their kids into this school”. I wish it had the opposite affect
I’m reminded of the old joke, whose punchline was, “We’ve already established what you are, madam. Now we are only negotiating the price of the service.”
Obviously, buying one’s child’s admission through a large donation to the school is not exactly the same thing as buying one’s child’s admission through an intermediary to the athletics coach, or an intermediary who also helps one to falsify a test score, or an athletics record, with the help of the athletics coach. The price may have been less, but it is the same thing. All the fencing dad did was pay the coach, instead of the school. Making a large donation to the school with the expectation that one’s child will be admitted, is the same thing. It’s bribery. It has already been established what the school is doing - now it’s only a question of whom the customer is paying.
And all of this is enabled, at least in part, by the tax-exempt status of the institutions, and the granting of government-funded research money to the institutions. And apparently, it’s less money that one would think, and it’s payable on the installment plan! The Story Behind Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance Into Harvard — ProPublica
Thanks for the link, very enlightening.
The Kushner donation was in 1998.
I think that donations are very different from paying someone to take a test for your child, or having your child pose doing fake rowing. Donations that help finance financial aid are different from donations that go in Singer’s or an athletic director’s pocket.
Noone is going to argue that money doesn’t affect admissions. We can debate Z list and so on forever but I’m going to stop here. A donation that is legitimate does not land you in prison.
Legacy is a problem too. There are all kinds of inequities based on money and culture that need to be recognized. Even legitimate advantages like niche sports and conservatory prep tend to be concentrated among those with money and education.
Things are changing, but slowly. I see progress, but not enough.
$2.5 million in 1998 is like about $4 million now by CPI inflation.
That is still many times more than the typical Singer customer paid for the scandal services, although there may have been one or a few who supposedly paid that much or more (seems like they were duped, since if a $4 million donation can buy admission to Harvard, why pay even more than that?).
On the other hand, when legacy and development admissions comes up on these forums outside of the Varsity Blues scandal, it looks like lots of posters here favor such preferences.
Point is, these schools, although private, benefit greatly from public money by being tax exempt, and receiving federal research grants. And although one can be very successful in life without having attended one of these schools, or even any college, in general, these schools are a pipeline to money and prestige.
Buying admission is in this situation like bribing a judge. It’s unjust. Even if the “Varsity Blues” participants had only paid 100K for the service, rather than a million, as opposed to that 1998 commitment to donate then 250K/yr (which is equivalent to 350K/yr now due to inflation) for ten years, my point is, it’s the same thing. Bribing the school directly is legal, bribing an intermediary (the fencing coach, the contact person for a coach, the person who arranges for cheating on the SAT) is not.
Legacy and “development” admissions should be a thing of the past. Donations made in order to receive something are not donations. They’re payments, and they shouldn’t be tax free. It’s very clear that in certain situations, such as that famous 1998 deal, the “donation” was really a purchase of admission.
Watched this last night and thought it would be fun to discuss. It was pretty well done, but not super compelling. It does a great job of explaining the scandal itself, though I would have liked more clarity as to how the FBI actually pieced together the case.
I have some sympathy for John Vandermoer. He seems very credible, but we viewers don’t know what the actual evidence against him was. The Stanford aspect appears to show complicity in the admissions office, and not just Vandermoer acting on his own. I felt it wasn’t clear, maybe deliberately so?
I was also surprised the Singer apparently still walks free, while others have served jail time and still others have plead not guilty. More court cases forthcoming and I guess they need Singer’s cooperation.
I would have liked more commentary from people outside the case. I especially liked hearing what his former associates said about him, and the comments from the college consultant. He was pretty scathing. Overall, an interesting documentary/re-enactment, but I would have liked a little less of the re-enactment and more documentary.
One more thing…my husband pointed out that this scandal isn’t dissimilar to people buying drugs from a dealer. Except here, they went after the buyers too.
Interesting indictment of a flawed system. Stanford not looking too good. Need to get more information, but it seems like Vandermoer was the Cardinal sacrificial goat. At the very least, Stanford’s AD turned a willing blind eye given the size of the gifts. BTW, I’ll betcha the “side door” is still open. Affidavit Sheds New Light on Harvard Fencing Scandal | News | The Harvard Crimson
I haven’t seen it, and I’m not sure I will. I worked in higher education, including admissions, for years. My personal thought is that I really don’t care about any of this. First of all, it’s an extremely small number of people at an extremely small number of institutions. I don’t believe that it really “hurts” deserving candidates, given that it’s such a small number. I suspect that wealth and privilege gets people many advantages in life, not just in college admissions (maybe this is an understatement). I find the people trying to buy their kids admission to be pathetic. But what REALLY gets me in this scandal is that the man who orchestrated the whole thing apparently will not have any consequences. If not for him, these privileged parents would not have been able to do what they did. It’s all just dumb. The real scandal in college admissions is that college is unaffordable for most people … so while a kid might be admitted, she may not be able to attend. I would rather spend my time learning about that and considering how to fix that system.
I did! Thought it was very well done and really informative. There’s a running CC discussion about the documentary here:
There was something about John that didn’t seem right to me. I feel like the documentary made him out to be super innocent, which he’s not. I agree in that him putting the money into sailing was better than taking it for himself, but he still interacted with Rick Singer, and John would be an idiot if he couldn’t read Rick’s signals. The documentary made John almost sound clueless, and it’s obvious he isn’t. I think his sentence was good, he’s not Rick Singer bad but he’s also not an angel.
Other than that I thought it was very well made, I watch a lot of documentaries and this one was well produced.
I get your point, but what was in it for him, Vandermoer? He didn’t take any money. Maybe he was an idiot, but would he willingly risk his job and his reputation for absolutely nothing? I don’t think he did much wrong, other than let himself be duped. I suspect he knew it wasn’t kosher, but felt there was complicity from the head of the athletics dept. and didn’t want to speak up for fear of losing his job or whatever.
I think Vandermoer knew what Singer was looking for: take the bribe money and get some kids “onto” the team. I think John was smart in the sense that he will take the money for the sake of his team, but not go along with Singer’s crimes. He could’ve basically manipulated the manipulator.
It sounds crazy and I could be far from correct but it could make sense. John is smart, I think the documentary team and his lawyer made him sound like he wasn’t. You’re right about the athletics dept. being involved in the scheme, John was really just in the mix, I do feel bad for him.
But, tons of staff and coaches DID risk their job and reputations for money. The Yale soccer coach (I don’t remember their name) did what John was supposed to.
Perhaps this is part of American exceptionalism, but nobody, even the Europeans who chose not to aboard the ship to to the U.S. some 100~200 years ago, understands American “holistic” admission process. The world thinks, well, it’s snake oil. A few examples:
Why do you have to be a good essayst to earn a spot in university? Shouldn’t you be, like, a scholar or a researcher?
Who is a superior human being: one with 14 APs with perfect scores vs one with 5 APs with perfect scores plus 20 hours per week working at McDonald’s?
Why do you need to check the race of an applicant?
Why should one who worked as a volunteer earn advantage over one who did not - to earn a spot in unversity? What is university? A privilege or an accolade given to superior beings, or a place to advance academia?
What is a good character, as opposed to a mundane one? Why should it matter to earn a spot? What is university? A horse race bet for who will succeed in life (and make donations)?
If you are boring, why should you be rejected?
Why do sports matter to a university? What does football have anything to do with academia?
If your political view happens to be at the diametric opposite end of your interviewer’s, should you be punished and rejected for that, or should you fake and feign? (happened to me once at the Harvard interview.)
Why do universities encourage EVERYONE to apply only to reject 99.9% of them?
Why do universities encourage there is no mimimum GPA required for acceptance, when they know it takes a Jared Kushner to get in with a 2.0?
Why do universities care about their matriculation rates? What relevance does it have to, say, an education? Isnt it basically a childish bragging rights, little else?
Why 100 times more expensive than, say, a German, a French or a Korean unversity education? What does it cost to teach someone, say, English literature, really?
If someone appears so smart that he looks as if he might get accepted to Harvard, why do other schools reject him? Is such practice morally defensible when committed by an educational institution?
What is the name of the university admission game? Meritocracy? Whatever the university needs at the moment?
If an applicant asks Rick Singer to write the entire application on his behalf, is there a fail-proof way to tell, or is this too minor a breach to care?
Why are “unique” and “rare” virtues to universities? Are they in stamp collecting business?
When a university’s advertised acceptance rate is 4%, does it mean the chance for an international, FA, no donation, no legacy pushed ORM would be, like, 0.1%?
Why did they make the selection process so arbitrary? To show that they are anti-elitests?
Anyone who doesn’t like our system can go to Europe or elsewhere for university. Plenty of internationals seem to prefer our system. There are options for everyone. I personally like our system much better than any other. It’s not perfect but none is.
And test scores do not make one “a superior human”. What nonsense!
Anyone who doesn’t like our system can go to Europe or elsewhere for university. Plenty of internationals seem to prefer our system.
Do all Americans like their system, or anyone who doesn’t is deemed as an international automatically - including 3rd generation immigrants like myself?