@collegemomjam Your son’s college preferences are not discriminatory in anyway, but are just his preferences based on “fit” from my point of view. My family is extremely blessed to know many HBCU graduates who have gone to elite graduate and professional schools (ultimate goals of my daughter and son) so I am not worried about the academic (Along with watching my wife in undergrad do summer research at Mayo Clinic, NYU, Stanford, and U of Chicago to supplement her undergraduate education from her HBCU). I believe that elite schools have an environment where my son could thrive in undergrad, and he is currently working on applying to some summer programs at MIT and Carnegie Mellon along with some less selective programs, so things could always change, but I will support his decision either way as long as he has thought out his decision.
I’m speechless.
Me too. Used car salesman indeed. Poor kids.
(Fortunately some proved that they did deserve their admissions.)
I’m curious what St. Johns will do (if anything) about Mr. Sassau. While not on purpose on his part (although allowing your teacher/principal to complete your application may be grounds enough), his application is fraudulent.
Beyond that, I am curious if any other students will face repercussions at their respective colleges. I am sure there are plenty of students who did not comment on this article who had their applications/transcripts altered as well.
The kids were used as pawns. Sure, they benefitted but the money flowed into the “founders” coffers after these kids got their admissions. And they were abused by the school - responsibility falls upon the school leaders.
There is an article in The NY Times today that describes a small Louisiana school (TM Landry) that routinely sent its underprivileged black students to elite colleges, including the Ivy League. The school received numerous accolades and hearty donations. Videos of their students opening their acceptance letters have been viewed tens of millions of times.
But it was all a fraud, as everything was falsified, from the transcript to the recommendation letter touting the student’s volunteer activities.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/tm-landry-college-prep-black-students.html
Once you get past the brazenness of this, there is so much wrong here that it is difficult to unpack, but here goes:
- It feeds into the prejudice that black students at elite colleges doesn't deserve to be there. These people can just point to the fraud at TM Laundry.
- Many of the Landry students in elite colleges do poorly, as would be expected. One student at Wesleyan dropped out saying among her other things, that her written papers were "childish, and she was too embarrassed to attend a writing workshop."
- Every student currently enrolled at TM Landry is now automatically suspect, even those that might have been qualified for elite colleges. And apparently some were, mainly those who spent only a limited time there.
- Donors were conned into sending money into a failing school. While the donations were supposedly for financial aid, none of it has been offered to students so far.
- The students were also mentally and sometimes physically abused. The Landrys have pled guilty to crimes related to violence against students.
- In summary, most of the students at Landry ended up worse off than if they attended a supportive school system that made the most of their abilities. This is the basis for mismatch theory.
- There is apparently no system at elite colleges to verify the accomplishments of these students. They wanted to believe the hype, despite the poor performance of previous students.
The article didn’t mention their standardized test scores. It would be interesting to find out. Presumably they are the only part of an application not subject to falsification.
The are going to talk about it on Today this morning.
I was wondering how they managed to get acceptable standardized test scores. Reading the article, that is all the school worked on, and manufactured the entire rest of the application. Appalling.
My guess is that many of the students will face repercussions at their respective colleges for the simple fact that they don’t have the educational background necessary to succeed and will end up dropping out of their colleges.
According to the posted article, the students were not required to attend their classes, and many of their classes appeared to be nothing more than prepping for the ACT. My guess is that very few of the transcripts issued by this “school” are legit.
I feel terrible for the kids and their families.
The article did mention that the upperclassmen spent most days doing ACT prep and I am guessing they figured out a way to even overcome the standardized test scores by just spending all of their time on test prep. I am one who believes that you can “teach to the test” and beat some sections on standardized tests if you spend enough time on it without completely understanding the “why” with some pattern recognition skills honed through lots of repetitive practice. But with the glowing false transcripts, life stories, and recommendations fed to elite schools looking to diversify their student bodies, I would be surprised if the standardized scores mattered at all when considering admission…
@hebegebe One of my biggest beefs with some struggling high schools in America is that they sometimes push and promote some of their students to attend elite schools (this part is good), while knowing that they have not done much to prepare them for the academic Armageddon that awaits (this is terrible). My wife taught at a title IX school early in her career that had a Ivy League alum on the staff teaching AP Language Arts classes and she would lower the standard so that all of the kids could move on in her classes, but not preparing the best and the brightest of her students who in some cases got accepted into elite universities. Most kids didn’t even bother with the AP Exam (even though it was free for them) and the ones that did made 1’s and 2’s. Those kids ended up being in the most remedial of English classes without fail, and all struggled early, which bothered me when she had the ability to get those students prepared for college better. I know it is a fine line (she could not fail 70% of the class either), but it is why I have always been proud of my wife for not dumbing down classes and preparing all the kids by sacrificing outrageous amounts of time and resources to help her students who were struggling. The AP Language Arts teacher totally wanted her students to succeed and loved those students, but hurt them more than helped them by lower standards, which in the end perpetuates the Mismatch Theory.
These poor kids! To get to college, especially with a lot of hooplah, and then not be able to cut it because you don’t have the foundation - how devastating.
Very interesting exposé in the New York Times this morning:
The average ACT score between 2014 and 2017 at TM Landry was 27, according to this Washington Post article from a year ago:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/15/this-video-of-jubilant-students-at-a-small-town-louisiana-school-inspired-millions-heres-why/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.65c0606072c2
Looking at the link shared by @1NJParent, last year’s class had 16 graduating seniors, with acceptances to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Tulane, Columbia, Brown, Wesleyan and Dartmouth. I wonder if the Wesleyan student is the one that just dropped out.
If the ACT exam was given on Landry’s premises, I would think the scores the students received is also suspect at this point.
Here’s the link to TM Landry’s official website:
http://www.tmlandrycollegeprep.org/index.html
Harvard’s Fitzsimmons is featured prominently.
And a link to its school profile:
http://www.tmlandrycollegeprep.org/TMLandry_school_profile.pdf
Not sure if any part of it is also falsified.
@hebegebe wrote:
Mismatch theory posits that the adcom knowingly accepts an applicant that may not have all that it takes to succeed at an elite college. Let’s be clear. That is entirely different from accepting a student whose transcript has been doctored and ECs have been woven from whole cloth. The Times article points out that there are few defenses at a college’s disposal against out-and-out institutional fraud, especially where the high school in question has no track record with them.
Yes, the colleges are victims too. But are they been victimized willingly?
I took a look at the current ACT Test locator and it looks like the only place close to the school that offered the ACT is at the local public high school. That doesn’t mean that the website isn’t being deceptive as well, or that the school didn’t have another way to doctor the tests, but it looks like it isn’t on site (at least for this current year).
@1NJParent We will see how the colleges that accepted students from the school react. I am sure this is the nightmare scenario for them. What is scary for me is how easily the entire system was manipulated.