Sad but not surprising. There was a Charter School here in Philadelphia that touted how all the students scored Advanced on the PSSA (Pennsylvania Standardized Tests for grade schools) when in reality it was run like a boot camp for PSSA test preparation.
@circuitrider you beat me to it.
No, @hebegebe this isn’t about mismatch at all. This is about fraud on the part of an unaccredited private school with zero government oversight making up and submitting to colleges fake student qualifications.
Ok, apparently somewhere along the way I missed that mismatch explicitly meant that the college chose someone who would then struggle.
Re: #3262
By that definition of “mismatch”, less or non selective colleges take chances on many students who, based on prior academic records, are at significant risk of struggling, because those colleges exist to give more students a chance (e.g. community colleges), or because they have no other way of filling seats. Some such students do succeed, but those who struggle become “mismatch” examples by that definition.
Super selective colleges have the luxury of a deep enough applicant pool so that they need not admit high risk students, regardless of admission goals (e.g. “hooks”) that may go counter to just taking the academically strongest applicants.
So the students knowingly went along in submitting “doctored” college applications? Is that fair to say? Or were they coerced to do this? What was the coercion?
I am curious as to how this came to light? Someone must have talked to spur the investigation. Whether the enrolled students struggled or are doing well is not all that relevant imo because even at top colleges there are certain easy courses you can take, and isn’t Brown a Pass or Fail option for 2 years?
According to the NYT article quotes below, it sounds like many students were aware of the “doctored” college applications and knowingly went along with it. However, Mr. Landry threatened to ruin their futures, including submitting transcript falsified in a negative way, if they didn’t go along with the program. He also has physically threatened students.
"Mr. Landry told students that he would ruin their futures if they left the school or told anyone what happened there, according to 20 current and former students interviewed and Terica Fuselier, a former teacher. They said that Mr. Landry threatened to alter or withhold their transcripts, or force them to enroll in a lower grade.
Megan Malveaux, 16, said she believes she received a mediocre transcript from T.M. Landry because…"
"A half-dozen current and former students said that Mr. Landry told them to lie on their college applications. In exchange for students’ loyalty, Mr. Landry produced glowing transcripts, including what several students said were high marks in advanced coursework they never took. "
“Kelvin Simon said that when he found out the school wanted to submit a fraudulent transcript for his daughter’s application to Yale, he told Mr. Landry that he would not pay tuition until the school produced a real transcript. Mr. Landry refused,…”
I am not surprised at all that this all came out. The behavior is so egregious, it was only a matter of time. Cheating always catches up with you. I definitely feel badly for the kids. Very interested in how this will be resolved.
I seem to remember about 10-20 years ago, there was a male student at Yale that had doctored his own transcript and got away with it. He was a B student at Yale and quite comfortable academically, but then started bragging about what he did to some friends and word got out. Pretty sure he was expelled, and totally should have been.
This whole thing makes me wonder if this happens incidentally in other cases. We will probably never know. I know that my kids’ high school would NEVER falsify records, nor do I know any others that would. But I wonder if there are some applicants that might be able to figure out a way to do it? I’m thinking rarely if at all, but still makes me wonder.
I hope folks who are commenting on this read the article first? There are others besides the main NYTimes one if you have exhausted the free monthly quota of articles there. Yes, some families came forward.
or read: https://newrepublic.com/minutes/152478/fairytale-school-now-sounds-like-nightmarish-cult
Most schools have oversight at the local and state level that wouldn’t allow this to happen. This school, Landry, was unaccredited and privately run. And the false transcripts were not produced by the students, but by the owner of the school. There is a process for sending transcripts from high school to college that bypasses the student for this reason - submitted via common app by counselor, mailed directly from school, etc. This assumes the school is honest, as most schools have an incentive to be.
But here we have a cultish leader who abuses his students physically and emotionally, where parents see this and still think it’s their kids’ best shot because the other options for poor black kids in Louisiana are so awful - and that’s if the parents even knew the level of abuse that was going on - he threatened students to keep them quiet. He threatened students who wouldn’t write the kind of essay he wanted them to write. He withheld transcripts form students who left the school. He was personally enriching himself here as well - these students paid tuition and the better his school looked the more students and the more money he got.
@OHMomof2 thanks. Yes, I already fully understood the process for sending transcripts, etc. I’m actually sickened by what has happened in that school.
Your point about this still possibly being the best option for some poor black kids from Louisiana is perhaps the most important point of all and the more important point that this thread should address. The Landry case is disgusting and horrifying…but it definitely shouldn’t be a factor in discussing the overall question of how race should be treated in college admissions. I hope people don’t twist it around to somehow use it as an example of why race should NOT be a factor.
Doesn’t the student/applicant have to sign the common app before submitting it? Even if the Landry school forged and falsified the transcript and letters of recommendation, doesn’t the student have access and a copy of the submitted common app? I think many of the students at this school were victims, however it is hard for me to believe that some of the students who gained admission from top schools didn’t know what was going on.
The student signs the common app but the student’s view doesn’t include recommendation letters or transcript, those are submitted directly by the school @bluering . They’d have to get a copy of the transcript from the school directly, and in most cases they are not allowed to see the rec letters because waiving that right is the norm - many schools won’t send them at all (or write them) if the student doesn’t waive.
But either way they can’t see any of that on the app itself.
As we read in the NYT expose, this school used transcript access and content as a weapon against students who tried to leave the school.
We don’t have to blame the students much, but we have to admit the students were participants in this.
The students had to coordinate their app with what the recommendations were going to say. You can’t have a student talk about his loving parents and have the counselor talk about the parents being abusive alcoholics.
I understand the part about not being able to see the transcript and letters of recommendation, but the extra curricular activities would have been listed on the common app. I’m not saying that we ought to blame the students for the school’s egregious behavior, but I do think some of them played along, turned a blind eye or were complicit.
Financial aid forms were also falsified. In the NY Times article, it states “Mr. Landry also advised Mr. Simon to state that his income was below $65,000 on financial aid forms to qualify for a scholarship.” Falsifying admissions documents for the purpose of receiving financial aid should have consequences.
Don’t you need tax forms for the FAFSA?
Yes @collegemomjam you do.
True, and that was the whistleblower’s exact situation. (Edited to add, that seems to actually not be the case:
“Only this week did Mr. Sassau see the application that the Landrys submitted to St. John’s University on his behalf. He was stunned and angry about the fabrications. Mr. Sassau’s father paid child support and had never beat him or his mother, unlike the abusive parent described.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/college-acceptance-black-students.html )
…apparently it was the NYU kid who was told to make up more family adversity than there was.
Landry told them what to write. And was not only physically and emotionally abusive to them in general, also punished them for not doing as he told them to. The “I love you kneeling on rice” stuff but also specifically - if you don’t write this I won’t send your transcript at all. These are kids, he is an adult and an abusive one at that, with all the power in this situation. You think that isn’t out of whack?
Regarding ECs @bluering - it sounds like Landry did the app for these kids, basically. Or had their logins and added things before submitting them?
It’s hard for me to believe that Landry students who gained admission to the most competitive schools in the country never took a peek at their application prior to submitting. Of course they knew. Maybe not 100% of them, but most of them had to know what was going on at least at the surface level.