I am sure most not only took a peek but wrote their essays and more. But they couldn’t “take a peek” at the main things that were falsified in this case - the transcript (!) and recs. @bluering
But the kid who said he just saw his app for the first time is hardly at a competitive school. He’s at St. John’s in NY, a school with an acceptance rate of 65% and a grad rate of 55%. ACT range is 22-28.
Landry isn’t the only school marketing some kind of “tough love” high-discipline approach to teaching black kids.
I read the article and watched the video, I am just wondering how all those kids who went viral are doing now especially the Harvard and Stanford siblings on Ellen. Did the school not predict it being fishy when multiple students drop out after doing poorly like Asja and others? It is frustrating too how they claim to help out black kids especially, but just use them to push harmful stereotypes even more.
I don’t think it’s a given that these students will drop out. First, they may be smart enough to catch up with all the resources offered by top colleges, especially if you take classes in some area in which you are naturally talented in. Second, they can take easier classes if needed. Third, it’s not that hard to get Cs from top colleges to not get kicked out of colleges even if one doesn’t study. I mean, I went to an Ivy, and I managed to maintain 3.0 GPA literally without going to 50% of classes and studying very, very little. I even managed to get 3.9 GPA in courses in a major which I was naturally good at without studying at all. Frankly, I had to try very hard to flunk out of an Ivy, and I was just a 3.0 GPA student in high school also, but I did have 99.99% in SAT score.
The NYT article mentions the students they interviewed have had " mixed success in college." Specifically they mention the following students.
3rd Year at Brown – Maintained good grades, Plans PhD
St. John’s – Doing well academically, but had to drop out of some advanced math and science classes
NYU – Did well academically, but dropped out due to debt
Weslayan – Depressed over academic struggles and is on medical leave
If all the students were failing out, I’d expect that the college would be more hesitant about keeping admitting students from the small, unaccredited HS whose degrees are not recognized by the state of LA. If you believe the acceptance videos and school profile, many selective colleges have been admitting them in 3 or more years. Some examples are below.
Brown – 2014, 2016, and 2018
Harvard – 2016, 2017, and 2018
Columbia – 2016, 2017, and 2018
Having attended a HYPSM school, I believe it is not that difficult to pass classes and graduate. Even getting a B is often not difficult, depending on the specific class. Colleges also offer classes at a variety of different levels of rigor and starting points, particularly in freshman STEM. They typically give freshman placement exams, and offer basic classes that review HS material for students who need them… Such colleges usually have numerous other programs to help students who need it like free tutoring, office hours, sections after class led by a grad student, programs to reach out to students who are higher risk of not graduating, etc. Even students who are given the biggest boost in chance of admission, such as key recruited athletes, have an extremely high graduation rate at such colleges. I certainly wouldn’t assume that the NYT article mentioning one student did poorly academically and is on medical leave means most drop out for academic reasons.
@websensation and @data10, we couldn’t agree more. Would just like to add that I would even be careful with the Wesleyan student, clinical depression can make even menial tasks (such as getting out of bed…) a struggle and it is virtually impossible for the sufferer to distinguish between cause and effect in real time. That is: “life tasks are unbearable because I am depressed?” or “life tasks are unbearable causing me to become depressed?”. If anything, it is much more common for a person suffering from depression to mistakenly assume the second in part because of the elusive nature of the illness (cause is oftentimes hidden) but also because the struggle is much more present (what seems to hurt most at the moment).
The Wesleyan student said that she left college after the first semester when she felt academically overwhelmed. I didn’t read anything about her being clinically depressed.
If this level of fraud occurred at a different high school involving white students or asian students, there would be real and serious consequences. The double standard is disturbing. Fake transcripts, fraudulent college applications, lying to receive financial aid, fabricating advanced coursework that was never taken, etc. Many of the TM Landry students were complicit in my opinion.
Here’s an exception:
“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, and Mr. Simon withdrew his daughter in October. After Thanksgiving, Mr. Landry tried to bargain with him: In exchange for an accurate transcript, Mr. Simon would pay no tuition but keep his daughter in the school, according to texts reviewed by The Times. Mr. Landry also advised Mr. Simon to state that his income was below $65,000 on financial aid forms to qualify for a scholarship. Mr. Simon’s daughter chose to withdraw her application to Yale rather than apply through T.M. Landry, which she no longer trusted.”
I commend Kelvin Simon, the father of a former TM Landry student who upon discovering that the school wanted to submit a fraudulent transcript to Yale, told the school to produce a real transcript. When the school refused, Mr. Simon withdrew his daughter’s application to Yale. This family showed merit, honesty, and integrity in the face of a corrupt and dishonest school.
@bluering wrote:
“The Wesleyan student said that she left college after the first semester when she felt academically overwhelmed. I didn’t read anything about her being clinically depressed.”
Quoting directly from the article:
"Asja Jackson, whose Wesleyan University acceptance video also went viral, decided to leave this month after she said she fell into a depression over her first-semester struggles… Ms. Jackson, who who took the advice of her dean and started medical leave… "
Could these conditions occur with those groups, though? The abuse, the unaccredited school, the charismatic headmaster getting parents to agree to stay completely out of their kids’ education to the point of not even asking about it? Seems hard to imagine if you aren’t pretty desperate. This type of school - and the get-tough charter schools in the rest of the country - seem to focus on poorer black families. I think there is a reason for this.
However, the NYT also says that as the school became known for success with elite colleges, some local white and Asian families did begin to send kids there. There is nothing in the article about their results, maybe none graduated yet? The school has graduating classes of only 8-12 kids a year.
There will be real and serious consequences for this school, I am sure. Or do you mean for the kids? I suspect they will have to answer questions at their colleges too, maybe be kicked out? Hard to say and it likely won’t be public unless the students make it so.
@bluering How do we know if real or serious consequences will not occur? The article is just 1 week old and we normally would look for an investigation into this matter further than a newspaper article. People have jumped to the defense of these kids and are also condemning these kids for life when we probably have not heard the full story. I am waiting for the college institutions, the state of Louisiana and hopefully federal authorities to dig into what really happened at TM Landry. I believe there will be consequences, but we must give those consequences time to occur, no matter the race of the students.
"Asja Jackson, whose Wesleyan University acceptance video also went viral, decided to leave this month after she said she fell into a depression over her first-semester struggles… Ms. Jackson, who who took the advice of her dean and started medical leave… "
Clinical depression and situational depression are different. We don’t know the details of Ms. Jackson’s experience. I wanted to point out that I didn’t read anything about clinical depression in her story which @notigering brought up.
@bluering what you wrote was: “…she left college after the first semester when she felt academically overwhelmed. I I didn’t read anything about her being clinically depressed”.
She was granted a medical leave. Schools (including Wesleyan) take that seriously. I can assure you they did not grant her a medical leave for feeling “academically overwhelmed” as that is not an illness nor a condition. In Wesleyan’s case a medical leave has to be authorized by the vice president for student affairs on the basis of a recommendation from the director of Counseling and Psychological Services. Her dean was also involved and probably one or more mental health professionals as well. You are right that we don’t know the details so you shouldn’t speculate to try and reinforce the narrative that some sort of imaginary and “disturbing” “double standard” exists as that is speculative on your part as well…
NY Times opinion piece: “T.M. Landry and the Tragedy of Viral Success Stories”
^^^ What a great article, I wish I could mark all three (Agree -Like - Helpful).
Just found this recent (predates Landry’s scandal) interview with Casey Gerald, the writer of the opinion piece @1NJParent shared. I think it belongs on this thread and forum.
"Your arrival at Yale seemed more jarring than it is for most kids. I laughed at the part about mother of your classmate, who told her kids they could only pick between Yale, Princeton, and Harvard if they wanted her financial help.
She says, “The boys want to go to Cornell” — like they just started doing crystal meth. I’m sitting there like, What?
Is this why you said Yale was the “loneliest place in the world’?
Yeah. From ages 8 to 18, I understood my people to mean black people. Everybody was black, so it was, like, cool. After I got to Yale, I realized it was more complicated than that. I mean, this sort of goes to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work around intersectionality."
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/09/does-casey-gerald-know-how-to-fix-america.html
@1NJParent That article speaks to me on so many levels. There is a guilt from those of us who make it out of tough neighborhoods with terrible schools and broken families. Most do not see that the terrible circumstances create the outcomes that continue to repeat generation after generation. For those who make it out, a feeling of selling our souls to push forward while leaving old friends and family behind, fill my thoughts every single day. Those thoughts would have engulfed me without my kids (and the hope to break this viscous cycle for good).
The systemic issues that have made the T.M. Landry scandal possible will be swept under a rug which will ensure that these type of abuses will happen again. Until your only choices for education are what those students faced, most have no idea about the struggle of those parents to get there students adequate educational options. The entire truth with TM Landry will come out and I believe there will be consequences, but most people only care about the elite admissions spots that may have been taken by T.M Landry students fraudulently instead of the real issues that caused the fraud in the 1st place.
All the while getting all hysterical at imaginary scenarios of their own making where privileged kids at the opposite end of the spectrum commit similar fraud and are sent to the gallows…
My neighbor the Kimn’s, changed or added an “n” to their Korean “kim” last name and have been telling everyone they are Native American. LOL so funny, they eat kimchi, speak nothing but Korean and yet they call themselves native americans. It worked, becuase they got both of their kids into Cornell!
@legomania are you serious? Did they actually lie on the applications and say they were Native Americans? I cannot believe they didn’t figure it out.
How could they? Fraud in college admission is not limited to TM Landry.