This is becoming a race discussion, and that belongs on the race thread. Note that this topic is already being discussed there, so I suggest follow-ups be moved there.
Some less selective colleges are much more transparent – admission criteria and thresholds are listed on the website, and often without subjectively graded criteria.
However, even the less transparent college admissions processes are more transparent than the hiring processes for many desirable jobs.
@bluering Transcripts and counselor recommendations are submitted directly by the school to CommonApp. Kids don’t ever see them, just like their teacher recommendations. I got the impression reading the article that the falsified background stories were things that the school included in the counselor letters, not in student essays.
They would likely be too disjoint unless there was coordination. I don’t blame the kids much, but I think this requires a concerted and coordinated effort between the staff, the kids, and their parents.
“They didn’t get in because of just telling a “sob story” or because admissions were holistic instead of admitting based on stats.”
They definitely got in on the sob story, Stanford and Harvard get thousands of applicants who get a 34 and want to work on Wall Street, or dive deep into physics. Most are white or Asian and from upper middle class or wealthy backgrounds, very few are black and have sob stories (even if sob story could have been fabricated).
Bottom line, adcoms were duped by TM Landy and really wanted to believe someone who was abused by his father and neglected by his mother started a non-profit dedicated to children of abusive parents. I’m glad that those stories were false, the kid did in fact have supportive parents. However, the adcoms even at Stanford and Harvard really wanted to believe something that most people would have been skeptical of. The question that needs to be answered, how did TM Landry know that elite schools would love hardship stories about blacks who could also do well on the ACTs? Get the 30 or above, and we’ll tell colleges your mom is a drug addict and your dad left you when you were four, leaving you to raise your siblings. He’s a criminal but he played the adcoms.
Note the word “just.” Their background is one of my factors considered, as is their ACT score, as is their transcript, as were their LOR’s, as were their essays, as were many other things. The weren’t admitted based on “just” any one factor. It’s a combination of factors.The Little brothers’ “sob story” appears to be true, as there is strong evidence that their brother really did die a few years before the application process… unless their whole family is in on the falsification and went so far to file false obituary reports and do a fake funeral, years before either of the kids applied. What might have been a fabrication is how each of the brothers said they plan to start a non-profit to help other disadvantaged kids after first making some money in the listed industries. I wouldn’t be surprised if Landry strongly encouraged this type of character display in the personal statement or essay, which could have influenced Harvard’s personal rating. Obviously, other non-“sub story” portions of the application are also suspect, such as the transcript, LORs, and how well they actually learned the high school material beyond what was covered on the ACT.
The student you referenced was admitted to St. John’s University, which is a not especially selective college in NYC that admits the majority of applicants, and primarily admits based on stats. He was not admitted to Harvard or Stanford (some info suggests he applied and was rejected). St. John’s is the college that had the most matriculating students that year in the school profile, which is surprising for a HS in rural Louisiana. Nobody is listed as matriculating to St. John’s the following year.
“Their background is one of my factors considered, as is their ACT score, as is their transcript, as were their LOR’s, as were their essays, as were many other things.”
You’re still not answering the question - how did TM Landry know that a 30 and a sob story would get the kid into elite schools, drug-dealing parents who forced the applicant to raise the siblings and not a 30 from a a family with supportive and well off black family, say a teacher and engineer? And the transcript, LORs, essays were all fabricated. The kids got As in AP or honors classes they didn’t take.
St. John’s is not an “elite school.” The Landry students who were admitted to were admitted to “elite schools” were not admitted based on just a 30 ACT and a “sob story,” nor did they match any of the backgrounds you listed (among those I’ve seen in NYT and elsewhere).
A comparison of how much of a boost Harvard gives for being SES disadvantaged instead of coming from a well off Black family, as listed in the lawsuit is below (Plantiff model, full controls, full sample). The higher the number, the stronger the boost, beyond the dozens of controls, including stats. That is if the student had the same stats, same prospective major, same LORs, same academic/EC/personal/athletic ratings, and same all other controls; the model predicts the groups below have the specified increased chances compare to unhooked white applicants. Note that the Plantiff’s analysis found no benefit for being from a low SES background, compared to Black students from a wealthy background with these controls. Instead if the low SES background prevents the student from applying early for financial reasons, then the low SES background is expected to notably decrease chance of acceptance. Harvard’s OIR model’s came to a reasonably a consistent conclusion.
Admission Decision: Regression Coefficients
Athlete: +7.85
Black and Non-SES Disadvantaged: +3.67
Black and SES Disadvantaged: +3.62
Dean/Director List: +3.25
Legacy: +2.32
Apply Early: +1.53
One of the controls in the admission decision above was personal rating. It’s possible that the effect is indirect, and the disadvantaged background influences the personal rating, then the personal rating then influences chance of admission. The lawsuit found a slight advantage for the personal rating compared to the wealthy engineer family… near the threshold for being statistically insignificant. A summary for personal rating is below. Maybe having a good “sob story” requires more than just getting the low SES “disadvantaged” flag, but the point is the students are not getting in based on just the “sob story”. While the student’s background is considered, it’s one of many factors that are considered, and without doing well in many of those other areas compared to the applicant pool, the student is unlikely to be admitted.
Personal Rating: Regression Coefficients
Athlete: +0.94
Black and SES Disadvantaged: +0.82
Black and Non-SES Disadvantaged: +0.69
Dean/Director List: +0.33
Apply Early: +0.27
Legacy: +0.26
From the article:
“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.”
The students that went along with sending fraudulent transcripts are participants in the fraud, and they should be expelled from the colleges they were admitted to under false pretenses.
Of course these children are victims.
These are students who were being emotionally and physically abused by the school’s founder/owner. They were told he had special connections to the top schools and that he could destroy their futures by getting them blacklisted from top schools (or whatever school he wanted to attend). He told the kids that top colleges were watching them through the security cameras. He vindictively withheld the transcripts of students who tried to transfer to other high schools if they didn’t like Landry’s approach. He made the students kneel in rice or rocks for hours if they disobeyed or did something he didn’t like. He choked, kicked, and punched students in front of other students and teachers, with dozens of witnesses. He abused disabled children, putting them in closets for “discipline” and calling them names.
And he made the kids say “I love you” to him while he was physically abusing them. He told them that his physical abuse was an expression of love, and that they should appreciate the pain.
In some cases, the students were unaware of the falsified transcripts and application components - one student said he never saw the transcript and that the false stories were in Landry’s recommendation letter.
In other cases, the students were forced to submit false essays and transcripts by Landry, a man they saw kicking and punching their classmates, or who saw others or were themselves forced to kneel in deliberately painful materials for hours. Landry also told kids that he would get Harvard and other top schools to blacklist them if they left the school or if they told anyone what was happening there. (Landry also lied to and conned some of their parents, but based on implicit statements in the two articles I do think at least some of the parents were complicit.)
People are acting like 16- and 17-year-old abused children are equally as complicit in the perpetuation of this fraud as their unhinged founder. This man is a classic abuser, and these kids - children! - are definitely victims.
I am less worried about the Harvards and Stanfords of the world, who now have one or two poor black kids who are unable to keep up with the work at their school. I promise you, they will survive the sheer indignity of being saddled with a poor unprepared brown kid. I am more concerned about the actual children and young adults who are the victims of this abusive fraudster. (Some of the younger children who started in the lower school there are functionally unable to read.)
Is it unfair that these kids may have taken the place of a more qualified student who would’ve succeeded? Yes, but 1) no more unfair than the much more numerous legacies, Z-list students, and developmental candidates (who are overwhelmingly white, since race has been brought into this) who are similarly taking up a spot they don’t deserve and 2) some of these kids are dropping out, meaning there will be a place for transfer students.
“In other cases, the students were forced to submit false essays and transcripts by Landry, a man they saw kicking and punching their classmates, or who saw others or were themselves forced to kneel in deliberately painful materials for hours.Landry also told kids that he would get Harvard and other top schools to blacklist them if they left the school or if they told anyone what was happening there.”
And the right thing to do would be for them to leave the school, not to participate in the fraud. I agree they were also victims, but some students and parents chose not to go along, which is how the NYT got the story.
These kids are victims, but were they victimized willingly, like the colleges, when it comes to their college applications? TM Landry has been founded since 2005, none of the kids, after they left the school, have blown the whistle.
I disagree. These children were victims of fraud and abuse, not the perpetrators of it. Remember that these people were teenagers when this happened. If they got into top colleges because their school’s leader (and potentially their parents, in some cases) participated in fraud without their knowledge - but they were able to succeed for whatever reason, and their universities are not planning to expel them, why should the students voluntarily decide leave their schools? To…salve the moral dilemmas of people who don’t even know them?
Some students had supportive parents who recognized what was going on and were able to advocate for them, and that’s wonderful, and I’m glad the New York Times story broke. I’m hoping that the school is shut down and that Landry is put in jail for abusing these children (although that seems unlikely now, as they just opened a new school). At the very least, I hope their donations dry up and they’re forced to close.
But I’m not about putting the burden of solving this moral dilemma on the kids who were victims of it.
Landry threatened (and carried through, in some cases) on retaliation for any students who did come forward. These children were scared to come forward; he repeatedly told them he would ruin their futures if he did. Are we really blaming teenagers for not blowing the top off an abusive school? There are fully-grown adults who haven’t blown the whistle in less daunting situations.
And although TM Landry was officially founded in 2005, in the early days it was a small outfit for Landry’s friends’ children. The school didn’t grow larger and move into a building until the mid 2010s (2013, if I recall correctly.)
I don’t advocate expelling the kids either. It’s truly a moral dilemma that the colleges helped to create. I’m also glad that the NY Times uncovered the story and TM Landry will be held responsible. However, TM Landry is not the first, and won’t the last, to perpetrate a fraud in college applications. Shouldn’t the colleges take a hard look at its admission process itself?
^ this. I’m sure some amount of fraud is inevitable in holistic admissions. Just from what I’ve heard first hand, I know a couple of examples, including a HYPSM student whose essays were written by her parent, a humanities professor in the same institution. Not counting the perfectly legal ways of gaming the system like highly paid college consultants, or proliferating cookie-cutter clubs and new nonprofits just to create new leadership positions.
If this were just a normal school in a rich NJ suburb and the kids went along with the fake transcripts and two years of test prep instead of ap courses everyone would be universal in condemnation of the duplicity. Expulsions legal action etc. look at the kids who cheat of a sat or act. Even if coerced they are done for.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have sympathy but make sure it’s applied in all cases. I’ve seen threads where kids are told they are lucky to go to a cc if they have a disciplinary infraction on their record from freshman year. Or got help with the essay.
@theloniusmonk
“You’re still not answering the question - how did TM Landry know that a 30 and a sob story would get the kid into elite schools, drug-dealing parents who forced the applicant to raise the siblings and not a 30 from a a family with supportive and well off black family, say a teacher and engineer?”
One can read all over College Confidential and other articles on college admissions - that colleges are looking for underrepresented minority students who have overcome hurdles in life, but proved themselves to be good students. Ivies love these stories!
UC schools (Berkeley, UCLA, etc) also specifically look for this. It’s common knowledge.
Plus, @Data10 did post evidence of this quantitatively.
There’s also information on this in the Harvard case…specific data showing that the test scores required for certain groups are way lower - or higher - than other groups.
@privatebanker
Wow one of the few times a I agree with you in here, but you’re right. I’ve seen some posters admit to academic cheating, and have respondents condemn then to expulsion for coping parts if an essay but somehow lying about a transcript doesn’t merit expulsion.
I can agree if they truly didn’t know their transcript were false then they have suffered enough, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
@emorynavy Thank you. I think.
“I’m hoping that the school is shut down and that Landry is put in jail for abusing these children (although that seems unlikely now, as they just opened a new school). At the very least, I hope their donations dry up and they’re forced to close.”
In the meantime I’m hoping selective schools reconsider how they look at this school’s graduates. T100s and QuestBridge should backlist them for as long as those crooks are in any way involved in that school.