No empathy. The entire system is pay to play for the social connections. If they were actually interested in education the scenario would have been completely different.

I saw similar fabrications growing up as I attended one of the wealthiest high schools in the country. The top 10 of my graduating class got complete scholarships the most expensive schools in the country and the parents were willing to do anything to the school faculty to make sure their child had a higher class rank.

Makes you wonder about kids always coming first in highschool. Makes you question the whole world!

Exactly. Olivia Giannulli even outright says “I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know..."

(source: https://youtu.be/lveMkZc-NRE, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/style/olivia-jade-giannul...)

Just to clarify my opinion, I believe there is incredible value in education. But if you are paying to join a social club that isn't education.

There is an old saying "It isn't what you know its who you know". Ray Dalio says that line of thinking is disastrous. Its all about personality and experience. You put the right people in the proper places and its golden, and you can qualify those results (and who are the right people) with data.

My high school was like that. The top ranked students were rich foreign kids. I remember the validictorian giving his speech and no-one could understand what he was saying (in grammar and speech).

> If they were actually interested in education the scenario would have been completely different.

Seriously, I was staying at the Trump hotel in Chicago (before Trump ran for president -- before I ever gave much thought about Donald Trump). Anyway, there was a looping video on the TV and she was inviting guests to stay at any one of their other Trump hotels around "North America and Canada." It was at that moment I realized that she thought North America was some kind of Northern area of America. I no longer wonder how she got into Wharton.

And Obama once said there were 57 states... gaffes are gaffes

He’s describing a recorded marketing video. It was deliberately produced and edited to contain that specific message. Comparing that to an off the cuff error during a live discussion is disingenuous.

Since it was "deliberately produced and edited", presumably by multiple people, it's even less likely to speak much about the education of the person on-screen, as the post in question appears to have questioned.

>Seriously, I was staying at the Trump hotel in Chicago (before Trump ran for president -- before I ever gave much thought about Donald Trump). Anyway, there was a looping video on the TV and she was inviting guests to stay at any one of their other Trump hotels around "North America and Canada." It was at that moment I realized that she thought North America was some kind of Northern area of America. I no longer wonder how she got into Wharton.

Who is "she"?

Ivanka?

The kids who only got in with some SAT fudging, like Felicity Huffman's daughter, were probably just below requirements to get into some of these universities. I read somewhere else that USC has so many applicants that if you don't have a 3.8 GPA with a 1400 SAT you are going to be the odd man out. So if you need 400 SAT points to get there, you probably aren't going to do it with just good prep (which usually only nets you a ROI of 200 or so points). So it's not like these people are complete morons and $15k is a pittance for the parents.

Lori Laughlin's daughter was probably a pretty poor student. Apparently she paid upwards of $500k to get in via the student athlete route, even though she's not an athlete. She's apparently a fairly well known Youtube/Instagram blogger who has made posts about not even wanting to be in college.

One of them was struggling and needed help to actually fill out the application form. Someone ended up doing it for her.

If you're not smart enough to fill out a form - imagine how you'll go during study.

Or if you end up with them as an assigned lab partner or group project member.

Or if you end up with them as your brain surgeon.

in my experience these types tend to paper over any hard feelings with teammates with expensive gifts/trips

What I don’t get about the rowing angle is that she would be found out within a few minutes of being on the crew. Also I imagine that there aren’t many spots available so that if the fake rower decides not to show up the real rowers will look at the roster and ask the coach why they are down a person.

As opposed to the SAT fakers where you can get into college and skate on by for a couple semesters / years without getting kicked out.

I also don’t get how the coaches didn’t think that they would get caught. Don’t they have to publish lists of students athletes? Presumably with the USC one the only way they got in was via a recommendation from the rowing coach.

I think what's really sad is how much the credential stuffing for their kids figured into this. I would guess that many of these kids would have been just fine going to whatever school they could get into and enjoying their life from there. But the overwhelming desire to get a major school brand label, even if otherwise completely useless for these kids, drove their parents to participate in one of the largest organized crime activities in U.S. history.

I highly doubt any of them will experience any negatives from this. The rigging just goes that deep in society. I doubt the costs will outweigh the benefits. This will continue just with different coordinators.

Makes you wonder how those kids managed in these top-tier schools - just fine, most likely, even if completely unaware.

And then you wonder if the people behind these fraudulent entrance schemes might have considered it worthwhile to leverage their position further by holding it over the parents/students in future.

Would they stoop so low?

[edit: s/Ivy-league/top-tier]

I mean sure when your job as a grad will be to be a rent seeker/pseudo gangster.

And what if you find this out, but worked your ass off and got straight As during your degree? Were your parents giving you unknown help then, too? Can you ask them? Where does it end?

Like, they tried so hard on your behalf. They spent so much money on you. They really did it out of the goodness of their hearts and in love of their child, in their own twisted way.

And now? I mean, it all blew up in their faces. All their best intentions made everything just so much more horrible for their children. They'll never wash this off.

My lord, not even Aristophanes himself could write a tragedy on this scale.

EDIT: And the parents were laughing with their fixer at the deception that they pulled on their kids! They were laughing at the naivete of their very children that they fooled. I can't even begin to process what was going through those parents' minds. What were they thinking?!

They were thinking this is how you get ahead because that's how a lot of people get ahead. Not to be cliche about it, but there is rather a lot of corruption in the upper echelons of society.

And there shouldn't be, which is why efforts like this are necessary.

> They really did it out of the goodness of their hearts and in love of their child, in their own twisted way.

Did they? Or did they do it out of vanity that their children need to look like they are the best?

I'd guess they did it for their own self image. Imagine being rich and famous, and your kid is too stupid to get into a good college, that would be embarrassing.

no one is going to care in a month, these people are super rich. i doubt anything more than fines and a slap on the wrist

>> They'll never wash this off.

I wouldn't go that far. If I ever interacted with these unaware children, I would go out of my way to not hold it against them. They did nothing wrong.

I think the "They'll" was referring to the parents.

When you are born into privilege (kid of a celebrity), you are afforded the best private tutors and academic resources that money can buy during you academic career, starting from childhood. Assuming you are born with a neurotypical brain, you are at an advantage over your less wealthy peers from day one whether you perceive it or not.

Additionally they'd have decent regular meals, presumably plenty of time to sleep, and time to work on schoolwork. Plus they probably don't need to work while in middleschool, highschool and college.

Absolutely, these environmental factors make a huge difference. Know any good studies on the effects of environment on student performance/success?

> When you are born into privilege (kid of a celebrity), you are afforded the best private tutors and academic resources that money can buy

The most expensive, sure, but the best? Celebrities are often no more qualified to select quality outside of their field—and education is rarely the field of any celebrity in our society—than any random person picked off be street, and they are a lot higher value target for charlatans. Sure, they may have staff who nominally assist them, but even if the staff are skilled and would be useful if they were vigorously loyal, they, in some cases, can be corruptly influenced just like university staff can.

No doubt it's a disappointment for these kids, but they will get over it pretty quickly. People have a powerful ability to protect their ego and tell themselves what they want to hear.

Wouldn't some of the kids had to have been on it? They posed for picture of sports they didn't even play, and must have referenced it on their application

> They posed for picture of sports they didn't even play, and must have referenced it on their application

What makes you think they wrote their own application?

Well, that seems just as bad.

Great point, would love an answer to this...

>One day you are a USC/Harvard/Stanford grad. The next day you are a fraud. And not only that, you are revealed to the entire world to be dumb as a box of rocks, just totally naked and shamed. And you had no clue. Your closest family members spent tens of thousands of dollars fooling you, committing very serious crimes on your behalf, and all the while, lying to you about your intelligence and work ethic.

It's not really that far off the general experience of being an American, what with all the stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen research, the history of which apparently no one seems to know about, let alone work into their fundamental understanding of what our country is and how it came to be.

To some degree, the notion that it's "totally unreal" speaks to how thoroughly failed most Americans have been by both history education and our common mythos.

Haha, that is legitimately what's going through my mind now. My parents were nowhere near wealthy enough to make these sized bribes, but doesn't stop me from wondering...It's similar to reading about 'back of the milk carton' child abduction stories.

Bingo! Wealth == Privilege. That's the way the world works sadly.

Their parents committed felony fraud to get them into college, do you not think the first thing they did was to call their kids up and tell them to say they didn’t know anything about it and let the family lawyers take care of it?

>>And you had no clue.

Anybody who does these kind of things does it because of positive feed back loops training over years. So they have a fair bit of clue. It's just the incentive ladder works that way.

Corruption exists because people want to be corrupt.

no empathy with the wealthy, not sorry.