College-entrance Bribery Scheme. The Failed American Education System

250K can get you into Ivy League, maybe Cornell or Brown.

Interesting… I guess if you only have 50 spots to sell (I’m guessing), you should sell them big. I assume the kid gets graduated regardless of grades after that.

250k for alimno’s kids only?

For non alumni, it’s 250k per year, for 5 years. Do you need to donate starting at 7th grade? Then you would have donated 250k x 5 by 11th grade.

For a bottom student, will they be able to graduate from Ivy League school?

“ The first example comes from a mother who point blankly asked an admissions officer from Northwestern University (private) how much it would take for her middle school son to get in. Talk about planning ahead! The response from the admissions officer was, “ $250,000 a year for five years. ” This is on top of the $60,000 a year in tuition, room, and board. In other words, the total cost to get into this Top 10 private university is roughly $1.5 million dollars.”

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For a borderline student for Harvard, (maybe many Asian students are borderline for Ivy’s), maybe an alumni parent can donate $50k and then secure an admission.

For a student who can barely finish college, Harvard ask for a new 3 story building. If you are not a billionaire you mean better keep the building

1.5M is just the price of a condo in sunnyvale. So buy one condo for each kid born and put the properties on 15 year mortgage. But the time the kid is 15 sell the condo and use the money for bribe and tuition.

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What is the goal you want to achieve by putting your daughters through such colleges? If you want your daughters to marry those dumb rich kids or eccentric geniuses or good psychopath, is ok. Hooking a Zuckerberg would be difficult :crazy_face: Otherwise, keep the condo as dowry :wink:

We Chinese don’t believe in dowry. We have the reverse, far superior system where grooms pay for everything.

You mean the groom’s dad pays for everything.

For the sake of gender equality, groom’s mom or dad or both pay.

Why is there a dowry system at all? Were there too many rich daughters and too few rich sons? Or were there too many women in general?

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Again you are not thinking logically.

Where is the logic flaw? Be specific

I take you haven’t understood the scope of this bribery scandal. Everybody is ponying up money so their kids can get into a good school/college/university because they can afford it. That leaves smart, intelligent, vetted students on the side of the road.

Now, I understand why some students are suing. Their lives were dumped under the bus the day “them universities” decided they weren’t rich enough but smart.

Your logic flaw was thinking in terms of gender equality, which wasn’t the intention to begin with. Also, dowry system is never because there were too many women. Too laughable. Please think first before you type! :frowning:

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It was a question with a question mark

Yes and no. The colleges have to be careful how many under-performing paid-spaces they give or their reputation goes down when it’s time for people to hire.

Smart kids will excel wherever they go. Even MIT openly states that they have to turn away fully qualified, amazingly capable kids simply because they don’t have enough space. They tell these kids exactly that–no matter where you go, we believe you’ll succeed.

Smart kids can get full rides to second tier colleges. There will always be colleges who want them to boost their scores. The people left by the side of the road are mediocre middle class white and Asian boys who have nothing going for them. They’re not a minority, they’re not female, they’re not rich, and they’re not admirable in any way. Good luck getting into a good college.

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The only ones benefiting from bribery were the ones who got what they wanted and those who were paid off. The overwhelming majority were left out unhappily. The respective schools involved have to do something about it to maintain their reputations.

They will let the kids finish school if they are already at school. For the admitted students who has not started, their admission will be cancelled. They will need to apply again next year, or register at De Anza College or city college.

Coaches will be fired immediately.

Colleges are overrated. I think we can ask the doners to spread their money and give more money to many schools instead of only top ones.

Make college endowments taxable and reduce federal income tax.

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All these $25M bribes was funneled through a charity and it’s tax deductible. Many non-profit organizations are fake and some are even criminals. For profit is better than non Profit.

“But for families looking for a sure thing, 58-year-old Rick Singer offered a criminal solution. Over seven years, the entrepreneurial life coach took an estimated $25 million from anxious parents, recording much of it as tax-deductible donations to his charity while actually funneling it toward bribes, authorities say.”

Lame lawsuit, IMO. If you think otherwise, why? I think they’re going to lose more money by getting their name out there as people who are litigation happy and scaring off potential landlords and employers. As far as I can tell, the colleges didn’t know this was happening.

I saw their lawsuit as symbolic action at the expense of potential risks you mentioned above.
Thus, I see it as brave behavior.
Universities involved in this bribery scandal are trying hard to present themselves as victims.
However, I hope them to take the responsibility and show the efforts to prevent such fraud.
What kind of admission process cannot even catch such obvious fraud?
Here’s quote from WSJ article.

In late 2017, a guidance counselor at the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles, wanted to know why USC was recruiting Matteo Sloane as a water polo player. The high school didn’t even have a team.
The boy’s father, Devin Sloane, founder and chief executive of aquaTECTURE, a Los Angeles-based company that invests in water-treatment systems, had hired Mr. Singer to bribe a USC official to identify Matteo as an athletic recruit, the affidavit said.

One of the campus officials accused of working with Mr. Singer, Donna Heinel, then the senior associate athletic director at USC, sent an email to the university’s admissions director to explain the discrepancy, according to the affidavit. “He plays at LA Water Polo Club during the year and travels international during the summer with the youth junior team in Italy,” she wrote on April 11. “I don’t know if the people at [his high school] are unaware.”

She added, “He is small but he has a long torso but short strong legs plus he is fast which helps him win the draws to start play after goals are scored.”

USC’s admissions director, not named in court papers, agreed to pass that information along. “They seemed unusually skeptical,” the admissions official said of the Buckley School. A spokeswoman for Buckley didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Heinel warned Mr. Singer in a voice mail that same day: “I just don’t want anybody going into” the high schools, “You know, yelling at counselors. That’ll shut everything—that’ll shut everything down,” according to the affidavit.

What kind of system let such suspicious case go when even guidance counselor of the student’s school raise the issue?

I believe Stanford students filed class action to hold involved universities accountable on this bribery scheme.
Mr.Singer successfully helped 760 students with bribery scheme last year alone.
Either they have broken fact-check system or involved parties are much larger than revealed.

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