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Nick Anderson
Reporter covering higher education, national policy in education and the global education market
He offers his services as a "main coach" in a university consulting company called "The Key", which aims to help teens develop a "personal brand", helping them to stand out from the tens of thousands of young people. others seeking admission to elite schools.
A website promoting the California company says its founder, Rick Singer, has worked one-on-one with students and parents "to develop a game plan for life." Over the last 20 years, Singer has helped many candidates achieve "A graduate or undergraduate degree in every field imaginable."
Federal authorities tell a darker story about William "Rick" Singer: he orchestrated a bold ploy to facilitate fraud during admission tests and bribery of university athletics coaches, all aimed at helping children wealthy parents to be admitted to prestigious universities.
Court documents released Tuesday indicate that Singer, 58, of Newport Beach, Calif., Has agreed to plead guilty to racketeering, money laundering and other 39 hope that government investigators would help him to get a lenient sentence.
[FBI charges dozens, including celebrities, in college-entrance fraud scheme]
The scandal that the investigation uncovered shook the world of admissions to universities with revelations of results tainted with SAT and ACT admission tests and alleged misdeeds on the part of coaches. Track and Field Universities of Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and Wake Forest and Universities of Southern California, Texas to Austin and California to Angeles.
Clockwise, from the left: William Rick Singer, Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman, John Vandemoer and Jovan Vavic. (Boston Globe via Getty Images; Rich Fury / Getty Images, Frazer Harrison / Getty Images, Scott Eisen / Getty Images, Juan Lainez, Cal Sport Media by AP Images)
The authorities charged dozens of people with the case, but did not claim that students had committed crimes and had not accused the universities of wrongdoing.
According to the US Attorney's Office in Boston, Singer allegedly conspired with parents, sports coaches, a sports administrator, and others to use bribery and other frauds to gain admission to the top universities. competitiveness of the country. Admission rates at Yale and Stanford are below 10%, and quite low at other schools targeted by Singer.
In a criminal complaint, Singer had been identified as Cooperating Witness 1 (CW-1), with prosecutors stating that he was hoping for a harsher sentence in return for assisting the investigators.
In the transcript of a conversation, CW-1 tells a father that he can help his daughter get a certain SAT or ACT score if she gets special test adaptations for a learning disability. . "I can guarantee him a score," says CW-1. "If it's ACT, I can guarantee him a score in the '30s. And if it's the SAT, I can guarantee him a score in the 1400s." The maximum possible scores are 36 for the ACT and 1600 for the SAT. The price for that, said CW-1, was $ 75,000.
In another conversation, CW-1 assures another parent that her daughter can apply to a university as a potential water polo player, even if she is not qualified in the sport. The price of a stage in this arrangement was $ 50,000. The parents ask, "Okay, so there's no chance I'll give $ 50, so she's not eligible?" CW-1 replies, "You will not send it until you receive the letter."
A phone message left on a number for Singer's business was not returned.
The college admissions consultants said Tuesday that they were shocked by the scandal and that they were trying to stand out from Singer. One of them likened Singer to a former Trump attorney, liable to jail time for campaign funding violations and other crimes.
"He works in this sector, as does Michael Cohen, in the legal field," said Arun Ponnusamy, director of studies at Collegewise, based in Irvine, California. He is not an educational consultant.
Ponnusamy said he sometimes heard about Singer in the Southern California consulting market, but he was suspicious of him. "You can spot who is a scam," he said.
Singer's website also states that he was a leader in the call center industry and claims to have helped create an online high school.
The bee of Sacramento said Singer appeared to have started helping students from the Sacramento area in northern California. In 1994, he told the bee that he was filling a void left by overworked high school counselors. "It's not that school counselors do not want to help. It's just that they often do not have the time, "he said.
Singer wrote a book published in 2014 titled "Entering: Getting Intake Into Your University of Choice". An Amazon list of the book describes Singer as a "26-year veteran coach with 250,000 success stories from families who were able to be admitted to the school of their choice and take the first steps towards a fulfilling future. "Chapter 33 of the book was entitled" Embrace your teachers. "Chapter 41 was titled" Hitch Up Your Safety Net ".
Representatives from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, based in Arlington, Va., And Independent Educational Consultants, based in Fairfax, Va., Said Singer was not a member of these groups.
Mark Sklarow, Executive Director of the Independent Educational Consultants Association , said he heard about Singer and did not like the way it was marketed. He said Singer had violated all professional standards.
"Our fundamental belief is that the consultant's job is to fairly reflect the abilities, needs, and everything about the student," Sklarow said. "Any disappointment done only hurts the student. If you think your job as a consultant is to "get your child in," that's not correct. According to Sklarow, the job is to help a student "find the right place".
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