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Do not feel bad for emphasizing your command of Spanish for your university application.
"I know some parents who have created a charity for their child and who have made a fake photo shoot with children with disabilities," Ron Foley, an independent educational advisor, told The Post. "The parents prepared everything and said that the kid had collected all that money, but in reality, it was a single donor – the parents. . . It was just a scam to bring the kid to college.
This is not everything. Foley, who has helped kids apply for college education for 30 years, including at Princeton Review and at a standardized Kaplan test preparation center in San Francisco, says a teenager's mother "had her daughter evaluated for an auditory problem was not present "to allow him to spend more time on standardized tests.
Did it work?
"Let's just say it was for an Ivy League school – and it's here now."
50 people were shocked by this week's indictment in the country – including Full House actress Lori Loughlin and Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman at a large-scale rally. But for top experts, corruption, cheating and completely insane behavior are common when it comes to ensuring someone's place in a premier university. plan.
"I was not surprised at all," says Foley, who now owns her own university applications consulting company and charges between $ 7,000 and $ 10,000 to help kids get into the school of their dreams. "I had offers like" Can you get someone to test? " [for] $ 15,000? "
Some have tests ripping off at a science. A group of international students was dismantled in 2015 and 2016 for accepting up to $ 7,000 to pass the TOEFL for other people, but that did not seem to deter other mixed US aspirants.
A December 2018 message on WeChat, a popular email application in Asia, announces various offers for the SAT. "American price: 1,800 yuan [about $270 USD] at the Los Angeles Test Center. . . We guarantee a 1,550+ [out of a 1,600-point SAT]It is quite difficult to get a full score, so you will have to pay more for it. The price of the international version, administered in a test center in Hong Kong, was reduced by about $ 200.
I had offers like "Can you ask someone to take the test for me?" [for] $ 15,000?
According to a high school student from Georgia, born in China and who asked to remain anonymous while he aspires to visit MIT, a scam headed by his friend takes advantage of time zones, corruptible middlemen and stereotypes.
Some tips are simple: a test administered in Hong Kong will take place a few hours later in the West; thus, the testers will simply be able to pay the test supervisors to close their eyes, then snap and share photos of the exam questions with the state candidates. Others are more elaborate: fake Chinese passports can be created for paid testers to report to test administrators. "The counterfeit would not cross the airport but would pass to the SAT," says the student, adding that racial stereotypes allow this change of bait: it only works because people see you as a "Chinese generic". . "
Then there are parents who are willing to mutilate their children to try a sports scholarship on a chic campus. Chris Siedem, founder of Perfect College Match, a company that helps high school athletes play at the university level, said some parents took their teenage son "to the doctor and asked for surgery from Tommy John."
The procedure, named in the honor of a Yankees pitcher, is designed to repair an arm torn ligament – and some who have undergone the surgery "came back by throwing harder and faster," Siedem says. , a native of Long Island living in Colorado. The parents turn to the scalpel hoping that the consequences will result in arms launched that will amaze sports recruiters.
And it's not just parents and students playing with the system: admission officers are not as pious as you'd expect, says Jaye Fenderson, a former admissions officer at Columbia University. She admitted students from 2000 to 2002 and said that high-profile candidates "had a different vision" of elite schools.
"They are reported when they arrive," says Fenderson, whose film on higher education, "Unlobody," was screened in New York on Thursday. "I remember when Malia [Obama] was applying. All the schools were in the running, because the president's daughter is a big deal. "
Even college presidents are caught in illicit behavior. "One of my friends was the editor of the Princeton Review," says Foley. "There was a college that wanted to be in the guide. They rolled out the red carpet for a weekend. In the end, the president said, "Are we going to enter the guide or not?" He pointed to the window and there was a brand new Corvette in the driveway. He said, "You can have this Corvette if we come in."
As with organized crime, Foley says there is a coded language for questionable admissions strategies. "If I gave the signal that I would be open to that, I'm sure I can find this business. It's totally there. "
Like many others in his field, he does not blame parents completely and thinks it is an institutional problem. In particular, he says, he would like college admissions offices to be less opaque about their work because it drives everyone crazy. "If the game is rigged, what can I do to shark sharks?"
And given the cost of tuition and narration that makes everyone graduate, he does not see the corruption end so soon.
For the panicked parents, he says, a few thousand dollars are "a drop of water in the bucket".
-Suzy Weiss
The most memorable scams of recent academic history:
1999: In his 2016 book, Vijay Chokalingam, Mindy Kaling's brother, claims to be identified as a Black instead of being Indian to enter the Faculty of Medicine at the University of St. Louis, which later denied that his race contributed to his admission.
1999-2000: Tennessee High School football coach Lynn Lang uses his star player, Albert Means, to convince colleges to fill out his own bank account. As part of the gambling payment system, a reminder costs Lang $ 150,000 to recruit Means from the University of Alabama.
2010: Adam Wheeler, a 24-year-old former student, is found guilty of falsifying A transcripts and of the prestigious Phillips Academy private high school and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be admitted to Harvard University and have flown $ 45,000 in scholarships and financial assistance. .
2011: Twenty Nassau County students are criminally prosecuted after participating in a vast standardized test cheating ring, in which they spent thousands of dollars to urge others to sign up for SAT and ACT to increase their score.
2018 La Poste discovers the alarming trend that parents are using doctors to simulate health problems for their children, allowing them to benefit from more time and other amenities while taking SAT and ACT.
-Marisa Dellatto
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