Would you offer a bribe to get your DC into a better uni. ?

[justasking111]

American police have arrested 50 people including Hollywood actresses and chief executives of companies in connection to a scheme to fraudulently get their children into Ivy League universities, according to media reports.

Felicity Huffman, star of Desperate Housewives, is currently in custody, TMZ reported.

Actress Lori Loughlin, who appears in ABC sitcom Full House and 90210, is also among those facing charges, according to ABC News.

The 50 people are accused of paying bribes of up for $6 million (£4.6m) to secure places for their children at elite universities, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and University of Southern California (USC).

Twelve people are believed to be facing charges.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/12/desperate-housewives-actress-felicity-huffman-among-50-people/

50 people and they pick out the Hollywood parents. There are a number of business people on the list as well.

So if you could would you bribe a college to get your DC into a certain college.

@Meyrin, My DP went to Yale and then went to Harvard, and he lived in a very working-class town with working-class parents. He had a very normal childhood as did many of his friends (almost all of his friends who we met at Yale and Harvard had very normal upbringings, and they certainly weren't pressured from grade 1 to behave in certain ways to get into ivy league universities). My DP was accepted to those universities because he is exceptionally bright, he scored a near perfect SAT score and a perfect LSAT score (which is very rare). But I can assure you that he wasn't in a pressurised school situation, and he lived a very normal and relaxed childhood.

I don't understand what these parents were thinking. They could have provided their children with the best tutors and teachers to help their children test better. If they aren't smart enough to get into these universities on their own merit then they don't deserve to go in the first place. I am bit confused on the children not knowing. Didn't Felicity Hoffman pay the SAT procter to give her daughter the right answers?

It's normal in the USA - you donate to x university and in return your quite thick kid gets a place.

First of all you'd want to be donating a hell of a lot of money. They say Jared Kushner's dad gave a million. It isn't just any donation. Second, no truly thick kid gets a place. Harvard and the equivalent are full of the highest achieving kids. What the million bucks gets you is a place in Harvard for a perfectly bright student who otherwise wouldn't have gotten in.

Second, what happened here is utterly different. This wasn't a donation. This was fraud, lying, cheating. Can't tell you how much people are talking in very shocked tones about this.

It's quite possible Huffman/Macy's daughter DIDN'T and just thought she did amazingly well because they used a proctor to rig her answers after completion at a test centre

in my experience (on my third kid going through the US system) utterly impossible. They do a PSAT in sophomore year and that gives a decent baseline. Then, if you have the money, you tutor and do courses etc and you maybe get it up a 100 points. Maybe - that is a stretch. It is a test of college readiness - very hard to tutor. If you are a student who has scored 1200 every attempt and you get 1480 in your last one - come on, you know what the kids in your school who score 1480 are like and what classes they take and grades they get. You know.

I think it’s a stupid thing to do, not only because it’s illegal.

Admission to an Ivy League college isn’t the end-game. This is true no matter what circles you run in, even the ones where parents are whispering about how “everyone’s doing it, it’s totally fine. You just gotta go with it, because Christ, can you imagine? You just wanna know you did everything you could”.

I think is belies a specific paranoia that come from living in specific bubbles. This urgent, breathless need to be top of at everything at all times.

You really feel for these kids.

I don't have kids but yes, of course. If it wasn't illegal I would do anything to help them.

I don't have kids but yes, of course. If it wasn't illegal I would do anything to help them.

it IS illegal. As the OP clearly states. Which is why it is in the news.

We'd all do most (not all) things that are legal to help our kids. The OP was about a specific situation in which people were cheating, being fraudulent, and doing illegal things to get their children into college.

I agree with you 7salmonswimming on the stupidity of it all. And most of these colleges weren't Ivy league as far as I can make out.

Off the top of my head (and I don't work in college admissions), I could imagine any of those kids getting into say, Oberlin, which is a great college. Or maybe University of Vermont - a great public school.
No fraud required. Parent who can pay, motivated kid, tweaked resume, good college essay, college tour, off you go.

But maybe I am overestimating the raw material.

I don't find it as easy to excuse your friend here as you do. He's enabled someone to graduate fraudulently.

He didn’t have a choice. If he refused to do what his employer told him to do he’d get sacked. And he needs his salary to pay the bills. My point is that rich kids receive support and cheating from all sides at all levels. Even Prince Harry was rumoured to have his school results falsified, teachers reported being told to do his work for him. The parents pay the universities, they pay someone to do the work in the kids name, then when they graduate they buy the kid a business and put them in a job they’d never have earned on merit, then pay for employees to support them and do the actual work while the kid swans off on holidays, etc. It’s a lifelong fix.

That would be Jared Kuchner and Harvard

Actually no, he was only at primary school at the time I was in the States. But there are plenty of rich people in America who aren't so much in the public eye.

No.

You'd be doing your child such a disservice. I take pride getting into university on my own merits and securing jobs myself rather than relying on pull. You can't buy the self-esteem that brings.

Those poor DDs who thought they got in legitimately and now will probably lose their place if not their degree because it was obtained via a fraud.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how the kids can't have known about it. They know what their SATs scores were (and what they should have been) and can't have failed to have noticed their admission on the basis of declared athletic prowess. They were in on it, I'm pretty sure. So I don't feel sorry for them, not least because one of these spoilt brats* was happily pronouncing on social media that she didn't give a crap about studying.

(* My colleague used to work at USC, and refers to it as the University of Spoilt Children. He also says that the sports coaches wielded unbelievable power in the institution and were paid far more than any of the academics).

Donald trump jr has been taking the piss on Twitter. I will laugh if it turns out that his dad did similar.

My friends who went to USC (grad school) call it University of Spoilt Children too. Lots of laughter at a big birthday celebration when that was mentioned.

No. It's absolutely disgusting.

No. It’s a disgrace and illustrative of a lot of what is wrong with society. A back-hander to get into a top university, then presumably you would need to pay someone to do your university assignments to ensure they were up to standard. It’s called cheating in my book, but perhaps I am just old fashioned.

I think the dcs must have known. In some cases other people were sitting the entrance exams for them. Apparently they pleaded an excuse as to why they had to take the exam at a different time/location, and then at the chosen location a cleverer person took their place.

If someone has donated $$$$$$$ to an institution, then maybe give their child a place. Say a library, or whole building. But one donation per year. That should raise some funds!

Dn was at a Top Five university here doing Law and bitterly complained about some of the foreign students who she said had very poor English skills. She saw first hand that they struggled to write in English in person, yet turned in flawless written assignments.

The only way to stop this is (expensively) interviewing the applicants, as they do at Oxbridge. The foreign students there speak better English than the home-grown ones!

@VelvetPineapple, your friend does have a choice, this isn't the only job in the whole world he could possibly get. He could, y'know, find another job that doesn't involve fraud.

I actually didn't know it was illegal in the US - it has always been done, and I just assumed the prestigious universities accepted a certain number of duds who came with a generous donation. It wouldn't be in their interests to take too many, or standards would fall noticeably.

I think it's just as morally wrong to donate lots of money in order to grease the wheels as it is to falsify test results.
I would feel like I was cheating my children if I did this. Especially if we were rich anyway and they weren't depending on that place in order to secure their whole future.
That said, if everyone else was doing it, I wouldn't want to put my kids at a deliberate disadvantage.
I think the US police were harsh doing the whole middle of the night arrest with armed police. Total overkill, designed to humiliate imo. The real villains are the colleges who've enabled this whole culture by accepting bribes.

Apparently the daughter of Lori McLoughlin boasted on social media about going to college to party. She must have known what her mum had arranged which makes her spectacularly arrogant.

It's normal in the USA - you donate to x university and in return your quite thick kid gets a place

Anyone watching Cheat atm.

Isn’t this sort of thing the basis of this storyline which infers this sort of thing happens here as well.

It has been going on here for quite some time in one form or another.

Many years ago we lived in quite an affluent area.
When it came to the 11+
Friend very sensible and who was the brightest in the class. Top in all the exams with 90% + scores failed to get to grammar school. No one from the council estate got into the grammar school. Don’t know the rulings now but years ago even if you passed you still had to have the confirmation from the Head teacher that you would be suitable grammar school material.

Another friend who lived in one of the posh houses apparently passed.
The issue was this friend couldn’t even read the exam paper, let alone write an answer.

I have known people who have donated money to get their children into schools that they otherwise wouldn’t have stood a hope in hell of getting into.

I have known people set up a bank account for all their household bills and deposit each month just enough for them to live on. They have done this for years because they know that they want their child to go to a certain school but don’t want to pay for it so want the scholarship.

It was happening when I went to school and it is still happening in this country today.

What is the point of buying a place that your dc wouldn't qualify for ? They wouldn't be able to keep up with the ones that did pass the test and the course would be too hard.

I'm afraid you are rather speaking out of your, er, nether regions, Oliversmumsarmy.

The 11+ is not perfect by any means, but you don't get in by recommendation . You may have done donkeys' years ago with the old assisted places scheme for private schools, but 11+ is based on test scores, and was when I took it in the late 70s! What may be subject to the Head's approval is an appeal . Grammar schools are very academic and have no interest in the pupil who "couldn't even read the exam paper".

IrmaFayLear

No I am not. Actually confirmed on here in previous threads that was what happened in the 60s and definitely early 70s.

Don’t forget test scores were adjusted.
Boys would have a few points added because they were boys and didn’t mature as early as girls and I think there was a big thing about adjusting marks for age as well.

Seemed mighty strange if this didn’t take place then that not one person from the council estate ever managed to get into the grammar school.

I remember friend who was illiterate but came from the bought houses was questioned in detail about how she managed to get in when all she managed to complete she said was a few maths questions. She did say her parents were going to get her a tutor.
I remember friend who didn’t get in being devastated because it meant she couldn’t go to university.

No, I don’t think it is always possible for people to say “I’m not doing that” and switch jobs. The moral high ground takes second place to paying your bills.

For example in my field of employment (before I had to SAH) there were only three possible employers within driving distance and the other two weren’t hiring. So I couldn’t switch employers even if I wanted to. DH couldn’t switch employers either because he’s highly paid and would struggle to find another job at the same level, plus he isn’t allowed to work for a competitor for a period of six months after leaving his job, plus it’s a small industry and if he was awkward his current employer would basically black ball him so he couldn’t get another job.

I think it’s quite likely that people knew what was going on with this bribery case but couldn’t say anything. Nobody wants to be the whistleblower, it rarely turns out well for you as an individual. And when you have bills to pay it isn’t as easy as just quitting your job, particularly in America where your health insurance is tied to your job.