“I’m shocked - shocked - to find that gambling is going on in here!”
So says police Captain Renault in the classic movie Casablanca, right after closing down Rick’s and just before being given his winnings for the night. I feel similarly about the recent admissions bribery scandal, and the response of colleges who have been implicated (SAT word) in it.
Everyone involved in college admissions knows the role money plays.
Indeed, I once heard the Dean of Admissions at an Ivy League school (that will remain nameless) say, in a public meeting, that parents can certainly buy their children’s way into his university, if they can cough up a million dollar donation. Of course, this was some time ago, so it is likely at least a five million dollar donation today. Similarly, it should be of no surprise that a coach at USC would be willing to make a bit of money on the side by lying about an alleged athletic recruit. After all, their football coach makes over two and a half million dollars a year, with the university’s blessing, by recruiting students who would probably not qualify academically for the university but whose prowess on the gridiron makes USC’s program a perennial (SAT word) powerhouse, bringing with it high-priced television broadcast rights, free national exposure, and alumni contributions. Money is definitely a deciding factor in some students’ admissions. The college’s real objection is that the money in these cases did not go to the institution, but to individual employees who were lying to their employer.
I have many thoughts about this. But, none of them have to do with the fact that money does and should not buy one’s way into school. In an ideal world, money would obviously not be a factor, but we do not live in a utopia (SAT word). I think about it this way: if a school can convince someone’s parents to build them a $10,000,000 building, and the price of that for the university is the admission of one student, that student has saved the rest of the students in his or her class a considerable amount of money that they would have to pay in increased tuition to pay for the building, while only taking away one spot in what is likely a class of several thousand students. Yes, it likely hurt one applicant whose spot might have been given to someone unworthy, but so do any number of other factors in admissions decisions. One of the things we have to understand is that admissions is not fair, and never will be. People with more money can hire tutors for the SAT, can hire someone like me to help them with college applications, and can go to schools that will better prepare them for the rigors of college. None of us start off on an equal footing monetarily, just as none of us start off on an equal footing academically. We do not criticize a university for not admitting a student with straight D’s on a high school transcript, even if those D’s were the best that the hard-working student could pull off with his or her severely limited academic abilities.
At the same time, while I am not shocked by this scandal, I believe it to be severely unethical.
Why? For the same reason the universities themselves are angry about it; when someone donates money to Yale or Stanford, hoping to influence an admissions decision, the school as a whole benefits. It might not be fair, but it helps a lot more people than it hurts. When someone bribes a swim coach or admissions officer to let an unqualified student in, the only people it helps are the person accepting the bribe and the person gaining undeserved entrance.
For me, and for any good college counselor, the goal is not to get a student into the most prestigious school, but to get him or her into the “right fit.”
Do I help students get into Ivy League schools? Certainly! But, when I do so, it is not by breaking the law, nor it is because the school happens to be in the Ivy League. It is because that school makes sense for that student’s abilities, interests, and tastes. As I’ve suggested in previous posts, Dartmouth is an excellent school, but not for someone who despises snow. You probably couldn’t pay me to go to UCLA, not because I don’t think it is an excellent school, but because nothing would induce (SAT word) me to live in Los Angeles.
Two of my students this year also considered hiring someone involved in this scandal, unknowingly. From what I’m told, nothing illegal or unethical was discussed. But, the perspective counselor never once asked to speak to the students. He simply explained to the parents about his past success and named his price. Literally the first thing I said to the parents was that I’d like to speak to the students first because I wanted to make sure they were interested in my help and that I was a good fit for them. I did not say this trying to land a new client, but rather because I believe it: my students’ needs should always come before my desire to make more money. As it happens, this family liked my approach and both students are now into several top thirty schools, and by the end of the admissions process, will likely be into several top ten institutions. I will take some credit for guiding them through the system, but their results are their own, and not through illegal or unethical means.
Most of my blog posts on here have advice. So far, this one has probably sounded more like a rant. But, I do have some pieces of advice relating to this scandal.
First of all, never hire someone who promises to get you into a certain dream school. None of us can make a promise like that. I can give you a percentage likelihood that you will be accepted, but never a guarantee.
Second, don’t feel that you need to bribe anyone, or even spend money. Students get into colleges all the time without the help of a professional like me, let alone without trying to bribe their way into a spot. My job is to make the process easier and to give you good advice, but just as someone can figure out how to build IKEA furniture without the directions, so too can someone figure out how to navigate the admissions process. It might take longer, and be far more frustrating, but the point is that you can do it.
Finally, try to remember that, as important as a school’s name and reputation might seem, your goal is not simply to get a diploma with a name everyone will recognize but to get the best education possible for you. I did not go to an Ivy League school even though - believe it or not - I was an athletic recruit at one, and I’ve never been unhappy with my decision (truth be told, I do sometimes regret not being part of the national championship team I would have been on, but that isn’t really a regret about college per se). Indeed, I got an excellent education, get to help students all over the world, and met my wife on the first day of college. I would not be happier today if I’d gone to a bigger name school.
To quote the end of Casablanca, if you base your college process solely on name recognition and prestige, without thinking about whether or not the school is a good fit for you, “you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon, and for the rest of your life.”