Unacceptable

Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & The Making of The College Admissions Scandal gives us a definitive look into the complexity of the scandal. We learn about how Rick Singer gained clients through word of mouth. We see dozens of parents falling into his well scripted trap and agreeing to go along with his lies. Honestly, Singer was only caught because one of his coaches was arrested in relation to a different crime and let his name slip.

Rick Singer has been running the college admission game for the last 20 years. He started small in the early 2000's, telling parents and teens to lie about their race/ethnicity on their applications, they could always feign innocence once they've made it into their interview.

Once Singer realized there was a market for college admissions counselors, he was determined to be the best one out there. He created an organization called "The Key" and quickly began funneling "donations" through his business. He was known for utilizing the side door for college admissions, a sure fire way to guarantee students would get into schools such as USC, UCLA, University of Texas, even Yale and Harvard. He convinced parents that just donating money to the school of their child's dreams wouldn't be enough to get them an acceptance letter. They needed high ACT/SAT scores, which could be guaranteed with the low, low price of $15k. From there Singer and parents would create a donation/payment plan for his services, which often included toting the potential student as an athletic recruit.

It's insane to me how long Rick Singer got away with this scheme of his.

What's even crazier is these infamous parents had given their kids virtually every opportunity and still chose to bribe their way into college. Many of these children would have been fine getting into these schools on their own, their grades and extracurriculars were more than enough to be noticed by the admissions office. Yet their parents still wanted that guarantee, they wanted to know it was a sure thing.

 

My question, in the aftermath of all this.....

What do the schools do with the kids they've already accepted?

Many of these children had no idea of their parents illicit scheme. This book only mentioned the aftermath of one student, who with his non-fraud test scores, they still would have admitted him. Therefore, he was allowed to stay in school there.

 

It just blows my mind that this flew under the radar for so long.

 

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