Are you wondering what wild and obscene things crazy, rich parents do to try to get their kids into college? If so, check out this blog where Brooke shares some stories reporters have unearthed of tactics that parents have done to get their kids into college.
1. Anonymous Tips & Rumors
Many private schools have close connections to top universities like Princeton and Yale. At these schools, recommendations from counselors are extremely important. Knowing that college applicants are compared to other students of the same school, some parents get into the game of badmouthing other students. One way they do this is through gossip and anonymous tips. For example, they might tip off that other students are cheating or that another student’s essays were written by a tutor.
This actually led to some drama at the Sidwell Friends Schools in the last year when all the college counselors left the school within a year because of the bad behavior of parents.
2. Lying on College Applications
The problem with essays is that it’s not difficult to lie and tell a story. Due to the competitive nature of college admissions, a lot of admission decisions lies in the story of who you are. Inevitably, it’s difficult to verify what’s true and what’s not, and colleges don’t do much fact checking.
Social norms towards lying on resumes paint a bleak picture of what may be happening on college admissions. According to a 2020 study from ResumeLab, over 30% have admitted to lying on their resumes. Over 78% of people considered lying, even if it’s just overstating their duties at their job. Even within that survey, 30 to 40% of people were telling factual lies. While it’s obviously unfair, it wouldn’t be surprising if this is happening in college admissions as well.
3. Fake Transcripts
This story broke in USA Today in 2015. There was an article that claimed that policies in verifying records of Chinese students applying to American universities were somewhat troubling. An organization called Zinch China claimed that 90% of applicants forged recommendation letters and half of them had forged transcripts from their high schools. This had made it difficult for many students in China to be taken seriously at U.S. institutions, and it had made it hard for U.S. institutions to figure out who to admit.
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