College Admissions Scandal Update

Bella Breakdown

On Tuesday, fifty people were accused by federal prosecutors of the largest college admissions scandal to date. These people were charged for attempting to illegally secure spots at eight extremely competitive schools, Yale, Georgetown, USC, UCLA, Stanford, Wake Forest, UT, and USD.

The scam revolves around thirty-three wealthy parents, many of them famous, using million dollar bribes to find a side door into these schools. They hired William Singer, a business man from California, who promised them that he had ways to get their children into elite schools. Singer was paid around $25 million.

The parents essentially were paying for several cheats in order to help their kids:

1. Falsifying higher test scores: a person would take a test for the student, or a paid person would proctor the test and help the student, or a paid reviewer would change the answers for the student after the test.

2. Coaches and administrators saying that a person was a top athlete (even if they had never played the sport in their life) so that they could have a back door into the school. The main culprits here are college coaches from the eight schools, who are being accused of Racketeering, mail fraud, and bribery. They were paid millions to lie about students being top athletes, even though they weren’t. Sometimes, the prospective students’ faces were even photoshopped onto the body of an athlete to try and make it more believable.

This scandal has revealed to the American public that our upper-level education system is extremely broken and unjust, and the consequences of this monstrosity will surely be far reaching.