Bribery, greed: All for a little bit of Ivy League

For parents trying to buy their kids into these marquee schools, the actual quality of education doesn't have much to do with it.

I'm sure some of these parents are scared their kids won't get into a "decent" school on merit, so want to short circuit the process. They think they mean well. For them, maybe some of it has to do with the eventual independence and employability of their children.

But the worst of them want to buy stature and status for themselves and their kids, a cocktail party talking point, and plug the children into that lifelong network of Ivy League backscratching, clubability and cultural insularity.

 

There is stature and status involved in where one’s child goes to college. Our son goes to Cal and we definitely get different reactions in social circles than friends whose children go to other colleges, even schools such as UCLA, which is pretty even educationally.

I can’t say I don’t feel a little boastful at times telling people where he attends college. In fact, I caught myself finding a way to build it into conversations at times and had to stop that.

I certainly didn’t bribe his way in, he earned it based on GPA, test scores, extracurriculars and life experiences.

 

Guess ya never fapped to Full House. I can understand your dad’s fish out of water experience, but ya never understood the attraction of something prestigious? Did his experience maybe spoil your idea of a prestigious school? You can go somewhere for its reputation— in as much as you can work for a place bc of its reputation — and take from it what you will and not necessarily become “of” the place.

 

IMG Academy suspends Mark Riddell after college admissions bribery scandal

Looks like IMG Academy is getting caught up in this. Shocking.

 

$250K bond for Felicity Huffman? Need to check the indictment again; I missed the part where she killed anyone.

 

It can difficult to be among them but not of them.

I meet a guy my first two weeks at school and we're doing the whole where are you from thing...

"Oh, cool. Where else do you live?"
"Where else? I've never moved. Just same place my whole life."
"No, where else do you live? Where's your other home?"
"Dude, I just have one home."
"Really?"

...and we just chugged our beers and moved on, each perplexed at the weirdo he'd just spoken to.

This was at a fair-to-middling engineering school. I can't imagine what it would be like at an Ivy, USC, etc.

 

I don't know, I find that people find their people, wherever it is. I went to a top 15 school, one that people consider prestigious, with a lot of kids who went to prep schools. Heck, I went to a prep school (albeit a day school, not a boarding school). My parents were both school teachers. I had student loans. Were there people who were rich as hell and privileged? Absolutely. We didn't hang out.

What's funny is that when I ever mention where I went to school now, people just assume I was one of those rich, privileged kids. My parents had no sway with me getting into my college. It was my grades and board scores, some extra-curriculars. They certainly helped me pay for it. And amazingly, they helped put four kids through college -- on their teacher salaries. Total selflessness. I don't forget that for a minute.

People are gonna think what they're gonna think. They'll make assumptions, have prejudices. We all do it because it saves time and is a defense mechanism.

 

All true.

Now rich white kids of middlin' brain power and not much ambition face plenty of stiff competition even at the second-best State U level.

So let the Ivies stay the Ivies, and the premium schools stay premium.

My real concern is for the kids and the families for whom a college education would mean a huge improvement, a life-changing generational shift. The most exclusive schools already do a pretty good job of underwriting the smartest and hardest working, most deserving poor kids.

But we need to rethink and remodel college education and how it works for the general population.

If that means taking government money out of the loan business, OK, let's try that.

If it means putting government money into the community college and state trade school budgets in order to make them "free" to state residents, let's try that, too.

 

the common application also makes it simple to apply to more than a dozen schools. In my day, I had to write my essays in long hand. Then my mother would run the application through a typewriter and copy my essay onto the page (and not re-write it, I swear. I think. Who knows. Thanks, mom).

 

I was just gonna post that. I visited and interviewed at Wake for the class of 1976 but never completed by application because I didn't want to write another essay, even though I it wasn't my first choice after visiting my eventual school, which was a better fit.

Had there been a universal application app, I still would have applied, and probably would have got in, especially since many private southern schools at that time were looking to become more diversified geographically and I was from an under-represented state.