Did you know that Felicity Huffman, an actress I’ve never heard of, and Lori Loughlin, another actress I’ve never heard of, have been “accused of spending or laundering millions of dollars to falsify school records of high school students so they could be admitted to elite universities” (Source: NBC news)? Their names are followed by a long list of millionaires.
I’d like to say I’m outraged. But if you’ve worked at an elite private school, you know what’s riding on college admissions.
Parents are mad to get their kids into college. They will hire expensive consultants to guide them through the system. They will make unreasonable demands on the school’s college counselor. They will hire experts to write or edit their kids’ college essays.
Private college prep schools provide a top-notch education ($15,000-$45,000 a year). But it’s not always about the education. Parents want the connections. Even if the administrators can’t guarantee acceptance at Brown University or Mount Holyoke, they have connections to prestigious “fallback schools,” like the University of Notre Dame, Pomona College, or the University of Michigan.
Elite universities automatically accept “legacy students” (the children of rich alumni). And it doesn’t hurt if a parent donates money for a building: the school will respond in kind. Jared Kushner’s father Charles Kushner pledged $2.5 million to Harvard. Jared was then accepted at Harvard , though his grades and SAT scores were mediocre, according to Daniel Golden, author of The Price of Admission. But the Kushners are hardly the only family to do this.
The best and brightest do occasionally get into elite schools. One of my best students, God bless his/her heart, wrote the college essay in Latin and was accepted at an Ivy League school. Another equally bright student did not get into Princeton and screamed that it was all my fault. Was it the straight A’s I’d given him/her? Or the glowing recommendation? In retrospect, the student came to me because I didn’t give a shit about Princeton.
Some of my best students did NOT apply to Ivy League schools. Who had the money? Not their parents. Their parents scraped together the money for private high schools because they genuinely valued a good education. But their well-educated kids went on to affordable, excellent state universities. Fun fact: the professors at state universities have often been educated at Yale, Princeton, Smith, Wellesley, etc. (Which is not to say that these are the only excellent professors.)
You don’t have to spend a million dollars for a first-rate education. But it isn’t about the education, is it? It’s about connections and money. And making more money.
Shame on the universities that make it ABOUT the money.
The educational system is corrupt, but it’s hard to sympathize with students who have a nervous breakdown because an admissions department randomly accepted or rejected their application. The older you get, the more random you know these acts are.