Joke's on the rich who bought 'old school' eilte rules

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Megan McArdle

The Washington Post

Let us have a moment of silence for all the affluent parents who have spent the past decade or so frantically preparing their kids for college admissions.

They vastly overpaid for homes near excellent public schools — or perhaps forked over the annual price of a new car to private ones — paid for extracurriculars, tutors, college-essay coaches … but as we now realize, they could have saved some money and a lot of effort if they had just paid a sleazy consultant to fake a record of achievement, rather than going to all the trouble of pushing their kids into actually acquiring one.

On Tuesday, dozens of people were indicted, all of them wealthy and several modestly famous, for fraudulently conspiring to gain their children (or their clients’ children) undeserved admissions to elite schools. Through the offices of the Key Worldwide Foundation, whose boss, William “Rick” Singer, was arrested, these parents allegedly engaged in a staggering fraud: fabricating athletic prizes, faking learning disabilities and altering standardized tests, even going so far as to photoshop a child’s head onto the body of a star football kicker.

I confess my first reaction was to ask — as the parents probably asked themselves — just how different this was from what other parents do. Anyone who went to an Ivy League school is familiar with the “development admits,” underachieving kids whose arrival on campus is accompanied by a plaque on a building or a laboratory bearing their surname. Legacies get less of a boost but are more numerous, and their admission is at least partly facilitated with an eye to future donations. Meanwhile, at less exclusive institutions, the ability to pay full tuition plays an unmistakable role in deciding who gets the nod.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/mcardle-jokes-on-the-rich-who-bought-old-school-eilte-rules/

[True Blue American]

1. Unless you contribute heavily, legacy

Does not do it either.

[leftieNanner]

2. We had exactly that experience

My husband graduated from Stanford in 1972. Our daughter applied for admission in 2012 and within three nanoseconds, we received a letter from Stanford stating that they recognized that she was a legacy, but that it had no bearing on her getting in. BLAM!

And no, we are not wealthy and have not made significant donations to the University.

She was not accepted at Stanford. And we think that was just right for her.

[True Blue American]

4. Same experience here

But the student received Scholarships to the other 6 he applied to. He chose the one
He preferred.

We knew then his Father had not contributed.

[GeorgeGist]

3. I missed the punchline.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

5. And the legacy admissions have help once they're in

In the Ivy League, there is something called the "Gentleman's C". This is a passing grade given to men of "good families" (George W Bush undoubtedly got some at Yale) or whose families had given a lot of money to the school (which is where Trump comes in) who should be given less than passing grades. It is one of the less endearing traditions of the Ivy League.

When I was in graduate school at Harvard, I spent a semester as a teaching assistant, teaching an intro class in history of the Christian religion. There was one student, the scion of a Boston Brahmin family, who deserved an F in the class, so I gave him one. The history department chairman called me into his office, explained the Gentleman's C, and told me to change this one grade. I didn't want to, so he changed it. (I then found myself another job at the university computer center, which, to my delight, paid considerably more.)

[Nitram]

6. They all thought it well worth the price to give their kid a leg up in spite of their lack of

achievement, hard work, and talent. In fact, that's why they needed a leg up. You'd be surprised what the word Harvard on a resume will do to help an otherwise under-qualified candidate. If anything good i going to come out of this, it will be a de-valuation of degrees from schools that admit and graduate wealthy slackers.