Back in my 2010 to 2013 period, while working at the Pentagon, I worked around with a guy who had two teenage sons, and lived in Maryland. The oldest won was approaching this summer vacation period between the ninth and tenth grades, and had these great personal plans for the summer.
Somewhere around six weeks prior to the end of the ninth grade, the mother came into the picture with this long drawn-out schedule and 'goals'. The intent? By her plan, in order to get him into a prestigious college (an ivey league situation.....like Cornell or Vanderbilt for example)....he needed to have a rich and fulfilling 'resume'.
This couldn't be done in the last year....he needed things to score points upon now....as he transitioned into the tenth grade.
As I remember the five goals:
1. A class in fencing (the kid knew nothing about the sport, and had zero interest).
2. Some youth environmental week, with a group planting trees, and clearing streams of garbage.
3. One afternoon a week in a art-appreciation group.
4. Spending several days with some church-theme group helping senior citizens.
5. Being an active participant in a neighborhood watch group (he had to walk the neighborhood at night with an adult).
In simple terms, the kid was fairly bitter. He'd been forced to participate in a French class via the internet, and was supposed to begin French in the tenth-grade.
The problem was....the kid had no real drive to go off to this premium university. I asked this guy about the cost factor, and apparently most of this was going to be covered via the wife's family (the grandparents), which this had to be in the $200,000 range for the kid. Appreciation? Even this guy questioned where this was going, and if the kid could be convinced to go and do all this extra stuff....to pump up his application in three years to the ivy league school deal.
So I look at how this bribe business worked with the colleges and how the parents paid off the right people, to get their kids (who might have been marginally acceptable to the standards) into the 'right school'. In some cases, the parents even knew the kid couldn't get the right SAT scores, and they arranged for special people to take the test. The added weight here is that there might be 10,000 adults who arranged bribes across the nation, to get their kids into various schools.
The ending? It's hard to say where this will really end. School sued? Parents brought into court and sent off to 6-to-8 months of prison. Kids tossed out of college for fraud?
No comments:
Post a Comment