OT: College Entrance Exam Cheating Scandal

[WestsideWaltz]

A couple of things. OJ2 (Olivia Jade) had deals with Sephora, Amazon, HP, Dolce Gabbana, etc. In addition, she has millions of followers on social media. That's super impressive for a high school senior and would have looked amazing on an application. How dumb must she be to have had to have her parents buy her admission. Even still, those achievements are education. She graduated from the very tony all girls Marymount HS. I honestly think she might have been accepted on her own merits. Since she has as much as said she never wanted to go to college, think of how wonderful it would have been if she really did get in on her own. But her parents were unwilling to take that chance.

And it seems that the now fired associate Athletic AD created situations where the applicants were asked to be considered as preferred walk-ons. If anyone questioned their status, they were to respond that they were going to be trying out for the team, nothing more. Nonetheless, wouldn't a coach be aware of someone like that if they were being considered for a team? Mark Trakh has not be named in any documents but I'm still suspicious.

This is what Heinel did when she tried to get a casino exec's daughter admitted as a basketball player: Heinel was also allegedly bribed to represent the daughter of Gamel Abdelaziz as a recruited basketball player. The daughter was given falsified basketball credentials like “Asia Pacific Activities Conference All Star Team,” “2016 China Cup Champions,” and “Hong Kong Academy team MVP.” Heinel represented the daughter to the admissions committee using the fraudulent athlete profile and obtained permission to admit her as a basketball recruit. Heinel advised that Abdelaziz send $200,000 to the gift account for the Galen Center, the arena for USC’s basketball and volleyball programs. This would be redirected to Heinel. Abdelaziz wired a $300,000 payment to KWF, which the co-operating witness told him would be marked as a donation to help “underserved kids.” The daughter was admitted. Abdelaziz was instructed to corroborate Heinel’s story that his daughter suffered an injury, which explained why she wasn’t playing basketball at USC.

https://deadspin.com/these-are-the-college-coaches-accused-of-turning-rich-k-1833238779

 

[TheFarmFan]

A couple of things. OJ2 (Olivia Jade) had deals with Sephora, Amazon, HP, Dolce Gabbana, etc. In addition, she has millions of followers on social media. That's super impressive for a high school senior and would have looked amazing on an application.

Call me super, super old-fashioned, but I work in higher education, and I do not find a celebrity daughter of two celebrity parents having a lot of social media followers and endorsement deals to be an impressive academic accomplishment worthy of admission. In fact, I don't find anyone, celebrity offspring or not, having a bevy of social media followers to be impressive. It's one thing to get elected as student body president, which certainly requires some popularity and social skills, but the accomplishment is only important and potentially worthy of your application file because you served as a leader for your school. Again, I may be a curmudgeon, but social media influencer is a bit like getting elected prom queen - everyone thinks you're pretty and cool, but no one thinks that's going to get you into Harvard, because all you do is stand there and look pretty, and--in the case of social media influencer--hawk random doodads for Amazon.

 

[CocoHusky]

Call me super, super old-fashioned, but I work in higher education, and I do not find a celebrity daughter of two celebrity parents having a lot of social media followers and endorsement deals to be an impressive academic accomplishment worthy of admission.

A couple of things. OJ2 (Olivia Jade) had deals with Sephora, Amazon, HP, Dolce Gabbana, etc. I

I'm trying my best to keep up here so please forgive or try and answer my questions. I don't understand this "social influencer" so this is my guess: Jade was hawking products from Sephora, Amazon, HP, Dolce Gabbana to her millions of followers on social media. Presumably in exchange for some compensation? If so how much? If the compensation was significant enough why would these kids even need to go to college?
Put another way, how does a social influencing business model benefit from a college degree?

 

[WestsideWaltz]

Call me super, super old-fashioned, but I work in higher education, and I do not find a celebrity daughter of two celebrity parents having a lot of social media followers and endorsement deals to be an impressive academic accomplishment worthy of admission. In fact, I don't find anyone, celebrity offspring or not, having a bevy of social media followers to be impressive. It's one thing to get elected as student body president, which certainly requires some popularity and social skills, but the accomplishment is only important and potentially worthy of your application file because you served as a leader for your school. Again, I may be a curmudgeon, but social media influencer is a bit like getting elected prom queen - everyone thinks you're pretty and cool, but no one thinks that's going to get you into Harvard, because all you do is stand there and look pretty, and--in the case of social media influencer--hawk random doodads for Amazon.

USC milked Lori and her husband for all it was worth. Lots and lots of publicity photos. USC also was at the forefront of OJ2's Instagram account of her going to college. That was free publicity and a lot of it. Similarly, a media influencer really doesn't seem a whole lot different than being elected student body president. It's a popularity contest. And schools have always been talking about having students who are well rounded and successful in other ventures and no question OJ2 is very successful in what she's done. That's accomplishment and it is impressive. She also attended a top private high school. Stand there and look pretty? Brooke Shields got into Princeton.

And just so we know where everything stands in this situation, USC is on break and OJ2 was on a yacht in the Baja,as with the Chairman of USC's BOD Rick Caruso and his family when the story broke..

 

[MilfordHusky]

Just curious, how does one qualify for a "Sailing Scholarship" at Stanford or for any school that has a college program. Looking at the rosters on the Stanford site, nearly every student went to a private school during HS(A few went to public highs in Newport Harbor and Costa Mesa areas of OC)
By the way if any of you New Englanders care, the Finals for sailing are around Memorial Day weekend in Newport RI. Does the Tree make the trip to RI?

Here's part of the USC incoming class:

 

[SVCBeercats]

This is about how the 1% manipulates the system to demonstrate that their wealth allows them to cut the line...any line.
In China, my old friend Chris Balding noted that no one pays attention to lines and everything is quite lawless.
This is a sophisticated version of that phenomenon.
As an aside, driving East on I-80 today, refueling in a truck stop near Joliet IL, wandered into a huge argument about a blocked parking space.
Luckily, it calmed down by itself, but I was perfectly prepared for one or both parties to pull out guns and have at it.
Great country we live in.

This is an AMAZING country with some daft people. I'm sure all the other countries you would prefer to live in have no problems whatsoever.

 

[ProSkeptic]

I find it very hard to feel sorry for the "children' of these wealthy and entitled people. These kids have had a sweet life, probably always getting more than they "deserved'. And while they are young adults, they are adults. You would have to know that you never played a sport before you got an acceptance letter for a athletic scholarship. Their parents may well have done them a disservice by this constant interference in their lives, but the kids have certainly reaped benefit from it. Privileged people always think they have earned their status, while underprivileged kids are taught that they deserve their lot in life because they are somehow responsible for their lack of advantage and opportunity. This apologist twist reminds me of the kid in Texas who killed four innocent people in a drunken, drugged accident wherein the judge declared him to be not guilty because he suffered from affluenza. I hope this post was written in facetious jest and I was just too unwitting to comprehend the joke. I wish no ill on anyone, but those who court ill gotten gain must surely reap their just deserts. And this goes fro the students and their parents alike.

The post was not written in jest, FYI. According to a piece in the New York Daily News, many of the kids had no idea about their parents’ machinations. I also think it’s a bit of a stretch to bring up the Couch family (the “affluenza” clan) in this context. None of these kids, or their parents, has been accused of killing anyone. Keep in mind that the students were most likely minors when the alleged payoffs occurred. I’m not absolving them of all guilt, but I think public humiliation is more than ample punishment for them, if not for their grasping, amoral, entitled parents. All I can say is that it would have been extraordinarily difficult for me, as a 17 year-old, to stand up to my parents had they chosen to involve me in such a scheme. But maybe that’s just me. Unfortunately, we don’t get to pick our parents.