Who's to Blame for the College Admissions Scandal? In March 2019, news broke that the FBI had uncovered a scheme in which 50 wealthy parents had paid a combined $25 million dollars to get their children admitted to elite universities like Stanford and Yale between 2011 and 2019. The list of people charged included celebrity parents Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, as well as high-profile executives, attorneys, university athletic coaches, an expert test-taker, and standardized testing professionals. 219 At the center of the scandal was William "Rick" Singer, a college-prep consultant who had masterminded the operation under the cover of his federally registered 501(c)3 charity, Key Worldwide Foundation._ 220 Page 112 HOW DID IT WORK? Singer used several strategies to bolster the parents' chances of snagging prestigious university spots for their kids. One tactic was to direct the parents to a psychologist who would evaluate their children for learning disabilities. Singer suggested parents tell their kids to "be stupid . . . be slow . . . be not as bright" in order to receive a diagnosis that would permit the students to have extended or unlimited time as well as an individual room for the ACT and SAT college entrance exams. For some students, this was enough to improve test scores. Parents who wanted additional help made sizable "charitable donations" to Singer's nonprofit-between $15,000 and $75,000 per test-to have an expert test-taker, now identified as Mark Riddell, complete exams for their kids. This ploy had parents traveling to one of two centers where exam administrators Igor Dvorskiy and Niki Williams would be waiting to pocket $10,000 per test to allow Riddell to either take the exams himself, correct the kids' responses, or feed them the correct answers as they were testing. Riddell also earned approximately $10,000 per test. Many of the children who benefited were unaware of the test-cheating scheme._ _- Other maneuvers included Singer creating phony athletic profiles for the students, then paying bribes to college coaches for spots on their team rosters. In one case, parents paid Singer $1.2 million to secure their daughter's admission to Yale. Singer created a fake athletic profile for the girl, sent it to Yale soccer coach Rudolph "Rudy" Meredith, and, after she was admitted, cut Meredith a check for $400,000. 223 P . GUILTY AS CHARGED At some point during the investigation, Singer, Riddell, and Meredith agreed to become "cooperating witnesses" for the FBI. They wore wire taps that recorded their conversations with wealthy parents, and they turned over incriminating e-mails related to the scheme. The three agreed to enter guilty pleas and to cooperate fully with the investigation in exchange for what they hoped would be more lenient sentencing -24 Singer pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, money laundering conspiracy, racketeering conspiracy, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. He told U.S. District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel, "I am absolutely responsible for it," adding that "I put everything in place. I put all the people in place and made the payments directly."_2 Activate Windows Go to Settings to activate Windows Actress Felicity Huffman was the first parent sentenced in the admissions scandal. She pleaded guilty to fraud, and the court ordered that she serve a 14-day jail term, pay a $30,000 fine, and complete 250 hours of community service. John Vandemoer, the former Stanford University sailing coach who had accepted a total of $610,000 in bribes, pleaded guilty to racketeering. The court ordered that he serveone day in prison, spend two years on supervised release, and pay a $10,000 fine._As of this writing, real-estate executive Toby Macfarlane has received the longest prison sentence of anyone involved. The court sentenced MacFarlane to six months in prison, two years of supervised release, 200 hours of community service, and a $150,000 fine for paying $450,000 for athletic spots at USC for his son and daughter. -28 WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE? In spite of their guilty pleas, are Singer and these parents, coaches, and administrators the only ones responsible for the largest college admissions scandal in Department of Justice history? It is likely that systemic factors played a role as well. Many of the parents involved cited the intense pressure surrounding college admissions that plagues both students and parents. Indeed, a lucrative industry of test preparation and tutoring has blossomed in response to this pressure. In spite of research that shows no substantial link between a person's undergraduate degree-granting institution and their subsequent successes, many parents hold tight to the belief that their kids can only truly succeed if they have a degree from an exclusive school.-2 Sadly, the academic achievement race often starts as early as kindergarten, with more and more teachers leaving the teaching profession rather than participate in overly structured, rigorous, testing-focused environments that they believe are akin to child abuse.250 And what about the broader system of college admissions? Are current admissions criteria doing a good job of selecting the most promising and most deserving students? Studies suggest that standardized test scores don't predict much more than first-year grades and retention rates, but SAT and ACT scores remain the gold standard in admissions decisions across the spectrum of colleges and universities. Other factors that play a role in students' chances of getting into their school of choice include whether they attended a private high school, their family socioeconomic status, and their gender (females often are victims of discrimination in the college admissions process).251 When asked how she felt about the scandal, Mia M., a student at Martin Luther King High, said, "We have created a mentality that we must be the best at all costs. Grades are valued over integrity, and alternative facts prevail over truth. Constant comparisons make us become desperate to be perfect." Alex Lee, a student at Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC, Page 113expressed his sadness over the scandal, saying, "I feel sorry for everyone in this situation. The parents, because they feel as if this is the only way to create happiness for their children, the students because some had no idea, and especially those students who worked so hard and got pushed out by those with more money to spare."