Admissions of Grandeur

What does it mean to “cheat?” What does it mean to “have an unfair advantage?”

Wealthy people cheat to get their children into prestigious colleges? They manipulate the law so their children can receive financial assistance designed for people with far greater needs? Really? They do? How unfair! How immoral! How shocking!

Not really. The recent college admissions scandal shouldn’t surprise anyone. Affluent people, especially affluent White people have been gaming this system since the beginning. The even more recent scheme where parents changed their children’s guardianship in order to secure them financial aid is a variation on the same theme.

There are many issues here: affluent (and other) parents’ desire to place their children at prestigious universities, their ruthless and selfish disregard for laws, ethics, and other people, the role of private consultants, private and public schools, and others who facilitate these machinations, and the effects that such efforts have on all students and the institutions they attend. There are other issues, but let’s start there.

Parents with resources have been gaming the college admissions process forever. If you believe that competitive universities select their students based on an honest and forthright evaluation of the candidate’s qualifications, then I would like to charge you several thousand dollars to increase your child’s chances of getting into one.

This is not to say that Snidely Whiplash or Boris and Natasha Badenoff are running college admissions at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. I am sure admissions counselors are trying to be fair and evenhanded. However, they must know that is impossible.

The idea is that students who are most able and worthy of admission to the most elite institutions are the ones that are chosen is as much a fantasy as the idea that anyone can be president. There is no meritocracy. There is no “standardized” anything. A “holistic” evaluation of a student’s application to college is a euphemism for a subjective judgment based on factors that often have nothing to do with academic credentials.

In his book, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, Frank Bruni, writer for the New York Times, discusses the issues of college admittance into highly selective institutions. He notes that children of alumni or celebrities, big donors, students from select private high schools, and elite athletes have an instant advantage. The Operation Varsity Blues scandal certainly focused on how athletics could be manipulated to alter admissions results.

Bruni also discusses a question that should be on the mind of anyone working with students preparing to go to college: why choose one school over another? There is no doubt that putting an Ivy League sticker on your car or sweatshirt on your chest is a status symbol. There is also no denying that a degree from a prestigious university does open doors and create connections that are different than those from the other 90% of post-secondary institutions.

But does every student from Notre Dame, Dartmouth, or Duke become a super-star? Do all of them reap all of those benefits? Obviously not.

Certainly, for some very wealthy families, these universities are nothing more than finishing school. Children from these families have their roads laid out before them by their parent’s power and wealth. They will succeed regardless (or sometimes in spite) of their upper-class status. Bonus points if you can think of any examples of these people.

Do the parents in the tiers below the Bushes, Waltons, Kochs, Rockefellers, and others believe that getting their child into these schools will elevate them into the elites? Perhaps. Do they have admissions of grandeur? Of course! Will going to one of these universities transform junior into a tycoon? Not likely. 

If your children’s worth is built on achievement of almost impossible goals, if you have been stitching together resumes for your children since before they could walk, and if success is dependent on a hair-thin chance of getting into the “right” school, wouldn’t every parent cheat or at least help increase the odds? This is your darling child we are talking about right?

Most parents would not cheat to get our children into college. Most of us know right from wrong. Most of us wouldn’t have the desire or resources. And most of us would have the common sense to know that, to paraphrase the title of Mr. Brunni’s book, that our children will not become the universities they attend.

Yet, there are parents for whom such a nearly impossible target is the goal. Mr. Barnum knew about them. He said one of them was born every minute. Thus an industry has sprung up to cater to their obsession. They promise to take their progeny and make them better than they are, better, stronger, faster, and smarter – and they will charge six million dollars.

How sad to be one of those children. How horrible to have your worth measured by such impossible, impersonal, and shallow goals? How dreadful to not be good enough unless properly labeled. But no price is too high to reach these heights.

The admission mania of parents faking their children’s test scores and financial background, photo-shopping kids into fake sports stars, and paying fortunes to those who stoke their obsessions is an extension of a society of privilege and selfishness. The parents benefit. The colleges benefit. The consultants benefit.

What about the students? What about the applicants they displace or who don’t get financial aid because it was given to more affluent fakers?

Ask that White field hockey player from the suburbs, or better yet, ask her parents.