This is the revelation of Singh, the protagonist of the American University scandal. In his latest Netflix documentary, he reveals the different price points of the three “doors” of America’s elite universities.
The front door, which depends on the student’s hard work and talent, costs nothing, of course.
The side door, which Singer created, is a way to bribe college athletic coaches and get admissions officers into the university. In the case of Harvard, it’s around $1.2 million.
The back door, or endowment, is more than ten times the price of the “side door,” and the better the university, the more expensive. Harvard, at $45 million or more, Stanford, $50 million.
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The Netflix documentary, just released today, reveals the inside story of the “college admissions fraud” case of the century.
The rich and famous on the east and west coasts of the United States were bribed to send their children to elite universities. After the incident, more than 50 people were jailed, including several celebrities, and the case shook the entire higher education pedigree.
The process of solving the case, recommended to see my previous article Parental Sins, the inside story of the largest college fraud case in U.S. history, the rules and subterfuge, is very exciting.
What makes this documentary special is that the plot and characters are real. The dialogue in the show is all real, even the FBI recordings, but some of the characters are played.
It was released today on Netflix, so if you have a network and account students, you can check it out. I watched it first, the plot is average, no particular impact, but to understand American society and the American university system, or very helpful.
In addition to the case detection itself, this big case unveiled a lot of U.S. university admissions admissions secrets, it is worth parents and education practitioners to look deeper, I list a few new explosive points for you to see
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A U.S. elite university degree has become a commodity
In the past three or four decades, American higher education has undergone radical changes, the biggest change is that education has become a commodity, no longer education itself. A degree has a price, a status and a symbol.
This is the root cause of the high incidence of college admissions fraud, a game for the rich and powerful. Of course there are many very talented and academically gifted students, but there are also some abusive ones.
The back door to elite universities has clear thresholds, such as Harvard at $45 million or more and Stanford at $50 million or more. But even with that kind of money, you can’t guarantee that your child will be able to go, so there’s Singer’s “side door” strategy.
Knowing this price, you know why Zhao Tao, the chairman of the step group, who spent $6.5 million, became a grievance. The money, which seems a lot, but only equivalent to 1/6 of the market value of the donation, far from enough to get his daughter into Stanford by donation, only through the “side door”. The parents did not understand the “side door” market, and Singh slaughtered them.
High school plays an extremely important role in college applications
American high school students are very tired because they have to take a lot of AP classes. In the documentary, for example, if a high school offers 15 AP classes and the student only takes one, then you have no chance with the top 50 colleges. Because college admissions will place a lot of weight on an applicant’s AP courses, this forces high school students to take as many AP courses as they can, as hard as they can, even if they are ruthlessly itching to take them.
Another example of the high school’s influence was cited. Through Singer’s operation, star Lu Green’s daughters have taken a conditional admission to USC USC, but they are worried about the only obstacle: the college counselors at their high school. The admissions officer at USC had to speak with the high school counselor to find out how she was doing in high school.
The counselor, in fact, told the admissions officer that Luglin’s daughter had not excelled in high school athletics. This made Luglin’s husband furious and he went to the school to have a big fight with the counselor. Although the admissions were eventually taken care of, this episode shows the impact that U.S. high school teachers can have on college applications.
The niche sports programs at the three top schools are vulnerable
Singh paid off all the major schools’ niche sports programs, so why did the coaches of these programs fall for the trick?
In addition to human greed, another very important reason is that these seemingly glamorous elite college sports programs live very meticulously, and coaches are under tremendous pressure to raise money.
Unlike popular programs such as basketball and football, money is flowing in in droves. With niche programs like water polo, sailing, and rowing, donations are limited, and universities are strapped for funds for their programs. In the case of the Stanford sailing team where the incident occurred, the coach wanted to hire an assistant coach and had to find a fundraiser.
The coach, who had the misfortune to be pulled off the boat by Singer, recounted one detail. At one point, the senior director of the school’s athletic department called a meeting with the coaches, and throughout, the director had his eyes on a couple of TVs on the wall. The only exchange was when he told the supervisor that he had received a $500,000 donation. The superintendent encouraged him to keep going, and that was it. The low status of the sailing team at the school is evident.
Four SAT, ACT and other standardized tests, pay to get good grades
It is an open secret in education that people from SAT and other testing agencies reveal that standardized tests like ACT and SAT have nothing to do with intelligence and academics. The only secret to getting a high score is to find a training institution to train and raise the score, so there are many institutions that will promise to spend as much money as possible to raise the score. If these exams were eliminated, a large number of institutions would go out of business.
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What message can be given to parents?
We have repeatedly warned parents in previous articles not to become obsessed with educational trends that have become obsolete. When this loophole, for example, is plugged by American society, the opportunities are greatly reduced. Besides, just because you can play the sport doesn’t mean you can get into college on a niche sport. Getting into an elite college on a niche sport is a matter of competing with the powerful in the United States and around the world, so weigh your options before you go down that road.
Don’t be obsessed with climbing the vine, don’t be obsessed with elite universities, and don’t be obsessed with ranking the top twenty, top fifty, these are investments that have been far from education itself. Moreover, ranking itself is a very bullshit thing, no need to be obsessed with it. If you want to really get a good education, the United States has a large number of excellent universities, a large number of excellent professional.
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