December 4, 2023

This is not a good time for American higher education, but as bad as this may seem, matters are even worse.  The students themselves are part of the problem when they seek admission to top schools with tactics that are at best questionable and at worst dishonest.

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Dishonesty is rampant.  Students will even misrepresent their race or ethnicity.  This is hardly a surprise in today’s academic world that prizes diversity, and admissions officers willingly lower standards to achieve it.  According to one study, some 34% of white students admitted lying about their ethnic identify for purposes of admission or financial aid, with “Native American” being the most popular subterfuge and 13% falsely claiming to be Latino.  Ten percent of these whites checked the African-American ancestry box.  The deceit generally worked: 77% of those lying were admitted.  

Deceit is further encouraged by “college admission counselors” to help youngsters whose families can afford to guide Junior into a school beyond his true academic abilities.  This industry includes independent tutors charging by the hour and firms belonging to the Independent Educational Consultants Association that expertly handle tasks like choosing the best high school courses, providing specialized summer programs, and deciding where to apply, plus tips to handle college interviews and obtaining outstanding letters of recommendation among multiple other services.  

Counselors will manage all the details — even rewrites of your college application essay.  The Varsity Blues scandal that resulted in criminal penalties exposed oft-hidden tactics such as bribes and hiring others to take your exams, but other exposed tactics, notably generous donations to the school, are perfectly legal.  Top-notch consultants can be expensive — as much as $15,260.

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The current heightened competition for places at elite schools has, as expected, encouraged innovation.  The online Scholar Launch offers options that start at $3,500 to connect high school students with specialists who will help them write and then publish “a scholarly paper.”  This is not outright fraud, since the students paper will appear in a journal called Scholarly Review that boasts of its thorough review process conducted by “highly accomplished professors and academics,” with the final paper being “published” as a “preprint.”  Scholar Launch is only one of 20 such for-fee sites that help high-schoolers embellish their résumés.

The latest option for college applicants is using artificial intelligence for everything from navigating the admissions progress to perfecting the required admissions essay.  A Forbes article illustrated a student’s use of ChatGPT when applying to Vanderbilt University.  One applicant asked the A.I. program: “As a prospective student visiting Vanderbilt University who’s interested in engineering, debate team, and Asian-American life on campus, what are some questions to ask on a college tour when interacting with my tour guide?”

This expensive “professionalization” of the college admissions process clearly helps the rich.  A police officer’s son might try for a Harvard scholarship, but Dad probably cannot afford expensive admission counselors to polish his son’s essay or help him choose au courant extracurricular activities.  And the son’s after-school pizza delivery job is not exactly eye-catching to an admissions officer infatuated with “crafting” a “diverse freshman class.”  Working-class applicants would be better off promoting LGBT+ rights in Zimbabwe than delivering for Domino’s.

Ironically, eliminating the SAT to help black and Hispanic applicants will only increase the benefits of expensive coaching.  Specifically, absent a measure of raw intellectual ability captured by the verbal SAT test, the costly helping hand to build impressive résumés necessarily looms larger.  The cop’s son might have scored a perfect 1600 if the school required the test or weighted heavily, but since so many schools now downplay such displays of brain power, the cop’s son must compete with rivals who, thanks to expensive help, submitted stellar personal statements, “published” articles in “peer reviewed journals,” and benefited from other comparable eye-catching advantages.    

Will these beneficiaries of expensive gaming the system fail once they enter college sans their life-support apparatus?  Hardly.  The extensive paid support network continues.

The internet abounds with paper-writing services, and one such site even assures potential buyers that they can receive papers in as little as three hours.  Everything is done by experts and is 100% original and thus undetectable with plagiarism software.  (Various legal disclaimers are also supplied if those submitting the paper are caught.)  Another site offers papers at between $10 and $13 a page.