College Entrance Scandal
 

I was surprised nobody has mentioned the indictment yet. At least one student is involved in Greek Life. Olivia Jade Giannulli's daughter is either an Alpha Phi or Kappa at USC. I've seen conflicting information on the chapter.

I am sadly not surprised by any of this.

I'm not surprised by this either, but it certainly brings a new level of helicopter parenting.

@Benzgirl, I think you typed too fast. Lori Loughlin & Mossimo Giannulli's daughters are Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose. Both daughters are USC Kappas.

Charlotte Todd, daughter of Todd & Diane Blake, is a USC Alpha Phi.

IF other affiliations are revealed, please update.

The BBC news feed has more. The trolling on social media is wild. Reportedly there are other offspring with Greek affiliations involved in this, and it's a hot mess IMO. Gonna see a lot of heads rolling (the USC employees who took the bribes just for starters!). And the admissions (as well as current status) of unqualified non-Greek students at USC is a list that will be interesting to peruse.

Watching to see if there will be other universities implicated. Am I too awful to hope Harvard and Yale are dirty? Yes I know that is petty; my "justification" is that I have a dog in that fight. Actually, we all do.

I think the older sister Bella is Greek at USC. The younger one, Olivia, made it clear on social media that academics are not her priority, and according to one publicized court document, she didn’t even fill out the common app herself, which makes me think she may have had very little knowledge of her parents’ behind the scenes schemes.
Does this mean she and her sister get expelled from the university?

@Remiechi, Olivia and her sister posed for rowing photos in support of their applications, although neither has any crew/rowing experience or interest. Going to be difficult to claim lack of knowledge.

Don't have any insight into how USC will handle these students' admissions or status. As we've seen from the current regime in Washington, money talks. Ethics and moral code be damned. How about an autographed Bible?

Devil's advocate here ...

Really, what's the difference between an unqualified rich kid whose parents pay a coach, and an unqualified athlete whose sports alumnae pay the school?

When I first saw the stories, I heard only Harvard and Yale. Private institutions, who are free to do with their reputations whatever they like. After all, it's not like Boston University, whose graduates call their reputation into question. Then I saw the number of public, taxpayer-funded schools involved, and my perception changed.

But still - athletes do it; why not rich kids?

Everyone on my FB is focusing on and trash talking USC as if it were the only university implicated in this scandal. I'm assuming that's because the children of the two most recognizable celebrities on the indictment list went to USC; but, there were some 30 parents on the indictment list.

So far, in the articles I've read, these are some of the potentially affected universities: USC, UCLA, Stanford, Yale, University of Texas, Georgetown, Wake Forest, Northeastern University, University of San Diego, Chapman University, University of California Santa Barbara.

That ACT and SAT scores are now suspect due to this scam/cheating business angers me. Prosecute!

That wealthy parents do not get their children in private schools (USC is private) by simply making substantial donations surprises me.

Ivies have been notorious for admissions by donations. This was even before burgeoning population and renewed burgeoning economic disparity contributed to today's parental angst and the embarrassing behavior of some wealthy parents. And it makes the academic elitism claims of the Ivies kinda phunny.

Just checked out my next book club book and saw this quote on Good Reads: “You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.”

Supposedly the SAT proctor changed a student’s answers after test completion? Unless the test was administered in a room with the proctor and student being the only ones there, it would be almost impossible to correct an answer sheet. It’s not like the proctors have an answer key. And aren’t the students required to seal their answer sheet in an envelope at the end of the test period? That would require the proctor to break the seal and go over the test question by question.
Wouldn’t it far easier to have someone take the test for the student, as William Macy’s fictional son in Shameless did?

I'm trying to remember which news broadcast had it (WGN?) but they said that there was one guy who was literally taking the tests for people at $10K a pop. Not a bad day's work, if you care to be a criminal.

There is a lot of detail in the document linked below:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pres...42951/download

It is exactly as you describe, they found a way to have the student and the proctor alone in a room so answers could be changed, among other things.

The guy coordinating the scam raked in $25M from these parents. Truly unbelieveable! Well, maybe not! I suspect when you have that much disposable income, and no morals, you will spend it to ensure that your kids find success.

Athletics are so ingrained in our society that we have come to expect schools to have winning teams every year - Alabama, Florida, Georgia anyone?

The financial gain from athletics is too powerful for a school to not try and make the investment. Winning schools attract more students, more students mean more tuition money.

Athletes are openly recruited by the school to attend. Athletes possess a physical talent that they leverage to be able to attend the school. And, there are penalties if schools violate the NCAA rules (think SMU).

Also, your point was litigated in Texas in 1996, https://law.justia.com/cases/federal...78/932/504514/

I think in this case, its the extent of the people who are involved that make it shocking. People who were trusted to maintain honesty and ethics in their academic jobs.

They took advantage of accommodations for students who receive special education services, which infuriates me. People already question why some of my students (grade school, mind you) need accommodation on standardized tests for extra time, a scribe, and other accommodations.

Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy’s daughter, Sophia Grace, is a senior at a private high school in LA. Since acceptance letters/emails have gone out, anyone know where she was accepted?

Can (or should) Lori Loughlin’s daughters be expelled from USC since they didn’t get in on merits?

How is this different from Jared Kushner’s dad giving $2.5M to Harvard before Jared was accepted? Or Prez Trump’s dad giving money and using a family connection to get into Wharton?

I think it will be difficult to expel a lot of the students with the exception of Bob Zangrillo's daughter at USC (Bob is a Miami Real Estate developer). She was the one on the phone with her father trying to get someone to retake her Art History class for her online since she got an F in the class and needed to increase her GPA to get into USC. Reading the indictment phone transcript on this one turned my stomach.

Some of these kids seem to have been unaware but others certainly knew what was going on. The one student submitted a handwriting sample so that could be copied. Others posed for photos participating in "their" sport, etc. Not all of them were innocent victims. If the universities have honor codes they should be applied here.

wow this is an interesting read. Our daughter was admitted to USC med school with no intervention on our part. She is a Chi Omega and went to very large state university.

Yes, some were innocent and some were culpable.

Here are statements from UCLA and USC. Link at the bottom for the full article.

"BOSTON — Two of the colleges caught up in a sweeping admissions fraud investigation said on Wednesday that they were considering disciplining students who were connected to the scheme. And the fallout from the case was just beginning.
...

“If U.C.L.A. discovers that any prospective, admitted or enrolled student has misrepresented any aspect of his/her application, or that information about the applicant has been withheld, U.C.L.A. may take a number of disciplinary actions, up to and including cancellation of admission,” the university said in a statement.

...
"The University of Southern California, where three coaches and the senior associate athletic director were charged with taking bribes, said that it would reject any current applicants who are connected to the bribery scheme.

Wanda Austin, the school’s interim president, also said that current students whose parents have been charged with paying the bribes would also be investigated. It is unclear how many current or prospective U.S.C. students are implicated."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/u...DGYGAPaBEc75Tg

From what I can see (lurking), Amber Zangrillo is not affiliated however her older sister was a Kappa at USC but appears to have graduated. Amber may not have had the grades, considering she needed help to pass classes at a Junior College.

Jared and DT didn’t falsify their qualifications or grades. The school chose to relax their normal admission standards.

From what I've read, the main problem is the tax evasion. They disguised the payment as a charity contribution which allowed tax break. Uncle Sam don't like it when he doesn't get his.

Well, it’s NOT the Admissions dept at UCLA. I’ve known the Dean of Admissions at UCLA for over 15 years and couldn’t even help my goddaughter get in, even though she had a 4.5 GPA and an impeccable resume (graduated HS a year early, graduating college a year early and heading to med school).

UCLA has a 10% acceptance rate. That may be lower than the Ivies.

This is per TMZ, apparently Sephora had partnered with Lori Laughlin's daughter Oliva Jade on a makeup line, as of a few moments ago Sephora has dropped Oliva Jade.

Apparently, one child is a Gamma Phi at UCLA too.

Lori Loughlin’s daughters both withdraw from USC
https://www.tmz.com/2019/03/14/lori-...llege-bribery/
Her younger daughter is 19. Is she a freshman and just joined Kappa (as Recruitment is now in January) and, if so, will she get initiated?

While my curiosity wants to know if any of the students are Greek, I’m not in favor of their names being public, especially if they didn’t know their parents were doing this.

Isabelle (Izzy) Henriquez is a Kappa at Georgetown.
Friends say she "gloated" about cheating on the SATs according to several articles that came out today.

Depends on when she became a new member and how long Kappa's NM period is.

I realize many students didn't know. This one did. Many articles are coming out where friends say that a particular student knew.

USC is in Spring Break this week, so even if she pledged in January, I believe she would have been initiated by now. USC is a semester university.

Kappas - how long is your NM period?

I think anyone involved in this who claims the kids didn’t know exactly what was going on is, to use a technical term, full of horse shit.

I read through almost the whole affidavit. I think it's pretty clear that a few of the kids really didn't know -- in the telephone transcriptions, the parent sounds desperate to keep the kid in the dark and let them think they got in under their own merits. The parents specifically said things like "Kid cannot know anything about this," and were worried the kid was asking questions and getting suspicious, etc. In those cases, I feel really sorry for the kids. I can't imagine being in the dark, publicly outed, and caught in something that ruins your college experience and haunts you forever. Thanks, mom and dad.

My sister and I were driving near USD yesterday and the scandal has touched that campus. We saw people from KUSI News there.

A friend is on the college tour with her son right now and visited 3 schools in Illinois this week, including Northwestern and University of Chicago. She said the parent/administration convos from past visits greatly changed this week to drilling the schools on how they ensure students get admitted on their own merit. It was a real eye-opener to her.

I have 19 yo twins. They are sophomores who pledged last year. She has likely been initiated.

I was wondering about the Gianulli daughters' affiliations so I logged on to GC -- you guys are swift with the answers! Thanks!

Mind you, until this story broke I had never heard of Lori Laughlin, her husband, or her 'influencer' daughter.

I still remember Lori from her “Edge Of Night” days.

Lori Laughlin has been dropped by the Hallmark Channel (where she had a TV series and a movie series, about 3 a year) as well as being cut from “Fuller House”.

Her daughter, Olivia Jade, has had all but 2 advertisers drop from her social media, where she had over 1M followers.

The loonies are coming out of the wood works now. A $500 Billion law suit? Her kid would have made that much money if he had gotten into one of the named schools? Her kid didn't get in because of the scandal? Does the mother have standing?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/...-b/3168445002/

DaffyKD

Lori Loughlin was the last celeb I imagined to be involved in a scandal much less get arrested. :eek: Mossimo said something about how he didn't want his daughters somewhere like Arizona State. What a snob! If the daughters did pose in crew gear, then they must have had an inkling of what was happening. I hate it for them on one hand because they are so young, but I wonder to what extent they knew something fishy was up.

Was Felicity Huffman and William H Macy's daughter Greek?