College Admissions: How to Jump to the Head of the Line Charles Lipson
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2019/03/18/college_admissions_how_to_jump_to_the_head_of_the_line_469259.html
To understand how this whole college admissions scam worked, I asked a friend who knew about it first-hand. Here is what Dee Seaver told me:
Sure, I wanted to go to Southern Cal. But would USC be impressed by climbing Mount Everest barefooted or herding unicorns with Peruvian peasants? Those items on my application might not be enough. That’s why Dad turned to Rick Singer as a “college adviser.” What a guy! He suggested I highlight my summer charity work building carbon-neutral air conditioning for every Nigerian. Dad’s friends in the hedge fund industry also put in the good word for me. Even better, they donated funds for the school’s new Pilates Studio and Sauna. I got in!
I knew there was zero chance of flunking out. That’s a secret most folks don’t know about elite colleges. All I had to do was pick the right major, regurgitate the teacher’s crazed ideology, and avoid any courses in math and science. My plan: stick to writing papers about gender fluidity in Jane Austen. If you show up occasionally for class and take the exams, then B-minus is the closest you’ll come to a failing grade. Just don’t major in astrophysics, my friend, and you’ll sail through.
With this sweet setup, I can focus on my primary interests: social inequality and the evils of capitalism. Fortunately, there is still plenty of time for drinking, partying, and getting horizontal. People who say “College is just not worth it” are completely clueless. I f*#kin’ love it.
While I toke this blunt, let me offer a few tips about how it all works. The way I figure it, the key is to find a school that goes in for “holistic admissions.” That’s easy. All private schools do! It takes the edge off all that meritocracy garbage. Some of it makes sense. You need some deep pockets to pay all those scholarships and salaries. Some of it just lets them tweak the results whichever way they like.
“Holistic” is such a great word. It sounds so good. What it really means is that admissions people can consider whatever they feel like, give it whatever weight they want, and hide it all from outsiders. That way, they can consider things like “your personality” without even meeting you. Harvard does it. The strange thing is how Asian-Americans applicants to Harvard have such inferior personalities. I guess that’s why they make up only 15 percent of Harvard’s undergrads but three times as many at Cal-Berkeley, where that kind of discrimination is illegal. Cal is one of the top universities in the world. What I can’t figure out is how they manage with all those bad personalities.
The other key, my adviser explained, is to work with universities where a single person can make the “admit decision.” Then, all you have to do is find out who that person is and explain to them the joys of having a second home, mortgage-free. It’s the best setup for bribery. Or so I’ve heard.
It is incredibly easy to repair, too, if any school wants to bother. Just make sure no single person, not even a winning football coach, can make the admit decision by himself. If the decision belongs to a committee, keep the names quiet and make sure it has rotating members. That way you don’t know who to bribe. Odd that the world’s most vaunted universities didn’t figure that one out. But, hey, their loss is my gain, and I ain’t complaining.
Even odder? The people who administer the SAT and ACT college entrance exams couldn’t figure out how to make sure the person taking the exam is actually the same one who signed up for it. I thought giving those exams was their whole business? Live and learn, I guess.
Gotta go. My smoke is down to a roach, and, baby, that term paper on how white nationalism causes global warming isn’t going to write itself. Hey, know anybody who can help me with that?
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