College Admissions

OK, I'll 'fess up.  I paid $1500 to get admitted to UP.  Oh wait, that was a semester tuition payment, and they were taking anyone who could fog a mirror.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions-scale-elite-schools-20190312-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions-fraud-corruption-list-20190312-story.html

up7587 wrote: they were taking anyone who could fog a mirror.

Shoot, I'd heard UP didn't even require an applicant to make a reflection prior to the early 80's...


A friend, who works for College Board, the owners of the SAT, told me the investigation has been going on for some time, but they were surprised by the breadth of the corruption and the amount of money involved in the fraud.

Interesting that UCLA soccer coach, Jorge Salcedo, was caught-up in the dragnet.

LA Times wrote:Longtime UCLA men’s soccer coach Jorge Salcedo was placed on leave by the school Tuesday morning after being indicted as part of a widespread corruption scheme involving the admission of students to top universities using falsified test scores and athletic profiles.

Salcedo has been charged with conspiracy to commit racketeering after allegedly accepting $200,000 in bribes for his role in facilitating the enrollment of one female student and one male student to the school under the pretense of being soccer players even though they did not play the sport competitively.

I wonder how the other players feel. "Man....this guy sucks. Coach recruited him here? And gave him a scholarship? Weird."

DoubleDipper wrote:

up7587 wrote: they were taking anyone who could fog a mirror.

Shoot, I'd heard UP didn't even require an applicant to make a reflection prior to the early 80's...


A friend, who works for College Board, the owners of the SAT, told me the investigation has been going on for some time, but they were surprised by the breadth of the corruption and the amount of money involved in the fraud.

I’m not surprised, and it’s not new.

I had a high school lacrosse team mate who got into UVA who was dumb as a post and from a rich family.
Two other fantastic Lacrosse player twin brothersgot into UVA despite being declared functionally illiterate. ( they didn’t last two years)
Then, of course, you have to wonder how George W. Not only got into Yale, but graduated.

This was also manifest in a couple great lacrosse players who were admitted to military academies despite low C averages.

DD wrote:Shoot, I'd heard UP didn't even require an applicant to make a reflection prior to the early 80's... Razz

I think maybe you are thinking of Seattle U.
(Cough- Elgin Baylor)

Truly the University of Spoiled Children: https://pagesix.com/2019/03/13/lori-loughlins-daughter-olivia-jade-was-on-yacht-of-usc-official-when-mom-was-charged/

All because her mother did not want to wear a UCSB Gauchos shirt around LA.

Another soccer coach caught in the scandal is former USC coach  Ali Khosroshahin , the fellow who took Jim Milinder’s recruits to a women’s national championship in his first year coaching the program. The team went downhill every year after.
His assistant Laura Janke was also named.

The two of them allegedly received $350,000 in payments sent to their private soccer club

And former  Yale soccer coach Rudolph Meredith allegedly received $400,000 in Payments. The head coaching position there is named for him.


But the biggie for me is Stanford’s sailing coach John Vandemoer, who plead guilty to receiving $770,000 in bribes for admissions fraud.

Not only does that dwarf the (alleged) payments to the soccer coaches, but it also puts permanently to rest the claim by Stanford supporters that athletes had To go through the same rigorous admissions standards as the student body. It also spoils Stanford’s record of being the last D1 program never to have suffered a major violation.

(It’s not strictly so. The softball team was cited for practices that were too long, and one football player received some impermissible benefits. The ncaa did not find lack of institutional control in those cases.)

It’ll be interesting to see if the ncaa thinks Stanford excercised control this time.


The good thing for Stanford is they can brag their degree is worth more.

From the NCAA:

NCAA wrote:"The charges brought forth today are troubling and should be a concern for all of higher education. We are looking into these allegations to determine the extent to which NCAA rules may have been violated."

I hear they are so mad about it they are looking into the death penalty for U. Wisconsin Green Bay

Karen Peters, UP Senior Associate Athletics Director, spent some of Tuesday night reading the coverage of the admission scandal.

She said she was "shocked:"

“It’s crazy that it happened,” she said, “but when you read through it, it was clearly a loophole there to be exploited.”

How colleges manage admissions for athletes varies widely, Peters said. But it’s “fairly common” for selective institutions to grant a specific number of slots to the athletics department each year, she said.

For example, Georgetown gives its coaches roughly 158 slots per year to work with, according to the affidavit.
Whether the “slot” given to a student guarantees admission or just a leg up in the process also varies among colleges, Peters said.

At the universities named in the affidavit, designation as an athlete results in admissions prospects that are “higher — and in some cases substantially higher — than those of nonrecruited athletes with similar grades and standardized-test scores,” according to the document.

Peters, who worked at Stanford for 10 years as an athletics administrator, said the university had a specific number of admissions slots, but she would not say what the number was.

At Stanford, Peters said, admissions officers had the ultimate authority to grant admission, with coaches only giving input. “Something like this never would have crossed my mind,” she said.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Bribery-Scheme-Coaches/245891

pilotram wrote:I wonder how the other players feel. "Man....this guy sucks. Coach recruited him here? And gave him a scholarship? Weird."

Yeah, I mean just use the time-honored legal tactic of getting into college by giving the university a lot of money above the table....

Cal gets added to the list of schools in the scandal.

https://nypost.com/2019/03/16/uc-berkeley-joins-list-of-schools-ensnared-in-college-admissions-scandal/

President Napolitaneo says the school will deal with the perps.

Story of a girl who got into UCLA via faked soccer credentials:
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ucla-admissions-soccer-recruit-20190319-story.html

@iowahawkblog wrote:Forcing UCLA to play her at goalkeeper all season would be the most hilarious NCAA punishment of all time

The USD coach in the admissions scandal was named by the university.


And the winner is...

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - University of San Diego officials Wednesday named former men’s head basketball coach Lamont Smith as the college employee involved in the campus admissions bribery scandal known as “Operation Varsity Blues.”

The initial indictment, released earlier in March, alleged real estate developer Robert Flaxman paid about $100,000 to get his son in the “side door” with the help of a USD coach.

Federal documents claim an FBI witness and Smith worked to accept Flaxman’s son, an Industrial Systems Engineer Major, as an athletic recruit, although he did not play basketball.

And USA today has some more details. Smith “resigned “ today from his post as a UTEP assistant.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2019/03/20/usd-identifies-lamont-smith-in-admissions-bribery-scandal/39232085/



Question: who was the AD who fired Brad Holland?

It just occurred to me that a couple of his former assistants closed out Salcedo’s career when UP beat UCLA in the tournament.

I am purely speculating and have zero knowledge on this whatsoever, but... What is going on at USD? This scandal, point-shaving, and that golfer who washed her car with a university water source...

The potential for NCAA actually imposing sanctions on a big name school brings to mind the quote from Jerry Tarkanian: "The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky, they are going to give Cleveland State another year of probation"

SouthCarolinaPilot wrote:I am purely speculating and have zero knowledge on this whatsoever, but... What is going on at USD? This scandal, point-shaving, and that golfer who washed her car with a university water source...

A_Fan wrote:The potential for NCAA actually imposing sanctions on a big name school brings to mind the quote from Jerry Tarkanian: "The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky, they are going to give Cleveland State another year of probation"

Or UP being so upset with Coach Porter's performance they fire Coach Sorenson.