Ever since the FBI announced the charges in their “Operation Varsity Blues” earlier this week, this scandal has been the most covered news story relating to college admissions in quite a while. This video is the News12 coverage:
Jake SAT Prep makes an appearance from 1:40 to 2:05.
Here are a few quick thoughts on this matter:
Quick take 1: People have always known that the elite use their wealth to gain unfair advantages.
This scandal merely shows how reckless and brazen some families are in expecting that a different set of rules apply to them. They literally wrote off the money they spent on these illegal services (in some cases, upwards of $100,000!) as charitable donations!
Quick take 2: Only a small number of innocent, hardworking students were negatively impacted by this.
As I mentioned in the video (at about a minute and 58 seconds in), the students that are directly harmed are those who just missed gaining acceptance off a wait list due to an actual admissions spot being offered to an undeserving student whose family bribed their way in.
Quick take 3: What’s the point of cheating anyway?
Let’s just pretend that you could get away with bribery, fraud, and outright cheating on the SAT. Would you want to? What would be the point of anything in life if you know in your heart you didn’t earn it. Life is a journey and not a destination. It’s this idea that makes all of our hard work worth it. I think most of us would like to know that we have worked hard to achieve what we have accomplished and that is what makes our accomplishments so worth it.
