NEW YORK, NY Mar. 13 (DPI) – A California college-admissions consultant spent seven years orchestrating a “guaranteed” approach to getting kids with rich parents into competitive universities – an approach that involved faked SAT tests, bribes of sports coaches and millions of dollars paid by the parents to make it all happen, according to the FBI.

The news yesterday of charges against the consultant, William Singer, and his various parent-clients, including some celebrities and a top lawyer at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, hit the airwaves and internet with unusual force. It unleashed yet another swirl of fury in the press, its pundits, and with an American public feeling cheated at every turn these days.

The scandal itself, though, appears to be small potatoes: The consultant managed to pull off the elaborate scheme for only 100 students per year, and probably much fewer – hardly a seismic number, especially considering that about 3.3 million high school senior apply to US colleges every year.

Over the seven years that Singer orchestrated his scam, he claimed to have assisted fewer 790 families, not all of whom got what they wanted, according to the FBI.

Moreover, only about $25 million passed through the scam, according to the FBI; with $500,000 to $1.2 million fees being paid by corrupt parents, and involving 6-figure bribes to sports coaches for a single applicant, Singer’s scheme – at least based on the math – could not be widespread, and thus could hardly be an example of a corrupt system.  But that is not exactly what the current political environment wants to hear these days.

The scandal triggered a much broader discussion about the college admissions process: The so-called “front door of merit” and the “side doors” of athletic-preference set asides, affirmative action, and – most controversially – the payments by alumni and high-profile donors who routinely influence admissions.  Comment boards decried the “unaccountable black box” of college admissions.

The investigation seemed to have some winners, though: One is the FBI, which with this case helped restore its reputation as the premier law-enforcement agency in the land, after years of being sullied in Washington’s political mud. Another winner was the University of Southern California, which found itself being mentioned with Yale and Stanford as an “elite university”.

Apparently an actress and her Italian-designer husband paid $500,000 to ensure that their daughter attend USC – the consultant pitched the daughter as a rower, and bribed the USC crew coach, even when the girl’s high school had no crew team.

The whole scheme – involving such huge payments to test-takers and corrupt test proctors, the photoshopping of faces onto athletes’ bodies, the payment of hundreds of thousands to minor-sports coaches to “recruit” the student – seemed to be prohibitively expensive and unwieldy to make a serious dent in the integrity of the overall admissions process.  But perception is perception, and those foolish few who did participate in such a scheme will be punished harshly not simply by the criminal-justice system but by a public hungry to satisfy its sense of class rage.

Comments from wsj.com which provided additional details in a follow-up today:

The focus on bribery by wealthy parents misses the point.   The real scandal is college admissions at elite colleges is a black box, is not transparent, is arbitrary, is not accountable and there is no oversight. It is an essentially unethical process  rife with cynicism and hypocrisy that paved the way for the bribes.
What jumps out among Singer’s many paths through his “side door” is : “……. lying about students’ ethnicities to take advantage of affirmative-action programs.”
More investigation needed into abuse of racial preference, how many students lied about ethnicities to gain admission with or without Singer’s help.

Dull-normals were the main users of Singer’s side door — they weren’t even smart enough to qualify  via Warren’s Pocahontas Door.

This is may be the tip of the iceberg as to how many of the elite in this country made it to the top…..I thought that hard work and  perseverance was the key to getting to the top of any business or industry but it appears that cheating your way there also works!  No mercy for these narcissistic fools!