The College Admissions Playing Field

News Flash: it’s not level

A scandal broke the week of March 11, 2019 in which authorities charged several celebrities, college coaches and self-proclaimed college entrance consultant William Singer with several crimes, including bribery and money laundering. In essence, they accuse the celebrities of paying Singer money which he used to get the celebs’ kids into elite universities. For some of them, it’s alleged that Singer hired people to take the SAT or ACT for the students: other had their students listed as athletic recruits when they weren’t even playing the sport. In those cases, the coaches got involved, and they’re likely to be charged or indicted as well.

I won’t slam the celebrities, nor say anything else about Singer: the courts will decide their fates. My purpose is to address the fact that some students have more avenues to get into college than others, and how that makes the college admissions playing field woefully uneven.

When I served as Dean of Enrollment Management, I remember speaking to coaches frequently when they were lobbying for their recruits. This was at an NCAA Division III school which offers no athletic scholarships. Yet the coaches would still lobby the Financial Aid Office asking them to provide any financial help possible for their incoming students. Let me emphasize, they didn’t ask us to do anything illegal, but they wanted us to go above and beyond to find the money to support their students.  The coaches figured the more money their student athlete secured that would increase their chances of enrolling at our college and the coach’s prospects of a winning season. After all, money talks.

I served as the Chief Student Affairs Officer at another college and learned how money talked. As Dean, I sometimes  spoke with a complaining parent who would say in an off-handed way “You know, I pay full boat.” In case that phrase means nothing to you, it means the student doesn’t qualify for financial aid, and the family is playing the bill out of pocket. This is as opposed to students who receive financial aid. When parents told me about paying “full boat,” I always bristled: did that mean I was to treat their students differently because they have money, rather than handle their concerns on their merits? On two occasions, I asked something like: “Oh, I am supposed to treat your child differently because they pay more to go here?” The parent would always come back with, “No, I didn’t mean that.” But in fact, they did: they expected to be treated with more deference or respect or to get favors for their student because they paid full price. Sorry, but that’s not how I roll.

There are other ways show how the playing field isn’t even. In my job working with students who typically aren’t seen in colleges and universities, I notice few have ever taken part in an SAT or ACT prep course. And few of them could afford private music lessons, usually just taking lessons in school. And with sports, they played volleyball throughout high school, but could never afford to play in juniors, which is one way college coaches find their volleyball recruits. The money that some people have isn’t something they shouldn’t posses: they earned it, after all. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing that their wealth and position doesn’t give them an inherent advantage. It’s when people use their wealth in the ways being reported that there is a problem.

All we can do as regular people to help our students is to learn how colleges work and provide the best springboard for our students so they are equipped to push through the inequities and thrive. That’s another thing I’ll continue to focus on within CollegeandParents.