Free Republic

The University of Virginia is facing a choice of historic significance: namely, whether to embrace admissions policies based on our colorblind Constitution or to engage in mass resistance to the supreme law of the land. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC, the United States Supreme Court held that the admissions programs at Harvard and UNC violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court’s ruling is, of course, binding on the parties themselves. However, this was no narrow decision. The broad constitutional mandate of colorblindness underlying the majority opinion is applicable to the University of...

Many high school students are pushing back against the importance of test scores. Awaiting responses from colleges on whether you were accepted or rejected can be quite stressful. That stress can quickly turn to disappointment when having been rejected from colleges that were high on your priority list. For one high schooler, despite her high overall average when she sent out college applications, she was shocked to receive more rejections in the mail than she hadn't been anticipating. In a TikTok video, the teenage girl, C'Lette, filmed all of the rejection letters she had received in the mail from schools...

BOSTON – A federal grand jury in the District of Massachusetts returned a superseding indictment bringing additional charges against seven university athletic officials and others previously charged in the college admissions case today. Gordon Ernst, Donna Heinel, Jorge Salcedo, Mikaela Sanford, Jovan Vavic, Niki Williams and William Ferguson have been charged with conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud, and honest services mail and wire fraud, in connection with the previously charged scheme to accept bribes and engage in other forms of fraud to facilitate cheating on standardized admissions tests and to secure the admission of students to elite universities...

Noah Millman wrote a marvelously honest piece for "The Week" last week about the pay-to-play college admissions scandal. He acknowledges what many have known for a long time: First, that admission to the most elite schools is not purely based upon merit. Second, that education as good as -- and often better than -- that at the Ivies and other top-tier institutions can be obtained elsewhere. What parents are really after, Millman says, is status. This has become more important than the education itself, or even connections, which the children of these grasping, bribing parents frankly already have. Millman makes...

Tell the truth.  After the initial shock of hearing that a group of affluent parents paid massive sums to get their progeny into elite colleges, were you really surprised this happened?  It had to happen.  It was destined to happen.  College as a whole has become a scam.All that was needed for this to happen was a guy like Rick Singer, the Bernie Madoff of college admissions.  You look at his website and it is written all over it.  “You need more than a school-appointed college counselor to help your son or daughter unlock the door to academic, social, personal...

The college admissions scandal should be the populist issue of our time. Most of the talk in our politics about how "the system is rigged" is incredibly abstract and symbolic. But this is infuriatingly concrete. On Tuesday, the Justice Department revealed a massive effort by wealthy parents and a shady "admissions consultant" to bribe and cheat their way into getting kids into a slew of elite schools. Prosecutors say William Singer, the ringleader of the operation, sold two forms of services. For tens of thousands of dollars, parents could pay for their kids to have a proctor correct their incorrect...

The KVUE Defenders dug into the foundation behind the college admission accusations. Court records show the bribe money came from "The Key Worldwide Foundation." Tax records show the foundation also gave large donations to 12 organizations, including UT athletics. The UT athletic department received $294,000 in 2015 and $252,500 in 2016, according to the tax records. The university told KVUE on Wednesday their records don't match the amounts in the foundation's tax records. They said they have a record of a $15,000 donation from The Key Worldwide Foundation on June 10, 2015. The $15,000 donation covers the same period where...

... Across the country, selective public colleges and universities are taking a page from their private counterparts and implementing what is commonly called a holistic or comprehensive admissions process. ... At Santa Barbara, the comprehensive review process was implemented in the late 1990’s, and across the entire system in 2002. Susan A. Wilbur, the system’s director of undergraduate admissions, says it enables the selection committee to view applicants in light of their socio-­economic and educational backgrounds. “We call this ‘achievement in context,’ ” she says. “We don’t want to compare a student who’s attending a well-resourced school with a student...

WESTPORT, Conn., Nov. 19 — A Crystal Rock water bottle is Exhibit A in a campaign to reduce cheating here at Staples High School, a bastion of affluence, academic achievement and unrelenting pressure to succeed. The label of the bottle had been peeled off, the history of atomic theory printed on the back and the label restored in preparation for a chemistry test. The test taker hoped for a handy crib sheet — indeed, it was even magnified by the water. But it also turned out to be easily visible to the teacher, who was more alert than he was...