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The Insider: Your Expert Guide to College Admissions

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I can vividly remember sitting at my desk in the fall of my senior year of high school and being so nervous I could barely breathe. I'd been on dozens of college tours, spoken with countless students, and interviewed endlessly. But I still hadn't found "the one." I hadn't experienced that "eureka" moment. You know, the one where you're walking around a campus and just know it's where you're going to spend your college years. Some of my friends had described it as a sunbeam of light falling straight down onto their head while listening to angels sing and birds chirp.

But there I was, with no idea where I wanted to go, what I wanted to be, or why I should even go to college in the first place. All I really knew was that in 12 months I had no idea where I was going to be. Cue the difficult breathing (and tears).

I'm going to be honest with you. There are a lot of parts of the college admissions process that simply are NO fun. Standardized testing, anxious waiting periods, panicked thoughts of the unknown, rejection letters-the process can be downright terrifying. But, if you're willing to look "on the bright side" or try to find the "silver lining," there can be something to "fall in love" with in this wild process. I'm a firm believer in P.A.C.E.-the idea that a Positive Attitude Changes Everything. So from the other side of the desk, here are a few ways to reframe the way you're thinking about college admissions so you can fall in love with the process:

1. You're learning a lot about yourself. Even if you don't feel like you are, I promise you, it's happening! Perhaps you've had to think long and hard about a tough, introspective essay prompt or an interviewer asked you to "describe yourself in 30 seconds." At the very least, you've had to think about where you'd like to go to school, thus defining your preferred learning and social environments.

2. You're also getting to know your parents a little bit better. Sure, this might come from some pretty heated arguments (Who knew your mom cared so much about campus safety?!) or way too much time in the car (Why does your dad only listen to Bob Dylan?!), but you've built a deeper relationship with your family that will serve you in the years to come.

3. Each potential admission will result in a slightly different version of "you." Even if you applied to very similar schools, each campus has a slightly different flavor and will influence you in varied ways. As you're waiting for decisions to come back, know that wherever you end up is going to shape the person you are when you walk across the graduation stage. Just imagine all the possibilities!

4. If all else fails, you can always transfer. Honestly, your college admissions decisions aren't the end-all-be-all of life. Plenty of successful people didn't love-love-love their undergraduate years. And if it really doesn't work out, you can always transfer. Sounds harsh, but it's true.

5. At some point, it's out of your control: By winter, when your applications are submitted and everything is sitting in the hands of an application reader and their committee, you've just got to succumb to the fact that there's nothing more you can do. If you've done your work (or you believe in fate), this is where you have to trust in the process. The right schools will see your fit. (But, of course, professional disclaimer: If you're a junior, this whole process is still currently completely in your control! There's a lot you can be doing right now to make sure you get the outcomes you want!)

Sure, the college admissions process isn't all cool road trips, free sweatshirts, and acceptance letters. But there are a lot of reasons to see it as an adventure and enjoy the process as much as you can! I hope you can fall in love with the process.

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College Admissions Process: 5 Reasons to Love It | College Coach Blog

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I can vividly remember sitting at my desk in the fall of my senior year of high school and being so nervous I could barely breathe. I'd been on dozens of college tours, spoken with countless students, and interviewed endlessly. But I still hadn't found "the one." I hadn't experienced that "eureka" moment.

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Article to help with counterclaim

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Mr. Murphy, who has one child in college and another a high school senior, said he might even consider employing a private consultant, despite his 20 years of experience in education.

''It's wearing,'' he said of the college admissions process. ''And it's become very high stakes. It almost defies reason how competitive it's become. But we live in an era when valedictorians are rejected.''

Earlier this year, Alva Greenberg of Lyme hired Virginia Bush of Old Saybrook to work with her son William, 17, a public high school senior and former boarding school pupil, to meet deadlines.

''They are very straightforward and talk realistically,'' says Mrs. Greenberg of the consultants. ''They've heard it all and seen it all. I just think she's a real good resource.''

William says working with Ms. Bush has put him ahead of his classmates in the college admissions process. ''She's told me what colleges had to offer and which ones are a long shot,'' he said, adding ''I think I have a better chance of getting in with her.''

Ms. Bush, a former admissions director at a private school, has been an educational consultant for more than 25 years. In a typical year, she works with 120 students seeking entrance to boarding schools and colleges.

Like other full-service consultants, Ms. Bush helps students establish education goals, prepare for S.A.T.'s, practice for interviews and stay on schedule with applications. The consultants will also prepare a list of colleges that might be appropriate for the student, help critique college essay topics and make suggestions for extracurricular activities. Some review the student's application with college admissions officers. The final service is helping the student decide on a school.

''It's not a placement service,'' says Jan Traynor, a New Canaan-based consultant, who visits about 100 college campuses a year and keeps in touch with former clients for their assessment of their schools' qualities. ''In this business, you can't promise anything. You can't guarantee admissions to a college or money. If you could, you'd be a millionaire!''

Ms. Traynor says she likes to work with students from their sophomore year in high school or earlier. ''What's nice when you meet kids early,'' she says, ''is you can find out what their talents and interests are.''

What students are most likely to benefit from a private education consultant? Dan Parrish, associate director of admissions at Connecticut College in New London, says it's probably not those attending private high schools with low student-to-counselor ratios. Instead, it's probably those attending a large high school without much access to a guidance counselor, who have learning disabilities or an academic record that's hard to explain.

''In general, the benefit of an independent consultant is not that they improve your chances of admission,'' says Mr. Parrish. ''A good consultant should make a student a better consumer, one who applies to more appropriate schools.''

Public school guidance counselors don't usually refer students to educational consultants and some even withhold the student's academic record from the independents, says Ms. Bush.

''They're not happy with us,'' she says. ''Some feel we're being overpaid and they're being underpaid. It's unfortunate. It would be so much better for everybody to be rooting for the student. And working with the guidance counselor gives me an extra dimension of the child to know about.''

Mr. Sklarow says average income of association members is $65,000 a year, a figure comparable to the salary of school guidance counselors. Some do earn well over $100,000, but they usually have additional staff and offices to support, he said. And the independents work evenings and weekends.

Ann Brennan, for one, head guidance counselor at Stamford High School with a student body of 1,800, is not convinced of the benefit of the private service.

''I don't believe in the concept at all,'' she says. ''That's the guidance counselor's job and we do it for nothing. People -- how do I put this nicely? -- people become so anxious that they think unless they spend money, they're not going to get their kid into college. And that's not true. I don't think it provides you with a leg up. What's going to provide you with a leg up is your own resume.''

Mrs. Brennan said her school sponsors three college information nights, financial aid seminars and other services each year because it recognizes that parents need help. In addition, she says, the guidance counselors are particularly knowledgeable about schools between Maine and Virginia, the region of most interest to students.

''We know what kind of student we've sent before and who is likely to get in,'' she says.

Mrs. Brennan, however, recognizes that, in most school districts, students lack access to guidance counselors during the critical summer months. ''We should be working part of the summer,'' she says. ''We have to be available. I think it's the wave of the future.''

Mr. Sklarow says studies show guidance counselors nationally are assigned to work with an average of 500 to 600 students at a time. In Connecticut, however, the average per counselor is 300, he says. But counselors today have to spend much of their time on issues beyond class schedules and college preparation, like family violence and substance abuse, he adds.

''I don't fault the counselors at all,'' says Mr. Sklarow, who blames budget cuts. ''School systems aren't putting enough of a serious commitment to counseling services.''

Although the typical family hiring an independent consultant earns between $75,000 and $100,000, Mr. Sklarow says most association members also do pro bono work.

Maxene Mulford, a Stamford-based novelist and creative writing teacher, is even seeking grants and working pro bono with a local high school offering to help less affluent students prepare their college essays. This past summer, Ms. Mulford also formed a business called Uniquely U to coach students with their essays -- not by writing them, she said, but by helping to make them more personalized and expressive.

Mrs. Mulford blames the elimination of writing centers at the high school level for the increased need in services like hers. She says most educational consultants do not provide essay-writing assistance, a glaring lack in her view.

''The essay is the one thing you have real control over, how you present yourself,'' she says. ''Your record is what it is. This is a real opportunity to put together a whole portrait; to make the application into a picture of all these facets of you that the stats aren't going to do. It kills me that this service is not available to every kid.''

Wayne Locust, director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Connecticut, sees the use of college consultants as a regional trend and he expects it to grow. But he warned that sometimes the pretty package that results is not in line with the student's performance record. That sends up a red flag.

''In some cases, the service is valuable,'' says Mr. Locust, ''and in some, it's not worth it. Unfortunately, the more and more it's perceived to be competitive to get into particularly the more selective institutions, the more families and students are going to be looking for other options and avenues to enhance their chances of getting in.''

Most agree that everyone preparing for college should start with the school guidance counselor.

''There are plenty of children out there from all different backgrounds who are getting into the Ivy League colleges without the help of consultants,'' said Ms. Bush. ''I don't think students are being treated unequally by colleges if they don't have a consultant.''

Ms. Bush says college admissions officers who are informed that a student is using a consultant consider that along with all the other information on their background. ''The child has to stand on the merits they have earned for themselves,'' she says. ''Colleges are not fools!''

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College Admissions, the Consultant's Way

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Mr. Murphy, who has one child in college and another a high school senior, said he might even consider employing a private consultant, despite his 20 years of experience in education. ''It's wearing,'' he said of the college admissions process. ''And it's become very high stakes. It almost defies reason how competitive it's become.

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Problems with the bias of who should be accepted

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THE remarkable academic success of Asian-Americans has touched off a growing national debate about whether some colleges are erecting informal quotas to limit their admissions. Administrators from Harvard and Princeton to Berkeley and Stanford strongly deny there are such quotas. But more and more Asian-American students, faculty members and community leaders have complained that some Asian-Americans are being turned down despite having higher scores than other applicants.

''It is a very sensitive subject,'' said Fred Hargaden, for 15 years dean of admissions at Stanford and now a vice president of the College Board in New York. ''People are tiptoeing around it.''

What makes the debate particularly difficult, those involved agree, is that the data on admissions numbers can be used to support arguments on either side. In California, for example, Asian-Americans make up only 6 percent of the state's population but accounted for 24.7 percent of the undergraduates and 27 percent of the freshman class last year at Berkeley, the most prestigious campus of the state university system. By contrast, Hispanics form 19 percent of California's population but only 7.1 percent of Berkeley's undergraduates, while blacks were 7.7 percent of the state population and 5.1 percent of the school's undergraduates. Such statistics can be used to show that Asian-Americans are perhaps the most overrepresented ethnic group on many of America's leading campuses. But there are Asian-Americans who maintain that they must have better records than other applicants to gain admission, and even when they do, they get turned down. Those who feel this way cite numbers, too. At Harvard, for example, 12.5 percent of Asian-American applicants were accepted in 1985 as against 15.9 percent of all applicants. At Brown, Asian-American students studied figures supplied by the admissions office for the classes of 1984 through 1987. They found that 21 percent of the whites, compared with 18 percent of the Asian-Americans, who applied to Brown were accepted. The Asian-American students who were admitted during the same period averaged 1 point higher on the verbal portion of the S.A.T. than successful white applicants and 18 points higher on the math portion.

One consequence of Asian-American success, many feel, is that they are forced to compete against one another in disciplines in which they excel. At Berkeley, Wang Ling-chi, an associate professor of Asian-American Studies, said he knew of several Asian-Americans who had been rejected for admission even though their grades were high enough. Each, he said, had wanted to major in electrical engineering, a field already crowded with Asian-Americans.

A task force of Asian-American community leaders, including several judges in the San Francisco Bay Area, has also charged administrators at the Berkeley campus with feeling ''that there are too many Asians on campus'' and trying to shift some of them to other universities in the state system.

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WHY ASIANS ARE GOING TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS Some Fear Colleges Use Quotas to Limit Admissions

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THE remarkable academic success of Asian-Americans has touched off a growing national debate about whether some colleges are erecting informal quotas to limit their admissions. Administrators from Harvard and Princeton to Berkeley and Stanford strongly deny there are such quotas.

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Problems with the College Admissions Process

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Problems with the College Admissions Process

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Explains the increase of competition to get into colleges

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This week, my Well column for Science Times focuses on the stress of the college admissions season and the heavy toll it takes on students. I asked three students, each in a different phase of the process, to share their stories about their efforts to get into college.
Phoebe Lett, 16, a day student at a private boarding school in Hightstown, N.J., is a junior in high school just beginning the admissions process.
I started my junior year believing that I would win acceptance to the right school simply by being myself. But no matter how hard I tried to block it out, I began comparing myself to other students. Advice from my pre-calculus teacher has stayed with me. He is a Princeton graduate, rumored to have received a perfect score on his SATs, speaks with a thick Jamaican accent and is currently training for the Olympics.

"This is high school," he told us. Who, he asked, dictated that the only benefit one should receive from it is a grade and an acceptance letter? In his view, high school should be about more than just getting into college.

I fear for my rapidly approaching senior year. Should I really spend nine hours a night on school work? As I rack up as many extracurriculars, community service hours and "beneficial relationships" (college-prep speak for impressive recommendations), I can't help but think that it's not good enough. Better grades, higher scores, more varsity letters, more leads in the play: have I been bulking up an application that perhaps doesn't reflect who I am, but instead just represents what a college wants from me? That is my true fear.

Robin Karlin, 17, a senior at Oshkosh West High School in Wisconsin, will attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an astrophysics and Spanish double major after receiving rejections from Stanford, Harvard and Yale.

Around the application deadline you're studying for finals, and it's your senior year. You already have a lot of classes and you have to write essays and you're already stressed out thinking "what if they don't want me?'' And you worry what if you don't get into any school at all? I'm not from a big city. We have pretty good schools, but I think in a bigger city with more people you have more perspective on where you stand in the nation. I'm not really sure how good I am.

I wasn't so terribly disappointed. There is the money aspect, and Madison was offering me a good scholarship. I got that offer before the rejection letters so I was already thinking I should go there anyway.

Sam Werner, 18, of Norwalk, Conn., achieved a perfect score on his SAT test but was not accepted into his top picks, Stanford or Princeton. He's now a freshman at Notre Dame.

Everyone I had talked to, once they heard "perfect SAT," they said, "You can get in anywhere." That was the hardest part, having everyone tell me I would and then not getting in. It was a rough few days. The rejection letters and my parents both kept telling me it's not a case of me not being good enough, but a case of too many qualified applicants. But it's really hard not to feel like you got rejected....

That was really the first major setback in my life I can remember. I felt like it was so out of my hands. Once I started getting mail from Notre Dame about rooming and stuff, that's when I started coming around and thinking, "I'm going to a really awesome school."

You hear the phrase "Oh, it will look good on a college application" so much in high school that people end up doing stuff just so it looks good for college. My theory at the time was, "I'm just going to be myself and if I don't get into the school, then I don't get into the school." It's hard to remember that when you're getting rejected, but I know now I didn't get in there for a reason, and I came here for a reason. I love it here.

To read the full Well column, click here.

Do you have a story to share about the stress of college admissions? Post your comments below.

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The Burden of the College Admissions Process

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This week, my Well column for Science Times focuses on the stress of the college admissions season and the heavy toll it takes on students. I asked three students, each in a different phase of the process, to share their stories about their efforts to get into college.

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The pressure of wanting the perfect college

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"You have to do more than be a good student," said Jennifer Hong, 15, of Dunwoody, Ga., who has joined the Future Business Leaders of America even though she intends to be a pediatrician.

The Ivy-or-bust mentality is evolving as a defining issue from earliest childhood. It haunts the games students play, the vacations plans they make, relationships with parents and friends and even the sports they choose.

Harvard University was deluged with a record 18,000 applications for the 1,600 places for men and women entering in 1995, up 50 percent from 12,000 applications in 1990. The University of Pennsylvania was similarly swamped with 15,000 applications this year, compared with 10,600 five years ago. Applications to Princeton University have also climbed, from 12,600 in 1990 to 14,200 for 1995. All three universities say the odds have never been tougher.

The amount of down time in these youngsters' lives is disappearing rapidly. The two largest national tutoring services that focus on S.A.T. preparation, Kaplan Educational Centers and the Princeton Review, each enrolled more than 30,000 student in their after-school classes in 1994, almost double the number of five years earlier. In the last five years, Kaplan has added 1,000 satellite classrooms to its 150 learning centers as demand has grown from Tullahoma, Tenn., to Minot, N.D., said Jonathan Grayer, the president of Kaplan.

And the demand for their services is coming at an ever-earlier age. Three years ago, the Princeton Review introduced a junior level, for grades 7 through 10. More than 5,000 now attend.

"Parents are asking us for S.A.T. prep even for our eighth and ninth graders," said Marcia Evans, president of Academic Study Associates in Armonk, N.Y., a company that provides summer enrichment programs at five universities. Duke University, a pioneer in summer programs for the mathematically gifted, today serves about 6,000 children a year.

College expectations are even redefining the hot sports. "You see kids giving up baseball for lacrosse," said an 18-year-old from Wilton High School in Wilton, Conn., who asked that her name not be used. Lacrosse, she says, often leads to big Ivy League scholarships. Crew is another popular choice, because it is seen as an easy way to stand out.

The pressure to succeed is also touching the lives of the very youngest children. Educational toys have become the fastest-growing category in the industry, according to Playthings magazine, a monthly trade journal. Stores like Egghead Software have entire shelves of products for toddlers.

The emphasis on beating the competition is so profound even in kindergarten and first grade that children think they must win all the prizes "just to feel 'good enough,' " said Maria Alba-Fisch, a child psychologist in Mount Kisco, N.Y.

The regular rankings of colleges by U.S. News and World Report and Money magazine, plus "The Bell Curve," the recently best-selling book by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray (Free Press, 1994) about America's intellectual elite, have contributed to the angst. So has the latest boomlet in the birthrate, called the baby boom echo, plus the rising cost of an undergraduate degree, which can now top $100,000.

Educational counselors have found that parents are reluctant to spend a huge sum on a college without a prestigious name. But the pressure can "drive a wedge" between parents and their children when it starts too soon, because the children can't always see the point, warned John Katzman, president of the Princeton Review.

Antoinette Saunders, a clinical psychologist working with children in Wilmette, Ill., warned of increased rebellion and resentment and even drug or alcohol abuse among less able children.

Many parents say it is a no-win situation. "It's the way we give our children the very best chance for their future," said Toni Peebler, a Manhattan mother of a 14-year-old son. "The child might be more relaxed if the pressure were off. But try being the only boy in a class of 20 who didn't get into the Harvards of the world. It's not only their future but their self-worth that's in jeopardy."

Others argue that a busy schedule is healthy. "Being involved in a multitude of activities has helped Karen find her strengths," said Ilene Sumberg, in Norwalk. But what about the stress? "When we think she's going into overload, we talk about where she can pull back," Mrs. Sumberg said. "It's a way to learn priorities." Karen says she is learning to become an efficient time manager, adding that it helps her enjoy her tight schedule rather than resent it.

Anwar Bennett, 15, of Decatur, Ga., who has set his sights on either Cornell or Vanderbilt, lets out the tension by playing soccer or golf. Yet, he sounded melancholy as he recalled the fun of being the "class clown," a role he relished until ninth grade, when his parents sent him to parochial school and private after-school tutoring. Things had to change, he said, because "as a black youth, you're afraid you'll get even less opportunities if you don't get into a good school."

The cutthroat college competition can warp friendships. "If you get a really good grade in math, then everyone else in the class gets mad at you," a student observed at a focus group in Wilton on college pressures. Betsy Kahan, a clinical psychologist in Wilton and a former consultant to the town's public schools, said it was particularly tough for a successful girl to develop relationships with boys who viewed her as a competitor.

To keep friends and appearances, "kids lie to each other about their grades and their scores," said Amanda Rose, executive director of Stanford Coaching, a Manhattan service that provides private tutors. Typically, she said, a child will call a friend to find out how much time has been spent studying for a test. The friend, who may have been working for six hours, may say, "Only half an hour," to prevent the other from doing as well. Lisa Jacobson, president of the company, knows youngsters who do "all nighters" with their books and coffee.

The top colleges insist that they're not to blame and that the panic emanates from rising applications and wider economic concerns. "We're hearing it's statistically much harder to get into the right kindergarten in some cities," said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions.

Yet, the pressure to excel may also be coming from a change in attitude toward financial aid by the colleges. At a conference on higher education held last month at Spelman College in Atlanta, one paper reported a nationwide shift toward basing financial aid on merit. "So extra-curricular activities have to be even more impressive," said Alison R. Bernstein, director of the educational and cultural program at the Ford Foundation and a former associate dean of the faculty at Princeton. And this, she added, will further separate the rich and poor. "You will lose a lot of kids whose parents can't give them that extra leg up."

Claire Gaudiani, president of Connecticut College, says that ivy has crowded people's vision too much. "Ninety-eight percent of our 1993 graduates have gone on to graduate school or are employed," she said. "The Fortune 500 companies actively recruit on campus, and we see starting salaries in the $40,000-to-50,000 range."

But Ms. Jacobson said, "You can say to a child, 'Don't worry, it doesn't matter where you go,' but with all the peer pressure and hype, the kids won't believe you."

She urges parents to remove themselves from the "me too" trap and to show a child, through specific examples, that many roads lead to success in life. "Otherwise," Ms. Jacobson said, "those children may never know the sheer joy of just being a kid."

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"You have to do more than be a good student," said Jennifer Hong, 15, of Dunwoody, Ga., who has joined the Future Business Leaders of America even though she intends to be a pediatrician. The Ivy-or-bust mentality is evolving as a defining issue from earliest childhood.

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Problems with the SAT's and the ACT's

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A trove of secret files made public in a lawsuit against Harvard outlined a system of admissions preferences and back doors for certain applicants. Credit Credit Tristan Spinski for The New York Times

Standardized test scores are manufactured. Transcripts are made up. High-stakes admissions decisions are issued based on fabricated extracurricular activities, ghostwritten personal essays and the size of the check written by the parents of the applicant.

American universities are often cast as the envy of the world, august institutions that select the best and the brightest young people after an objective and rigorous selection process.

But the bribery scandal unveiled by the Justice Department this week - and a number of other high-profile cases that have captured the headlines in recent months - has shown the admissions system to be something else entirely: exploitable, arbitrary, broken.

At the heart of the scandal is a persistent adulation of highly selective universities. "Elite colleges have become a status symbol with the legitimacy of meritocracy attached to them, because getting in sanctifies you as meritorious," said Jerome Karabel, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a historian of college admissions.

The case, in which dozens of parents are accused of buying spots at elite universities for their teenagers, comes amid already heightened scrutiny of college admissions.

Last summer, a trove of secret files in a lawsuit against Harvard was made public, outlining special admissions preferences and back doors for certain applicants.

Then the news broke last fall that a Louisiana preparatory school had fabricated stories based on racial stereotypes to get its students into selective colleges.

The court papers released this week says that the organizers of the bribery scheme identified and abused weak spots in the admissions process: special accommodations in standardized testing and a system of reserving slots for students favored by athletic coaches. The parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get higher test scores for their children and to have them fraudulently recruited for boutique sports.

The charges against the parents, who include Hollywood actresses and powerful executives, have exposed how thin the line is between admissions help that most middle-class families consider not just legitimate but de rigueur, like sending a child to a Kaplan class for SAT help, and outright fraud, like paying a ringer to take the test for the student.

In the days since the scandal broke, college consultants and admissions directors have found themselves in an awkward, sometimes defensive position. They have expressed shock at how the system was manipulated, while being acutely aware that they, as part of the system, may bear some responsibility for an admissions process that has spun out of control.

"It isn't exactly broken, it's breachable," said Theodore O'Neill, who was dean of admissions at the University of Chicago from 1989 to 2009.

Parents accused in the scandal took advantage of extra-time allowances on the ACT or SAT exams, court documents said, and bribed test administrators to allow someone else to take the tests or to correct students' answers.

Cheating on standardized tests has long been seen as an admissions vulnerability. In 2011, prosecutors on Long Island accused students of hiring others to take standardized tests for them. Testing officials have also reported troubles in Asia, where SAT and ACT scores have been delayed and, in some instances, canceled because of allegations of widespread cheating.

The tests, which also routinely face attacks that they heavily favor affluent students who can afford coaching, are becoming optional at a growing number of selective schools.

Colleges say they use a "holistic" admissions system - weighing factors like hardships and service to the community - in part to account for the edge given to those who can attend better schools or pay for test coaching.

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A New York Times investigation found that administrators at the T.M. Landry College Preparatory School in Breaux Bridge, La., had falsified transcripts and made up student accomplishments. Credit Annie Flanagan for The New York Times

But reports of fraud at the T.M. Landry College Preparatory School in Breaux Bridge, La., in November have shown those measures to be vulnerable, too. A New York Times investigation found that administrators at the school had falsified transcripts, made up student accomplishments and exploited the worst stereotypes of black America to concoct stories that could be fed to selective schools.

Some of the revelations this week were reminiscent of the secrets of admission revealed at the trial last October, in which Asian-American students rejected by Harvard accused the university of downgrading their applications based on subjective measures. Documents in the case shed light on, among other things, the little-known Dean's and Director's Interest Lists, closely guarded lists of applicants connected to top donors or other people of interest to the university, and the Z List, a back door for students who were borderline academically.

In essence, the wealthy parents accused in the federal charging documents took similar ways in. William Singer, the college consultant accused of being at the center of the bribery scheme, even called his services a "side door," according to court papers. Compared with the more traditional route of, say, endowing a building, which could cost millions, the door Mr. Singer offered cost only hundreds of thousands of dollars, a relative bargain.

Other documents in the Harvard lawsuit showed the strong advantage that universities give to recruited athletes; at Harvard, their admission rate in recent years was 86 percent.

This week, the bribery investigation illustrated how even those preferences can be gamed.

Prosecutors said that parents funneled millions of dollars through Mr. Singer, sometimes through a charity front, to coaches, administrators and sports programs so they would designate their children as recruited athletes in boutique sports like water polo and sailing. Often the children had no experience playing on a competitive sports team, and were not expected to play once they got in.

The scandal has raised questions about whether such athletic preferences are fair - or even necessary.

"Ivy League and sports, to me that's an oxymoron," said Christopher Hunt, a college admissions consultant.

Mr. O'Neill said that while an argument might be made for recruiting preferences in major sports like football, it was harder to justify for less popular programs.

"It seems ludicrous that basically upper-middle-class white kids are given advantages because of their capacity to play minor sports that are meaningless to most people," he said.

But other experts said that eliminating those preferences would be counterproductive.

"If you're going to have an athletics program, then you need to recruit athletes," said E. Gordon Gee, the president of West Virginia University. "If you're going to have an orchestra, you need to have orchestra players."

The investigation may spur more schools to reconsider other admission preferences, such as those for legacy students, or the children of alumni. Universities say those preferences encourage community and fund-raising, but impassioned criticism has mounted in the wake of the Harvard lawsuit, and recent news about the influence of wealth on college admissions is likely to keep that fire burning.

According to court documents, the admission rate for legacies at Harvard was 33.6 percent. The rate for the Class of 2022 as a whole was under 5 percent.

"It's like going to the movies - you need a ticket," said Mimi Doe, a founder of Top Tier Admissions, a college counseling service. "Your scores and grades get you in the door. But guess what? Half the seats are roped off with a big red cord."

Mr. Karabel, the sociologist, said that the bribery crisis simply reflected problems in broader society. "I think that as America has become more and more unequal, affluent parents have become desperate to pass on their privileges to their children and avoid downward mobility at all costs," he said.

Fair access to education, the engine of upward mobility, he suggested, is the casualty.

Alan Blinder and Marc Tracy contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: College Admissions: Vulnerable, Exploitable And, to Many, Broken. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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College Admissions: Vulnerable, Exploitable, and to Many Americans, Broken

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Standardized test scores are manufactured. Transcripts are made up. High-stakes admissions decisions are issued based on fabricated extracurricular activities, ghostwritten personal essays and the size of the check written by the parents of the applicant. American universities are often cast as the envy of the world, august institutions that select the best and the brightest young people after an objective and rigorous selection process.

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Concerns of the rising number of cheating

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Citing heightened concerns about educators' cheating that have emerged after recent scandals in Atlanta and Philadelphia, a New York State panel has recommended an overhaul in how the state administers and grades its standardized tests.

Some recommendations issued on Tuesday by the panel, which was convened by the state's Department of Education in July, will take effect immediately; others require approval of the Board of Regents, the state education policy board.

Among those that take effect right away: All state tests must now begin on the same day in districts throughout the state, to heighten test security. Also, all educators who proctor or grade state exams will be required to certify that they were trained and followed security procedures.

In outlining the recommendations, John B. King Jr., the state education commissioner, and Valerie Grey, the executive deputy commissioner, wrote in a memorandum to the Board of Regents that not enough was being done to detect and deter cheating by teachers and principals, given the rising stakes of tests.

"Here in New York, as standardized test scores are increasingly utilized for school and district accountability" and in teacher and principal evaluations, they wrote, "it is imperative that those tests are not compromised."

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Educators Move to Curb Cheating on Handling Standardized Tests

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Citing heightened concerns about educators' cheating that have emerged after recent scandals in Atlanta and Philadelphia, a New York State panel has recommended an overhaul in how the state administers and grades its standardized tests.

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Gives thought provoking questions to answer and analyze

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Is the College Admissions Process Fair? (Published 2017)

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What criteria do you think colleges should use to admit applicants?

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Gives student examples and their adversities

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"This fits with what we're all seeing," said Brian Van Brunt, director of counseling at Western Kentucky University and president of the American College Counseling Association. "More students are arriving on campus with problems, needing support, and today's economic factors are putting a lot of extra stress on college students, as they look at their loans and wonder if there will be a career waiting for them on the other side."

The annual survey of freshmen is considered the most comprehensive because of its size and longevity. At the same time, the question asking students to rate their own emotional health compared with that of others is hard to assess, since it requires them to come up with their own definition of emotional health, and to make judgments of how they compare with their peers.

"Most people probably think emotional health means, 'Am I happy most of the time, and do I feel good about myself?' so it probably correlates with mental health," said Dr. Mark Reed, the psychiatrist who directs Dartmouth College's counseling office.

"I don't think students have an accurate sense of other people's mental health," he added. "There's a lot of pressure to put on a perfect face, and people often think they're the only ones having trouble."

To some extent, students' decline in emotional health may result from pressures they put on themselves.

While first-year students' assessments of their emotional health were declining, their ratings of their own drive to achieve, and academic ability, have been going up, and reached a record high in 2010, with about three-quarters saying they were above average.

"Students know their generation is likely to be less successful than their parents', so they feel more pressure to succeed than in the past," said Jason Ebbeling, director of residential education at Southern Oregon University. "These days, students worry that even with a college degree they won't find a job that pays more than minimum wage, so even at 15 or 16 they're thinking they'll need to get into an M.B.A. program or Ph.D. program."

Other findings in the survey underscore the degree to which the economy is weighing on college students.

"Paternal unemployment is at the highest level since we started measuring," said John Pryor, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at U.C.L.A.'s Higher Education Research Institute, which does the annual freshman survey. "More students are taking out loans. And we're seeing the impact of not being able to get a summer job, and the importance of financial aid in choosing which college they're going to attend."

"We don't know exactly why students' emotional health is declining," he said. "But it seems the economy could be a lot of it."

For many young people, serious stress starts before college. The share of students who said on the survey that they had been frequently overwhelmed by all they had to do during their senior year of high school rose to 29 percent from 27 percent last year.

The gender gap on that question was even larger than on emotional health, with 18 percent of the men saying they had been frequently overwhelmed, compared with 39 percent of the women.

There is also a gender gap, studies have shown, in the students who seek out college mental health services, with women making up 60 percent or more of the clients.

"Boys are socialized not to talk about their feelings or express stress, while girls are more likely to say they're having a tough time," said Perry C. Francis, coordinator for counseling services at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. "Guys might go out and do something destructive, or stupid, that might include property damage. Girls act out differently."

Linda Sax, a professor of education at U.C.L.A. and former director of the freshman study who uses the data in research about college gender gaps, said the gap between men and women on emotional well-being was one of the largest in the survey.

"One aspect of it is how women and men spent their leisure time," she said. "Men tend to find more time for leisure and activities that relieve stress, like exercise and sports, while women tend to take on more responsibilities, like volunteer work and helping out with their family, that don't relieve stress."

In addition, Professor Sax has explored the role of the faculty in college students' emotional health, and found that interactions with faculty members were particularly salient for women. Negative interactions had a greater impact on their mental health.

"Women's sense of emotional well-being was more closely tied to how they felt the faculty treated them," she said. "It wasn't so much the level of contact as whether they felt they were being taken seriously by the professor. If not, it was more detrimental to women than to men."

She added: "And while men who challenged their professor's ideas in class had a decline in stress, for women it was associated with a decline in well-being."

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College Freshmen Stress Levels High, Survey Finds

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"This fits with what we're all seeing," said Brian Van Brunt, director of counseling at Western Kentucky University and president of the American College Counseling Association. "More students are arriving on campus with problems, needing support, and today's economic factors are putting a lot of extra stress on college students, as they look at their loans and wonder if there will be a career waiting for them on the other side."

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Background information and evidence for how it's flawed

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The actress Felicity Huffman was released on a $250,000 bond after she was charged in the college admissions scandal. Credit Credit David Mcnew/Agence France-Presse Images

In March, federal prosecutors charged 50 people in a brazen scheme to secure spots at Yale, Stanford and other big-name schools in what they called the "largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice." They have accused dozens of parents of paying millions of dollars in bribes to help their children get into the schools.

For those catching up, or those overwhelmed by the volume of news, here's an overview of The New York Times's coverage.

Thirty-three parents, many of them high-profile: The parents included the television star Lori Loughlin and her husband, the fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli; the actress Felicity Huffman; and William E. McGlashan Jr., a partner at the private equity firm TPG. Ms. Huffman plead guilty, along with 13 other parents, in federal court in Boston, where the investigation is based, on April 8. Jane Buckingham, an expert on youth marketing, was also charged in the scandal.

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William Singer, known as Rick, is at the center of a major college admissions scandal. A series of videos posted on his YouTube account reveals some of the advice he gave to students. Credit Credit Katherine Taylor for The New York Times

The system operated by falsifying a student's test scores or fabricating their athletic status. Here's how the authorities say it worked:

Parents paid for scores: According to prosecutors,parents paid between $15,000 and $75,000 for higher test scores. Mr. Singer encouraged some parents to get a learning disability waiver for their children, which can give students more time to take the tests or allow them do so without the regular supervision.

The cheating went down in three ways: Someone else would take the SAT or ACT exams for the student; a person in on the scheme would serve as the proctor and guide the students to the right answers; or someone would review and correct the students' answers after the tests were taken. Many students were not aware their answers would be changed, prosecutors said.

It was all under wraps: The parents made payments to Mr. Singer's company that were disguised as donations and would be funneled through the organization to the universities, allowing the parents to claim tax deductions.

Read more about how the scheme worked, from bribes to doctored photos.

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Jovan Vavic, the water polo coach at the University of Southern California, was fired after he was arrested Tuesday morning. Credit Juan Lainez/Cal Sport Media, via Associated Press

Mr. Singer has pleaded guilty: He pleaded guilty to counts of racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of justice in federal court in Boston on Tuesday. The judge set sentencing for June 19, and Mr. Singer was released on a $500,000 bond.

But it's not over for them yet: At least some children of the parents who were charged in the scandal have received so-called target letters, which notify people that they could be targets of a criminal probe, according to a lawyer involved in the case. A number of schools implicated in the scandal, including the University of Southern California, have warned that it might punish students who were connected to the scheme. U.S.C. students have been blocked from registering for classes or withdrawing, pending a university review.

All of the defendants are out on bail, of varying amounts.

U.S.C. faces more scrutiny: This isn't the first scandal to ensnare the University of Southern California, but this time, the school is near the epicenter. Four U.S.C. athletic officials are charged with taking bribes in the scheme, more than are named at any other institution. The case has also brought renewed attention to long standing class divides on college campuses.

Other clients are stunned: Mr. Singer's company's website included testimonials from some of the hundreds of families who used its legitimate counseling services, including one from the golfer Phil Mickelson, whose daughter Amanda is a sophomore at Brown University. Asked about the scandal on Thursday after the first round of the Players Championship, Mr. Mickelson said, "We're probably more shocked than anyone." He said Mr. Singer had come well recommended by friends, and did not approach him about doing anything fraudulent for his daughter.

Read more about some titans of finance and law who have been swept up in the scandal.

About a year ago, federal prosecutors in Boston were working on a securities fraud case, when their suspect gave them a tantalizing bit of information: He knew about a college admissions fraud scheme and he could help law enforcement learn more, according to a person with knowledge of the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The suspect, who hoped to be granted leniency for his cooperation, told them that a college coach had taken bribes to secure athletic recruiting spots for prospective students.

Investigators ran down the tip, and by last April the F.B.I. had set up a sting in a Boston hotel room, where they say Mr. Meredith, the Yale soccer coach, solicited a $450,000 bribe from a parent in exchange for saving a spot for his daughter on the team.

Investigators pressed Mr. Meredith, who led them to an even bigger target, Mr. Singer.

There is outrage and sadness: From coast to coast, the scandal has dominated conversations on campuses. Students railed against privilege and greed. Some worried that their diplomas had been tarnished. At Georgetown, arguments erupted in class as some students offered their loan applications as proof their parents did not game the system. We also received nearly 500 comments from students across the country. Most said they were appalled, but not surprised.

Students are suing: Two Stanford University students brought a federal class-action suit on Wednesday on behalf of "qualified, rejected" students, accusing eight schools of negligence. (The suit was amended on Thursday, dropping one plaintiff and adding others with no ties to Stanford.)

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Listen to 'The Daily': Bribing Their Way Into College

A major college admissions scandal has laid bare the price of entry for some wealthy families - and the cost for everyone else.

Back to The Daily

transcript

Hosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Clare Toeniskoetter, Andy Mills and Ike Sriskandarajah, and edited by Paige Cowett and Larissa Anderson

A major college admissions scandal has laid bare the price of entry for some wealthy families - and the cost for everyone else.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is "The Daily." Today: When a federal prosecutor revealed a $25 million scheme to purchase college admissions for the children of celebrities and executives, he declared, "There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy." But there is. It's Thursday, March 14.

archived recording

We're here today to announce charges in the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice. We've charged 50 people nationwide with participating in a conspiracy that involved -

michael barbaro

Jenny and Katie, where does this story begin?

katie benner

So according to prosecutors, the first lead in this case came about a year ago.

michael barbaro

Katie Benner covers the Department of Justice. Jennifer Medina is a national correspondent for The Times.

jennifer medina

So this story begins with a totally different investigation.

katie benner

Federal prosecutors are investigating an entirely separate case when one of the targets in that investigation gave them a huge tip. There could be a bribery and cheating scandal occurring in the college admissions process.

jennifer medina

The feds think that this is pretty interesting, and it turns out -

katie benner

They discovered a man named Rudolph Meredith, a soccer coach at Yale. And they thought that he might be taking money in order to falsely recruit students to the team so they could get into the university. Once the F.B.I. understands how big a deal this is going to be, and as they investigate and more and more schools become involved -

jennifer medina

They bring in more and more investigators. They give this a name: Operation Varsity Blues.

michael barbaro

As in the James Van Der Beek movie?

jennifer medina

As in the James Van Der Beek movie.

michael barbaro

Which we all saw.

jennifer medina

I didn't see.

archived recording 1

Dozens of actors, coaches and C.E.O.s are among those charged. ARCHIVED RECORDING 2: The former C.E.O. of Pimco, the investment firm. ARCHIVED RECORDING 3: Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin.

archived recording 4

You also have William McGlashan. He's a senior exec at TPG.

archived recording 5

Huffman starred on ABC's "Desperate Housewives," and Loughlin is best known for her role on "Full House."

jennifer medina

And it all leads back to this guy in Newport Beach, California, who charges somewhere in the ballpark of $15,000 to more than a $1 million to guarantee your kid a spot in a school.

michael barbaro

And who is this guy in Newport Beach, California?

katie benner

So this guy is Rick Singer.

archived recording (rick singer)

Hi, my name is Rick Singer, and I'm the founder of The Key.

katie benner

Singer is a guy in his 50s who lives in Newport Beach, California.

archived recording (rick singer)

As a father myself, I understand the stress the college admissions process can put on your family.

katie benner

He is sort of a player in this world of academic coaches who help students, oftentimes who can pay a lot of money, get into colleges, including some of the nation's top schools - Yale, Stanford, Harvard.

archived recording (rick singer)

For the past 25 years, our coaches have been helping students discover their life passion and guiding them and their families through the complex college admissions maze.

jennifer medina

He was doing legitimate college counseling work, catering to the wealthy, trying to get their kids to school, but legitimate stuff.

archived recording (rick singer)

My Key method unlocks the full potential of your son or daughter and sets them on a course to excel in life.

jennifer medina

So he does that for several years, then seems to somehow take a break and works in a call center, but then somehow gets back into this and starts making connections for people to get their kids into schools that they want to get to.

archived recording (rick singer)

Getting into the right college will set the trajectory for the rest of your son or daughter's life. Don't leave it to chance. Let a Key coach come alongside you and your family to truly unlock your student's potential.

katie benner

Eventually, the F.B.I. lands on Singer's door.

jennifer medina

He looks in all this huge amount of evidence that they've got against him. He thinks about what he's going to do, and he agrees to flip.

katie benner

And Singer begins to help the F.B.I.

jennifer medina

He agrees to wear a wire. He agrees to go back to the clients that he's worked with for years and tape, in excruciating detail, what he's done. He agrees to call all these people he's worked with - people he's accepted bribes from and people he's given bribes to. Some of these are parents. Some of these are coaches. Some of these are associates - people he's paying off in one way or another.

katie benner

They're discussing extremely strange, bizarre, extraordinary measures that very, very few people could imagine ever taking in order to get their kid into school.

jennifer medina

There's sort of two different ways that he operates. The first is this athletic scheme where he amasses a number of coaches at a number of different schools - more than a dozen schools - who agree to accept his bribes and say, I want this person on my team. All these coaches get special slots for athletes. They get admitted to universities on a totally different track than anybody who's not an athlete.

michael barbaro

So these coaches are communicating with the admissions departments at these colleges. They're almost getting, like, their own personal bucket of student athletes.

jennifer medina

Absolutely, that's exactly the way it works. You get to say, this is who I want on my team, and the admissions office essentially agrees to go along with what you say. So he's paying off these coaches in all these different colleges.

michael barbaro

And how do the coaches pretend that someone is a legitimate athlete when they're not? And how do the parents play along with that as well?

jennifer medina

So he had a very elaborate scheme in lots of cases. One of his typical ways of operating apparently was to fake photos. In one case, he said, I need a picture of an Asian girl playing soccer. And we're going to Photoshop the applicant's face onto this photo.

jennifer medina

Almost every case that we know about, this person never played on the team. They would drop out as soon as they arrived on campus. In some cases, the kids didn't even know that they were expected to play on this team. They created a profile saying that this kid ran track, and he gets to campus and is speaking to a college counselor, and the counselor says, oh, so I see you run track. And the kid says, what are you talking about? He didn't even know.

michael barbaro

O.K., so that's one scam, this kind of sports coaching method scam. What was the other scam that the F.B.I. discovered?

katie benner

He talked about how he arranged for students to take their SAT or ACT exams at special sites where he had bribed the proctors on those tests to basically correct the student's answers. He talked about how he encouraged the parents to get their children tested for disabilities so that they could have more time to complete the exam. He talked about how he would sometimes even have a man - an adult - pose as the students at the test centers that he, quote, unquote, "controlled," and that adult would take the test for the kids. And this guy was so good at it, he could basically get any score that they wanted.

michael barbaro

Jenny and Katie, you've described an elaborate system of wealthy parents bribing their children's way into college. Aren't there less risky ways for rich people to get their children into college?

jennifer medina

The world of college admissions for the extremely wealthy is really complicated. So there are three ways to get in. First, you've got the front door. There's tests. There's grades. There's your extracurricular activities, your achievement. There's also the issue of legacies. If your parent went to this college you're trying to get to, you'll probably get some extra points. If you play a sport, you might get some extra points so you can be on their team. That's the front door. And then there's the back door.

katie benner

There are so many legal ways that the ultra-wealthy have been gaming the system for a long time to get their kids into school. They donate tremendous amounts of money. They help people build buildings and work on development projects.

jennifer medina

And this is also the world where you have incredibly high-end tutoring. This is not just spending a couple hours learning how to navigate an SAT. This is hundreds of thousands of dollars, many times over years, to come up with all sorts of elaborate ways to brand yourself, essentially, into something that you think will get you into the right college, whatever you consider the right college to be. So then there's this third door, what Singer referred to as a side door, which is essentially just bribing.

jennifer medina

Cutting out the middleman or cutting out the pretense of anything other than paying people off and bribery. And I think the reason why this case is so fascinating, and we're sitting here talking about it and everybody is so interested in it, is the difference between these two doors - the side door and the back door. Now, if you're the F.B.I., that line is very clear. It's clear that it is completely illegal to simply bribe somebody to get your kid into the college of your choice. But if you're one of these parents, where you're operating in a world where you know many people are paying tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars to universities in an often successful attempt to get your kid into the college, then maybe this doesn't seem so strange.

katie benner

Certainly we know it's breaking the law. And certainly you can tell from the recordings that were transcribed by the prosecutors that the parents knew they were breaking the law. But they also don't act like breaking the law is a completely big deal. And they seem to operate in a parallel universe, with different consequences for them.

jennifer medina

They knew that this crossed a line. They did it anyway. The why of why they did it anyway is actually really interesting and really complicated. It's not as though if these kids went to college their income potential was going to grow enormously.

michael barbaro

Because they're already rich.

jennifer medina

They're already wealthy, and studies have shown that people who go to colleges and are already coming in with wealth do not necessarily see a huge jump in their income over a lifetime. On the other hand, that's not true for kids who come from poorer families. There is a lot that shows - especially if you go to a highly selective college and if you're successful, there's lots of things that show your income potential goes way up. It is a path to the middle class. That's what we've always thought of college as being - a path to the middle class. But it's not clear that if you're already part of the most-upper class, that you need to go to some specific college to stay in that upper class.

michael barbaro

So why then? Why do these parents who can afford to participate in this kind of scam - why do it? If there's no tangible benefit, why take that risk?

jennifer medina

I don't think it's about economics. That might be part of it, or they might tell themselves that it's part of it. But it is obviously at least somewhat about status, about maybe being able to put that sticker on the back of your car that says, my student goes to Yale University. Maybe it's that you want to give your kid some perfect social experience that you think they're going to have at this right school. Or maybe you just want to save your kid embarrassment. Clearly these parents didn't have a lot of faith in their kids. And what's also really fascinating here is that it's not just Ivy League schools. Yale is, of course, the one that is sort of eye-popping. And there's Stanford, and there's all sorts of elite schools. There's also U.C.L.A. But there's also schools like Wake Forest University and University of Texas at Austin - all schools that they might have been just fine getting into on their own, and are not schools that we think of as holding a lot of cachet in these elite circles. So what was that about? Why were they so willing to spend so much money and so much effort and break the law to get into schools? We really don't know the answer to that yet.

katie benner

Another way to look at it from the point of view of the parents is that no matter what their motivations are, whether they be social or whether they want an education for their children that they believe is the best education that money can buy, they have this feeling that the kids face really long odds. College has never been more competitive. I think that Harvard accepted about 5 percent of all of the students who applied last year. And they understand that colleges are also looking for a wide array of students as well. They don't want a class just packed with all of the people who can pay full tuition, donate a million dollars to a development fund and continue to give for the rest of their lives because they're extremely well-heeled. They're looking for something more. And they might worry that their students are not extraordinary enough to get in. And so they're going to use the money that they have to try to offset not a systemic inequity, like socioeconomic inequities or racial inequities, but to offset their children's own inability to get in.

jennifer medina

A lot of it seems to be about the certainty of it, about the security. It's not a question of maybe you will or won't get into this school. It's, I'm going to make sure that you have a spot at this specific school that you want to be at, that I know I can get you into. And I am going to be able to breathe a sigh of relief or celebrate or congratulate you much earlier, with much more confidence, than I would if I had gone through the front door, or even if I had gone through the back door.

michael barbaro

And where do these privileged kids who were actually implicated in this scheme - where do they fit into all of this?

archived recording

I don't know how much of school I'm going to attend, but I'm going to go in and talk to my deans and everyone and hope that I can try and balance it all. But I do want the experience of, like, game days, partying - I don't really care about school.

jennifer medina

So the kids whose parents participated in this scheme are fascinating. It is clear that some of them knew what was going on, but many of them didn't. Many of them are probably waking up this week stunned to learn the great lengths that their parents not only went through to cheat on their behalf, but the great lengths they went to to hide it from them.

katie benner

The parents worked so hard to keep their children from knowing what was going on. And this creates a whole other layer of privilege that we see in education, that we see in business, that we see that these adult parents certainly had in spades - this idea that if you do not know all of the winds at your back pushing you forward, helping you along, you will believe that you deserve everything that you got.

jennifer medina

They've been operating under the assumption that they earned their spot. They deserve it. And I think this is forcing us to have a conversation, to think about, what does deserving it really mean? What this has done is really laid bare, for all of us to see in plain view, how unequal the system truly is - that if you have enough money, you can buy your way in. But at the same time, there are thousands of students who are taking out massive loans to come in and are desperate to get into higher education, which our country has long believed is the way to get into the middle and upper class. It's supposed to be this system based on your academic merit that's going to give you a path to get from wherever you started from to where you want to be. But what we've seen is that's not true. If you believe that education, and that a college education specifically, is the great equalizer or can be the great equalizer of our country, what this shows you is that that system is completely broken.

katie benner

It's difficult to think of a scenario that speaks more clearly to the idea of inequity.

jennifer medina

What this really shows is that there's all sorts of ways people have been using money and power and influence in this system for years that is completely legal and completely accepted. And it's perpetuated every single admissions cycle.

michael barbaro

Jenny Medina, Katie Benner, thank you both very much.

jennifer medina

Thank you.

michael barbaro

Since the F.B.I. revealed the bribery scheme on Tuesday, at least three college coaches from Stanford, the University of Texas and the University of Southern California have been either fired or placed on leave. Two of the most prominent parents in the case, the chairman of a major law firm and a partner at a private equity company, have also been placed on leave. The fate of the students involved in the scheme remains unclear. On Wednesday, the University of Southern California said it would investigate any current students connected to the bribery and reject any future applicants who benefited from it.

For nonwhite students, it was a reminder that nothing is equal about America's college admissions process. "We can put in work from fifth grade to 12th grade, every single day, come in early, leave late, and it's still not enough," said Khiana Jackson, 17, a senior at Kauffman who has been accepted to the University of Chicago.

Some students were galled by the money being thrown around in the allegations. "I was mad at the fact that parents spent millions of dollars to pay these counselors to falsify test reports and in the meanwhile, I know everyone in here is figuring out how to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for the rest of our college education," said Jacob Esquivel, 18, who plans to attend the University of Miami.

Read more about how the case has served as another harsh lesson in racial disparities.

Dozens of people were charged in what the authorities said was a scheme to get students admitted to top schools, including the University of Southern California. Credit Rozette Rago for The New York Times

It's gotten harder, even for the rich: It can cost $10 million or more in donations to earn an applicant truly special consideration beyond their merits, according to several experienced college admissions consultants.

It's not all bad out there: We spoke withDylan Chidick, a formerly homeless high school student who has been accepted to 17 colleges so far. "There is always going to be someone with more privilege and more connections," he said. "You have to work harder to achieve the same goals."

Now, standardized testing officials are scrambling to fix weaknesses in the process that the scheme exposed, particularly special-needs arrangements that allowed the cheating to happen. While federal authorities say that this is the largest prosecution of its kind in history, it is far from the first.

In one previous scandal, expert test-takers in New York memorized the answers and phoned them to people taking the exam hours later in Los Angeles. The answers were also carved in code on the sides of pencils being used to take the same tests. Here's a list of other schemes.

Several of the nation's most selective universities trumpeted the news that they had record numbers of applicants - and record low admission rates.

Colleges have a clear incentive to tamp down their admission rates, which figure in annual ranking surveys and help burnish schools' sought-after status.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a California private school whose board included a parent charged in the college admissions investigation. It is the Thacher School, not the Thatcher School.

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College Admissions Scandal: Your Questions Answered

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In March, federal prosecutors charged 50 people in a brazen scheme to secure spots at Yale, Stanford and other big-name schools in what they called the "largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice." They have accused dozens of parents of paying millions of dollars in bribes to help their children get into the schools.