Duke Alumna pleads guilty in college cheating scandal

[Reilly]

... Duke's undergraduate enrollment has not increased since I was there in the '80s. Meanwhile the number of applications has more than tripled. There is no good reason why the student body size has not increased as well.

This shows 1,740 enrolling for the class of 2022: https://admissions.duke.edu/images/u...profileWEB.pdf

How big were Duke's entering classes in the 1980s? I thought they were 1,600 or less but don't know for sure. If they were 1,600 exactly, an increase of 140 to 1,740 would be an 8.75% increase in class size (140/1600).

[Bluedog]

This shows 1,740 enrolling for the class of 2022: https://admissions.duke.edu/images/u...profileWEB.pdf

How big were Duke's entering classes in the 1980s? I thought they were 1,600 or less but don't know for sure. If they were 1,600 exactly, an increase of 140 to 1,740 would be an 8.75% increase in class size (140/1600).

Pratt increased in size after they built more facilities and recruited additional faculty. They started looking to matriculate ~50 more students/class in around 2008 (?) I think.

Edit: Happened between 2005 and 2009:
"2005: Pratt begins a four-year expansion of its undergraduate class – adding 50 students each fall to raise total enrollment to more than 1,200 by 2009."
https://pratt.duke.edu/alumni-giving.../timeline-text

[chris13]

Duke accepted 11.5% international students last year. That is one of the biggest forces behind the cheating scandals that rarely gets mentioned. Duke is actually on the low end of that statistic among highly selective schools. Every Ivy plus Duke and Stanford accepted record numbers of international students last year. None of those schools increased enrollment. International students are taking up more and more slots at these schools in the zero sum game of admissions. Are these kids exceptional students? Probably, although some are athletes and some have wealthy parents, and some have both. Are they more exceptional than the American students they are replacing? No. They aren't. And that's a problem. American families subsidize our universities with our tax dollars at a time when more and more American students are getting squeezed out.

My solution is to quit making it a zero sum game. We should start putting financial pressure on American universities to increase the enrollment of American students. Duke, among others, lauds their increase in international students as improving the quality of the education for all. Exposure to different cultures is a benefit. Well, sure, except you are decreasing the number of American students who receive that benefit. Duke's undergraduate enrollment has not increased since I was there in the '80s. Meanwhile the number of applications has more than tripled. There is no good reason why the student body size has not increased as well.

1) Do the international students pay full sticker price? I know these elite colleges are supposed to be need blind but I wonder if this matters. Also, and this is not a Duke specific issue, the kind of things that help get you into selective colleges are the kind of things it helps to have family wealth buy (private schools, travel sports teams, admissions counseling, etc.). I wonder how the economic profile of the international students compares to the American.

2) 14.5% of the students at the Ivy plus college system (Ivies plus Duke, Stanford, MIT and UChicago) came from the top 1% of the income distribution. 13.5% came from the bottom 50%. https://www.businessinsider.com/elit...project-2017-1

3) The cynical part of me believe that elite colleges want to drive the acceptance rate at low as possible because more selectivity keeps them at the top of the US News ratings which argues against increasing class size.

4) The really cynical part of me has a hard time distinguishing between alumni donations, legacy preference and athlete preference, and the kind of bribery that happened in these cases. I can see the difference, but it often seems like one of degree rather than kind.

[Bostondevil]

This shows 1,740 enrolling for the class of 2022: https://admissions.duke.edu/images/u...profileWEB.pdf

How big were Duke's entering classes in the 1980s? I thought they were 1,600 or less but don't know for sure. If they were 1,600 exactly, an increase of 140 to 1,740 would be an 8.75% increase in class size (140/1600).

I stand corrected. Bravo, Duke. Entering classes vary as does the student body population but 1740 freshman is higher than freshmen classes of the 1980s. I haven't checked freshman class sizes - what I was checking (and it's been a couple of years since I did it) was number of undergraduate degrees conferred at graduation. (And, tbh, I was looking at Harvard more than Duke because I am currently more familiar with Harvard undergraduates.) I know the class size when my oldest son matriculated at Duke was not as high as 1740. Total undergraduate enrollment is listed at ~6600, in the '80s it hovered around 6000. Individual class size does not remain constant for 4 years, of course, and freshman enrollment tends to be higher than upperclass enrollment (by year). I found this useful document - https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/...les/statistics. I do notice that the number of full time faculty has increased by about 150%. Do I think the class size should do the same? No. The smaller size is one of the strengths of a school like Duke, but they could certainly increase the class size without losing the feel. I think Duke should seriously consider increasing by another 1000 students or so, hovering around 7500 total undergraduate enrollment. I think pretty much all of the most selective schools should do the same.

[sagegrouse]

Then why are athletes given preferential treatment in admissions? I can understand football / basketball athletes, as those are revenue generators. But why are athletes in minor sports given a break on admissions?

Under the heading of "that's the way it is," consider this:

November 1958: At inaugural ceremonies for the University of Washington’s new president, Charles E. Odegaard, President Clark Kerr of the University of California last week offered some of the green fruit of his experience: “I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty.”

(a) Every college in the country that competes in athletics wants to be successful: this means ensuring that there are competitive ath-a-letes admitted in every sport.

(b) If no one played the admission-preference game, then there could be a random distribution of talented athletes across the colleges, but, in fact, there is competition for athletes in every sport at every level.

(c) Consider the U. of Chicago, the first major university to abandon big-time athletics -- it dropped out of the Big Ten in 1946 after abolishing football in 1939. It prides itself today as offering no advantages in admissions for any athlete. But as detailed in the NY Times Mag a while ago -- the coaches can take the application of any football recruit to the admissions office and get an immediate decision on admission. Uhhh,... that's an advantage.

(d) I had a friend take his large and mobile son to interview at a small but prestigious New England college with Division III athletics. The football coach urged the son to take the SAT's again (his scores were already pretty good). "I get only three exceptions in football [from admissions], and I am not wasting one on a tackle."

(e) I had another friend's son go to an admissions session at an Ivy League school that was all or mostly prospective athletic recruits. An inexperienced admissions counselor came in and stupidly said, "The only reason you are being seriously considered for admission is that you are athletes." The kid was so mad he was spitting and went elsewhere.

[Bostondevil]

Under the heading of "that's the way it is," consider this:



(a) Every college in the country that competes in athletics wants to be successful: this means ensuring that there are competitive ath-a-letes admitted in every sport.

(b) If no one played the admission-preference game, then there could be a random distribution of talented athletes across the colleges, but, in fact, there is competition for athletes in every sport at every level.

(c) Consider the U. of Chicago, the first major university to abandon big-time athletics -- it dropped out of the Big Ten in 1946 after abolishing football in 1939. It prides itself today as offering no advantages in admissions for any athlete. But as detailed in the NY Times Mag a while ago -- the coaches can take the application of any football recruit to the admissions office and get an immediate decision on admission. Uhhh,... that's an advantage.

(d) I had a friend take his large and mobile son to interview at a small but prestigious New England college with Division III athletics. The football coach urged the son to take the SAT's again (his scores were already pretty good). "I get only three exceptions in football [from admissions], and I am not wasting one on a tackle."

(e) I had another friend's son go to an admissions session at an Ivy League school that was all or mostly prospective athletic recruits. An inexperienced admissions counselor came in and stupidly said, "The only reason you are being seriously considered for admission is that you are athletes." The kid was so mad he was spitting and went elsewhere.

Why was that a stupid thing to say?

[BLPOG]

Why was that a stupid thing to say?

It's insulting (as a generalization to a group by someone who probably didn't have a full grasp of the admissions credentials of everyone present and simply assumed they were all unqualified).

[YmoBeThere]

It's insulting (as a generalization to a group by someone who probably didn't have a full grasp of the admissions credentials of everyone present and simply assumed they were all unqualified).

But aren’t you now making a similar error to the one ascribed to the young counselor? You’re assuming that the counselor did not know the backgrounds of the attendees but have no evidence of such. The error of the counselor could just be that they are overly forthright in presenting the facts.

[BLPOG]

But aren’t you now making a similar error to the one ascribed to the young counselor? You’re assuming that the counselor did not know the backgrounds of the attendees but have no evidence of such. The error of the counselor could just be that they are overly forthright in presenting the facts.

I'm basing my comment on my recollection of the previous time this specific story was recounted on the board.

[Bostondevil]

It's insulting (as a generalization to a group by someone who probably didn't have a full grasp of the admissions credentials of everyone present and simply assumed they were all unqualified).

I don't know how long ago this happened, but the admissions rates at Ivies are under 10% for all of them except Cornell. Harvard's is under 5%. Admission rates for recruited athletes? Aren't that low. Even if they are equally academically qualified (which many of them are not), that is not why they are accepted. To believe otherwise is very naive.

Also, it is not assuming they are unqualified to tell a bunch of recruited athletes that they are being seriously considered only because of athletic talent. At 5-10% acceptance rates, very few candidates of any kind are being seriously considered for admission. Recruited athletes are a special category in any admissions office and they get accepted if they meet minimums on the academic side, not maximums. Granted at an Ivy, those minimums will be higher than at many other schools, but still, they are only looking for the minimum. If that weren't true - what would be the point in bribing coaches to put students on the recruited athlete list?

[Nick]

1) Do the international students pay full sticker price? I know these elite colleges are supposed to be need blind but I wonder if this matters. Also, and this is not a Duke specific issue, the kind of things that help get you into selective colleges are the kind of things it helps to have family wealth buy (private schools, travel sports teams, admissions counseling, etc.). I wonder how the economic profile of the international students compares to the American.

Generally, yes they do. More so than Americans, anyway. My wife's niece is a bright girl from Nicaragua who has good grades, good SAT scores and wants to do biomedical engineering but federal aid is only for American citizens. (And if you think affording college is difficult on a middle class American salary, try it on a middle class Nicaraguan salary.)

[Reilly]

... overly forthright ...

I'm going to start using this: I apologize if I was overly forthright ...

What's one of the definitions of charm -- the ability to make others feel good about themselves ... https://www.bustle.com/articles/1910...ing-to-experts

And the takeaway of now-president-of-UVa Ryan's graduation address when he was at Harvard -- we should make others feel beloved.

[sagegrouse]

[Sage Grouse wrote -- An inexperienced admissions counselor came in and stupidly said, "The only reason you are being seriously considered for admission is that you are athletes."]

Why was that a stupid thing to say?

Well, almost everything falls under the heading of "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

First, you are trying to entice the men and women in the room to come to Penn, and you begin by insulting their intelligence and scholastic accomplishments.

There were applicants in the room that would have been admitted regardless of athletics, including my friend's son.

To get more technical, some or maybe even all were recruited athletes who already met the Ivy League minimum standards for acceptance: the Academic Index. If the admissions counselor was pointing out that the Academic Index enabled students to be admitted with quals up to one std. dev. below the student body average, well, duh... But that's UPenn's decision, not yours.

[Bostondevil]

[Sage Grouse wrote -- An inexperienced admissions counselor came in and stupidly said, "The only reason you are being seriously considered for admission is that you are athletes."]



Well, almost everything falls under the heading of "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

First, you are trying to entice the men and women in the room to come to Penn, and you begin by insulting their intelligence and scholastic accomplishments.

There were applicants in the room that would have been admitted regardless of athletics, including my friend's son.

To get more technical, some or maybe even all were recruited athletes who already met the Ivy League minimum standards for acceptance: the Academic Index. If the admissions counselor was pointing out that the Academic Index enabled students to be admitted with quals up to one std. dev. below the student body average, well, duh... But that's UPenn's decision, not yours.

Some of them, maybe. But not all of them. UPenn received 44,960 applications this year. They accepted 3,345. That's this year and acceptance rates have been going down, so, the odds were better when this incident occurred, but, if this incident had happened this year and your friend's academically qualified son had applied without the athletics behind him, he would have had a about a 7% chance of being admitted. Overall acceptance rate this year was just under 7.5%. UPenn has 33 varsity sports teams. Assuming each team gets 5 recruits a year, that's 180 slots that go to athletes and lowers the non-athlete acceptance rate to 7%. I am probably underestimating the number of slots that go to athletes since I just looked at the lacrosse and heavyweight crew teams rosters and both have 13 freshman on their squads, but, I'll stick with my initial estimate. (I am assuming that all recruited athletes get accepted.) Way more than 7% of the applicants to UPenn are academically qualified. Athletics may not be the only reason he would have been accepted but it is one giant thumb on the scale at these highly selective schools.

More numbers for UPenn's Class of 2023. They accepted 14% international students and 15% were the first in their families to go to college - both categories your friend's son was not in, I suspect. Granted there could be some overlap but adding up the internationals, the 1st gens, and the athletes, we get around 1150 students out of 3345. Since I don't know denominators, I can't calculate an acceptance rate for students not in those categories, but, just looking at the number of slots still available, the acceptance rate certainly isn't going to be higher for the non-international non-athletes. I could be wrong, but I suspect the majority of the applicants to UPenn are not in any of those 3 categories. Again - your friend's son may have been academically qualified but getting in with the qualifications and no athletics is extremely difficult to do, so no, I do not agree he would have been admitted regardless of athletics. He might have been, but it would not have been a sure thing. I concede that I am looking at this year when UPenn's acceptance rate hit a record low, but it hasn't been that much higher in recent years. If we're talking about something that happened 20 or 30 years ago, then yeah - things were different then.

Looking at those numbers though, it's easy to see why we've had a college admissions scandal. It almost makes you wonder why there haven't been more.

[budwom]

^ People have purchased admission to top schools for decades. The difference with the recent case is that it involved so many people and so much fraudulent activity (e.g. widespread cheating on tests, numerous non athletes being deemed athletes, etc).
Helps to be a bit more discreet to get away with this...

[budwom]

having just vacuumed, and feeling frisky, thought I share tales of two sides of the ledger:

I had two classmates who got into Harvard with 400 range SAT verbals...hint, both were hockey stars...one was from a disadvantaged background, was a prince of a guy; the other was just a good hockey player.

On the other side of the ledger: classmate in grad school who had gone to a consensus top three college, was turned down at Stanford B School to which his family had given tens of millions of dollars. (He was no dope, the school he ended up at was also consensus top three). Either Stanford was for some reason highly principled or completely oblivious...I tend to think the latter in this case.

[CrazyNotCrazie]

having just vacuumed, and feeling frisky, thought I share tales of two sides of the ledger:

I had two classmates who got into Harvard with 400 range SAT verbals...hint, both were hockey stars...one was from a disadvantaged background, was a prince of a guy; the other was just a good hockey player.

On the other side of the ledger: classmate in grad school who had gone to a consensus top three college, was turned down at Stanford B School to which his family had given tens of millions of dollars. (He was no dope, the school he ended up at was also consensus top three). Either Stanford was for some reason highly principled or completely oblivious...I tend to think the latter in this case.

Business schools are a lot less deferential to legacies and donors than undergrad programs. When it comes to tens of millions of dollars, though, I think it starts to become more relevant. I read applications for a top three program and we were definitely aware of people's backgrounds (we had codes for "bootstrappers") and did focus on what people made of the resources available to them. However, I was just the first reader, so I don't know as well what went on once the applications were reviewed by more senior people who had more influence in putting together the demographics of the accepted class and had to potentially make big donors happy.

[budwom]

Business schools are a lot less deferential to legacies and donors than undergrad programs. When it comes to tens of millions of dollars, though, I think it starts to become more relevant. I read applications for a top three program and we were definitely aware of people's backgrounds (we had codes for "bootstrappers") and did focus on what people made of the resources available to them. However, I was just the first reader, so I don't know as well what went on once the applications were reviewed by more senior people who had more influence in putting together the demographics of the accepted class and had to potentially make big donors happy.

That's interesting, and I suspect it makes a lot of sense...from just my own personal, non scientific observations, most people seem to have more allegiance to their undergraduate school than their graduate school, and tend to give more money accordingly...

[Jeffrey]

That's interesting, and I suspect it makes a lot of sense...from just my own personal, non scientific observations, most people seem to have more allegiance to their undergraduate school than their graduate school, and tend to give more money accordingly...

I've had similar observations. For example, a former next door neighbor went to a very good (top 20) undergrad school and then was a HBS Baker Scholar. He has given over $10 million to his undergrad school and relatively little to Harvard. His Harvard MBA opened the doors to great wealth.

To be fair, his highest earning years are the next 10-20 and there's still hope for Harvard.

[-jk]

My cousin couldn't get into Duke Med, even with good scores...

It's tough these days, unless you can find/buy your way onto a minor team.

-jk