9 Totally Legal Ways The Collegiate System Is Rigged In Favor Of Higher-Income Students

By Christianna Silva


an audience of about  50 people — including prosperous parents coaches, college prep executives, and Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives fame and Lori Loughlin from Full House — were charged in connection to a nationwide fraud scheme to get their children and students into elite universities, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday, March 12. The parents allegedly paid a college prep business operated by a consultant named William Singer to take tests on behalf of students or to correct their answers immediately following the fact. Singer also allegedly helped the parents bribe college coaches to lie and mention that the students were athletes sort in attempt to help admit the students as required athletes.


Of the scheme, FBI special agent Joseph R. Bonvolonta mentioned it was “a sham that strikes at the core of the college admissions process.” The core, though, was already rotten.


That “sham,” otherwise known as Operation Varsity Blues, was also unlawful, unlike a myriad of other ways prosperous families can give their college-bound children of all achievement levels a leg up. Seemingly purchasing children a slot in elite universities is nothing new; for years, we’ve heard of conveniently-timed donations made to key schools by rich families whose children happen to enroll in their programs. A prime example is Jared Kushner’s father, who pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998; according to Kushner’s high school administrators, he would likely not have been accepted purely in on his own merit. Kushner’s story is common: A recent lawsuit concerning Harvard’s admissions policies shows that the school views incoming students as income generators as much as they do actual students.


Anand Giridharadas, a journalist who wrote the book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, tweeted that the crux of the rigging scandal is simple: “Many prosperous Residents of the
U.S. Are no longer content with the generalized rigging of America in their favor. They want additional, private, bottle-service, bespoke rigging, over and above the unfair benefits they’re forced to share with other prosperous people.”


“I think one thing, just sort of consider around this narrative, [is that] this scandal is about folks who got caught cheating,” Tiffany Jones, the policy director of The Education Trust, a nonprofit that advocates for low-income students and students of color, told MTV News. “But thinking about the ways in which our existing system already cheats so several students and who those students are: disproportionately low revenue, black and brown. The way that the system already operates in terms of exclusion leads the most disadvantaged students with the least choice.”


This is what some of what Giridharadas calls “generalized rigging” and Jones plainly calls cheating looks like:

1. The legacy system

A recent investigation into Harvard University noticed that children of Harvard alumni, or “legacy” students, were five times more likely to get in than equally qualified applicants without prior connections. A 2011 study of 30 elite colleges noticed that legacy students were 45 percent more likely to get into elite colleges than non-legacy students. Statistics also shows that being a legacy student was roughly equivalent to scoring 160 points higher on the SATs, once admissions officers weighed a student’s application. Harvard University did not immediately respond to a request for comment from MTV News.


“Legacy is one of these points that people often point to because of who has historically been excluded from higher education,” Jones told MTV News. “That means those who are likely to have, you know, parents, grandparents, fantastic grandparents who have attended a particular college or university and are likely to be white, prosperous, privileged, or means due to the history of our system. And thus keeping a legacy piece of that admissions process assists the perpetuate that.”

2. Parents can donate or promise to donate to schools

A recent investigation into Harvard University noticed that children of Harvard donors were more likely to be accepted than their peers who didn’t donate. The school even kept a secret list all the applicants who are the relatives of major donors, and the students on that list had a 42 percent acceptance rate, according to the Harvard Crimson, in comparison to the in general 4.6 percent acceptance rate Harvard boasts.


And it isn’t just Harvard: This happens in schools across the nation. Donald Trump cumulatively donated about $1,480,500 to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the company school he attended before his daughter Ivanka and son Don Jr. — Notably, donations coincided with Ivanka and Don Jr.’S enrollment in the school, according to the Day-to-day Pennsylvanian.

3. Parents can spend cash on tutors

Studies show that students who receive private tutoring perform better on standardized tests. One recent study showed that the average student jumped from the 34th percentile to the 42nd percentile immediately after tutoring. Nevertheless that same study showed that private tutors cost about $3,800 student a year – which is often an insurmountable quantity of cash for lower-income families.


Lower-income students can access other options, like Khan Academy and the Purdue Online Writing Lab — free online resources that issue test-prep, writing help, and course discussion. Advocacy groups are trying to prepare these and other programs more obtainable to students, according to Annie Reznik, the executive director of Coalition for College, an audience of elite colleges and universities that are working to prepare college more obtainable for low-income and diverse students.

4. Students from prosperous families are much less likely to be first-generation college students

According to the Postsecondary National Policy Institute, the median annual household revenue for the parents of first-generation college students is about $37,565, while the median annual household revenue for their peers whose parents did go to college tends to be around $100,000 per year. This creates a cycle for success in ways the students and parents might not directly even realize: Because your parents went to college, you are more likely have the ability to afford college, and to have the resources needed to succeed at any scholastic level.


First-generation college students also face more barriers to success than their peers as soon as they are welcome to these universities, according to statistics. First-generation students are more likely to work jobs throughout university and are more likely to need at least one remedial course during college as a result of not having access to those same courses at a high school level.

5. Students from rich families are more likely to be athletes

Promising athletes with lower grades and test scores are more likely to be admitted to colleges than their non-athletic counterparts, according to the New York Times. And rich kids are more likely to fit the bill: They’re from families who could afford to support years of sports, The Atlantic reported.


It’s a double-edged sword: For several lower-income students, sports can feel like the only way out of poverty, however statistics show that they are getting shut out of sports increasingly a year. Not only can extracurricular sports be prohibitively expensive, however parents of several low-income students might not directly have the ability to take time off of work to support their children in the way that higher-income parents might. And as school budgets across the nation become tighter and tighter, athletic programs can often negatively impacted, despite the myriad ways sports programs benefit young people.

6. Students from prosperous families have better medical care

According to a 2015 study, health care is one way to explain the gap in reading and math ability between children from lower-income families versus higher-income families. And a 2012 Health Affairs study showed that the wealthiest fifth of Residents of the
U.S. Derived 43 percent more healthcare than the poorest fifth of Residents of the
U.S.. Healthy students are much less likely to miss school and have a higher chance of success in classes, especially math, according to research, thereby setting them up to achieve the grades needed to be accepted into better schools.

7. There’s a shortage of guidance counselors

According to the Scripps Howards Foundation Wire, there really is a shortage of guidance counselors in the U.S. That is only getting worse a year. One of the main job descriptors of those counselors is to advise students on college and supporter for them – something that particularly affects students whose parents aren’t pushing them at house to pursue higher education.


“There is a shortage of counselors obtainable to advise students, a disparity of that advocacy is greater in low-income areas,” Reznik told MTV News, adding that because of this shortage, there’s intelligence that some people might perceive as obvious that is actually privileged intelligence, and add an added barrier to lower-income students.


Take, as an example, the fact that lower-income students are more likely to have to work a job or take care of their siblings as an alternative opposed to attending Key Club or other extra-curricular activities, which can often a important aspect of the college application. Nevertheless speaking openly about responsibilities not related to school can actually boost a student’s college application, something that Reznik says is often unknown data — which can pose an extra barrier for students.


“We know that students who spend time working at a pancake home or a student who gets residence from school and watches with their younger sibling is gaining certain qualities and values that really matter to the colleges and universities in the coalition,” Reznik told MTV News. “And so attempting to help signal the students that their experiences, but @they could be order kind of out of the mainstream media or not discussed about in school are really valuable and critical to share.”

8. Rich students are more likely to have access to GPA boosters like AP courses

According to the New York Times, while AP courses are growing to districts across the nation, they are still primarily taught in wealthier school districts, which can leave students in lower-income districts struggling to compete with their peers by the time college applications roll around.


“Wealthy students, privileged students, had another leg up in the admissions process through bonus points that they were given based on them taking courses that they had access to – those being honors courses or advanced placement or also referred to as AP courses,” Jones told MTV News. “Often low-income students [or] students of color attended lower resource schools that did not provide any or as several of these courses.”


Jones mentioned that colleges and universities recalculate GPAs to include these advanced placement courses, which can raise some students GPAs almost a full point. Although, students who didn’t have access to those courses would visualize their GPA stay stagnant, without indication that they are being graded against a unfair curve.

9. College is expensive

The price of college is skyrocketing and is increasing almost eight times faster than wages are, according to Forbes. If a lower-income student defies all of the odds and does make it into an elite college, often times they still can’t attend because needs-based resources don’t habitually stretch far enough, Jones told MTV News.


“We also have to think about investing more in a need-based aid or financial aid for the lowest revenue students so that they have choices about where they can attend,” Jones mentioned. “And it's not necessarily just default to what resources elite colleges can provide.”


It’s clear that the whole company of admitting students to elite universities is damaged at best and corrupt at worst. Groups like the Coalition for College and The Education Trust are working to combat this and level the playing field through advocacy, legislation, and changing how we think about elite colleges and universities.


“I think one of the most crucial things we can do as advocates and push policymakers is to redefine prestige and excellent,” Jones told MTV News. “So if you are a college or university that excludes students that looks like America, which right now most of them of public school children are low revenue [and] are people of color, and you're excluding these communities, you're not excellent.”