The country has watched as rich/celebrity parents head before a judge after being charged criminally for using their money to skip the college admission line….
Ouch….
The fact is?
We parents are under HUGE pressure to have our kids go to college…
The headlines on the celebrities belay a much more complicated problem….
President Obama finished paying his and his wife student loans after he got a job running the American government at a scary of $400, 000 a year….
It IS in the American National Security interest to have its young people go to college….
The idea is ingrained in just about EVERY American parent….
And?
Those who can afford it?
Those who can afford it without going into debt?
ARE gonna keep using their money, one way or another?
To get their kid in college….
Don’t fool yourself….
Some College’sadministrators are NOT gonna turn the money down…
Private college ARE BIG Business…..
Oh, and as the Washington Post linked piece points out?
It isn’t JUST about the money…..
Some parents will do OTHER crazy assed things …..
The intense pressure surrounding the admissions process — and the corrosive effect it can have on a parent’s tether to reality and morality — has been a hot topic in the aftermath of the recent college admissions scandal that led to indictments against 50 people, including 33 parents, two of them television stars. The alleged multimillion-dollar bribery scheme was said to be aimed at helping less-than-stellar students gain entry to elite colleges and universities.
Even among the most affluent and privileged families, such blatantly illegal acts are rare and widely shunned. But that doesn’t necessarily preclude other underhanded tactics, including attempts to sabotage students who are also competing for coveted spaces at the nation’s most selective schools.
“I can tell you that every single parent that I know who has heard about [these rumors] has reacted with shock and horror,” said one Sidwell parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. “Whoever did this is a really good example of somebody who has lost all perspective and all sense of control, and I don’t think they represent our community, but I do think they represent the extremes that we’re seeing in the news — that absolute loss of any sense of normalcy around a process that shouldn’t be so intense.”
Officials at Sidwell emphasized that the incidents would not be tolerated: “Instances of disrespect are anomalous and often anonymous, but have nevertheless become increasingly intense and inappropriate,” Head of School Bryan Garman wrote in a January email to senior class parents, a message that Sidwell shared with The Post. “The circulation of rumors about students and/or the verbal assault of employees are antithetical to the School’s values.”
This sort of behavior is hardly the norm, school counselors and college prep experts agree — but neither is it as rare as one might hope.
Sue Moller, a high school guidance counselor in Long Island and president of the Nassau Counselors’ Association, remembers feeling skeptical in 2008, when she first heard a mother voice concern that other parents would comb through her son’s social history or tell college admissions officials about his jaywalking citation.
“I said, ‘Why would you think anyone would do that?’ And she said that one of their friends’ kids had been the target of an anonymous, disparaging letter; the admissions office had called them about it,” Moller recalled. “The parent in my office was petrified that someone was going to sabotage her kid, and I was like, ‘Oh, that doesn’t actually happen.’ ”
But she wanted to be sure about that. So she posted a question on the message board for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, asking whether anyone else had heard of this type of behavior. And more than a dozen replies swiftly poured in to assure her that, yes, it does actually happen.
There were accounts of parents who had called admissions offices to spread gossip about another child’s bad behavior, parents who reported long-ago run-ins with law enforcement, parents who sent anonymous tips about potentially compromising posts on students’ Facebook or Twitter pages.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Moller said. But the stories kept coming….