O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - Printable Version
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O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - crackpot - 10-22-2024
U$C cuts out the middleman.
Might be paywalled.
TL;DR: U$C will happily take your giant donation and designate your kid as a walk-on whether or not they actually play the sport.
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - dabigv13 - 10-22-2024
Some pretty great bits in there.
Quote:“The founder of Jersey Mike’s - Peter Cancro is coming to show his son USC…at 1pm,” Kristi Seiter Simmons, the chief financial officer of a company that owned franchises of the hoagie chain, wrote in an email. “I said I would see if anyone could meet with them and give them a little usc pep talk. He would be a major big donor.”
.....
Giving his application a last read before the committee meeting, Heinel stumbled upon a complication.
“In his essay he states that he became tired of practicing tennis from 5-9 Pm every night so he quit playing tennis,” Heinel emailed his stepfather on Feb.12, 2015. “It is hard to present a candidate as a walk-on tennis player when he states in his essay that he quit playing.”
The records do not reflect how Cancro responded, but the committee approved the teenager for admission two weeks later. His name does not appear on any USC tennis roster.
Cancro and his wife made a $500,000 pledge after his admission, according to an email from the couple that Orr forwarded on to colleagues.
“Good news … Jersey Mikes coming through,” Orr wrote. Heinel responded, copying their boss, USC Athletic Director Pat Haden, “Yahoo. It was all worth it.”
Quote:Heinel has said in court papers that she was introduced to the system around 2006 by then-senior associate athletic director Brandon Martin, her supervisor, who had a particular aptitude with applicants from upscale communities south of L.A.
“Martin’s success at this practice started a running joke in the athletic department that he should have a street in Orange County [California] named after him for all the kids he secured admissions for as walk-on student athletes,” Heinel’s attorney wrote in a 2022 sentencing memorandum.
Quote:Haden kept close tabs on the admissions prospects of donor children.
“Crap,” he emailed Heinel after learning about the admissions officer’s dim view of the Bangkok energy heir’s academic record. “Got to get the Thai kid in.”
LOL
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - newguy - 10-22-2024
gotta admit, that's pretty funny.
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - Vandelay - 10-22-2024
Have no problem with that. USC is a private school. They should be allowed to admit whoever they want to and for any reason they want to.
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - dabigv13 - 10-22-2024
I actually agree with that sentiment, but it's pretty comical how USC conjured this absurd walk-on fig leaf to buying your way in.
I think it's most interesting as a story of the bureaucracy at USC, which the article hints at more than just the quotes above. It seems the athletic department played along with this admissions scheme because it gave them a piece of the big donor money directly. This bit was really interesting-
Quote:Administrators even contemplated rescinding the admission of a New York investment banker’s child over money. After Subco approved the son of Thomas Michaud as a water polo walk-on in 2014, fundraisers in the athletic department learned their counterparts at the Marshall School of Business and USC’s Manhattan outpost were already courting the family for a donation of $1 million to $5 million.
Worried that athletics would be cut out of a windfall, Heinel told Orr, “If this is not working out the way you planned, I can have Admissions pull the approval.”
“Really sucks,” he agreed. “Don’t pull we will guilt them …”
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - Mick - 10-22-2024
(10-22-2024, 09:31 AM)crackpot Wrote: U$C cuts out the middleman.
Might be paywalled.
TL;DR: U$C will happily take your giant donation and designate your kid as a walk-on whether or not they actually play the sport.
I think my favorite part of that article was the five USC administrators pleading the Fifth Amendment...
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - Goose - 10-22-2024
(10-22-2024, 09:17 PM)Mick Wrote:Was that in response to being asked if they worked at USC?(10-22-2024, 09:31 AM)crackpot Wrote: U$C cuts out the middleman.
Might be paywalled.
TL;DR: U$C will happily take your giant donation and designate your kid as a walk-on whether or not they actually play the sport.
I think my favorite part of that article was the five USC administrators pleading the Fifth Amendment...
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - GK3 - 10-23-2024
(10-22-2024, 09:19 PM)Goose Wrote:(10-22-2024, 09:17 PM)Mick Wrote:Was that in response to being asked if they worked at USC?(10-22-2024, 09:31 AM)crackpot Wrote: U$C cuts out the middleman.
Might be paywalled.
TL;DR: U$C will happily take your giant donation and designate your kid as a walk-on whether or not they actually play the sport.
I think my favorite part of that article was the five USC administrators pleading the Fifth Amendment...
Of course it will soon be illegal for Stanford to cut legacy applicants a break as they clearly fail to meet our Governor's standards of having Merit, Skill and Hard Work. Of course Athletes clearly meet those Standards. So does a 5 star legacy applicant get dinged because he is a legacy applicant and then get admitted because he or she runs fast, jumps high and hits a golf ball a mile. Sometimes I just do not understand peoples decision making, my own included. Clearly athletic scholarships should be banned at all California Universities, otherwise this whole thing makes no sense.
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - BostonCard - 10-23-2024
(10-22-2024, 06:39 PM)Vandelay Wrote: Have no problem with that. USC is a private school. They should be allowed to admit whoever they want to and for any reason they want to.
This would be fine if they were up front about it and simply said something like “up to 10% of our admissions slots will be auctioned off to the highest bidder” or “we reserve 500 admissions slots in the freshmen class to students able to donate $5million” or something like that. I have no idea on the legality, but certainly it seems scummy to be saying that they use a holistic approach that values academic excellence, blah, blah, blah, but they actually have an approach where if you donate enough money there is a separate path.
BC
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - Vandelay - 10-23-2024
Well, they also have the Trojan Transfer Program which is another backdoor for legacy admissions. Get offered TTP, go to school in Rome or Paris for a year and then transfer to USC. Haven't heard anyone talking about that.
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - oldalum - 10-23-2024
(10-23-2024, 08:15 AM)GK3 Wrote: Of course it will soon be illegal for Stanford to cut legacy applicants a break as they clearly fail to meet our Governor's standards of having Merit, Skill and Hard Work. Of course Athletes clearly meet those Standards. So does a 5 star legacy applicant get dinged because he is a legacy applicant and then get admitted because he or she runs fast, jumps high and hits a golf ball a mile.The new California legislation on legacy admissions also applies to relatives of donors, so I wonder if USC is planning to use fake "recruited walk-on" status for some donor admissions to partially avoid the law. But for both legacy and donor "admissions" the only enforcement for violations is that the schools have to report (non-identified) information on the admitted students who meet those definitions. Does anyone know if the law specifies a dollar threshold for donations above which an applicant is considered a relative of a donor, or does any amount count?
RE: O/T Beyond Varsity Blues - M T - 10-23-2024
I was wondering about that too. What about (long) past donations and potential future donations?
The bill contains this
Quote:(1) “Donor preference in admissions” means considering an applicant’s relation to a donor of, or a donation to, the independent institution of higher education as a factor in the admissions process, including asking an applicant to indicate their family’s donor status and including that information among the documents that the independent institution of higher education uses to consider an applicant for admission.
If you donate $100 to, say, KZSU, that doesn't make your child's admission reportable. If your grandmother donated $500,000 to Stanford Hospital 10 years ago, that may or may not be reportable. If you write a binding legal contract that you promise to donate 10 acres of land upon your death if your son is admitted, then it probably is reportable. I wish the bill had been clear about "donation" to mean the "likelihood of a (possibly future) donation related to the applicant's acceptance".