Did only girls benefit from the college admission scam?

Girls can be anything! (As long as their parents pay out)

This is an interesting question, OP--especially the second prong.

(I think there was at least one ersatz water-polo-playing boy, but on the whole I think this scandal largely involved girls)

This was because the recruiter/lead scammer specifically focused on girls.

That broker -- Singer -- probably fantasized about ejaculating on them

There were a few boys...like the 5’6” that was listed as a 6’2” basketball player.

Isn't it obvious that all those girls didn't have the smarts to earn good GPAs that would allow them to get into the colleges on their own merits?

Affirmative action. More females apply to college than males. However, colleges want to maintain a male/female ratio close to 50/50 for the sake of diversity. So for many schools, the acceptance rate for males is higher than that of females.

Thank you, r4, for your intelligent contribution to the thread.

I don't get the whole deal. In 1972 I was accepted at USC without any of this cheating bullshit. And I lived in San Antonio, and am a pure white queer.

R9 when the cap on college loans got lifted, more people started going to college. More people started applying to expensive schools. A greater percentage of the population goes to college now than did in 1972 or 1992. It’s harder to get in these days.

The other thing is that Universities will often have a cap on how many students they’ll take from a single high school. Students who attend elite high schools in California have a harder time getting in to Stanford or USC than someone from outside the state. Schools have cared about geographic diversity for a long time. Long before they cared about racial diversity. USC also used to be a lower ranked school than it is now.

the chinese zillionaire who got his sons into harvard by buying the college's fencing coach's house at way above market, and making a "charitable contribution" to some fencing scam org that the coach was able to extract cash from

see story

"fence fiercly harvard!"

Didn't some boy pretend to be a pole vaulter?

It’s also possible that women’s sports teams aren’t Given any priority or attention so you have coaches who are resentful of how They are snubbed in terms of status. And when they do take action, everyone is less likely to notice

Title IX means colleges have to field an equal number of women's sports teams. Some are not very high profile and apparently it is easier to find coaches who will take kickbacks from parents. I am sure there is a lot of corruption in men's sports but it works differently. It is probably harder to pull off a scam like the one the Laughlins did.

That said, in this case there were male students who paid for someone to take the SAT for them. That is probably the more common way that people cheat the system. The College Board, which runs those exams, is a real mess, but it will fight tooth and nail to keep the sleaze under wraps.

Final thought. Most ultra-wealthy families benefit chiefly from the legacy admissions system, so unless their kid is a total fuckup, they don't need to go through all this. At Harvard and Princeton, the Ivies I am most familiar with, the actual legacy admit rates are higher than what they publicly say they are.

I was a walk on fencer. Our coach was on the up and up (and very tough).

False dichotomy, OP

Women make up a majority of most colleges now. Men are not getting into college/pursuing college degrees in growing numbers.

And look at the male offspring of celebs: Chet Haze, Richard Hilfiger, etc.

R19 And? How does that relate to the scam? Are you saying parents have given up on sons?

[quote]Women make up a majority of most colleges now

Not in the elite colleges the scandal is focused on.

Apparently some people haven't bought into the new American society: Men are evil; women are good. We must encourage our girls in everything. Boys can fend for themselves.