College Admissions Scamster Told Students to Claim Minority Status
Richard Moorhead
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The criminal at the heart of a nationwide college admission corruption scandal told the wealthy and privileged students he shepherded into elite colleges to claim that they were minorities, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
William “Rick” Singer, the founder of the Edge College and Career Network, told students who sought admissions to prestigious universities to misrepresent their ethnic and racial background. Singer is currently facing numerous felony charges in Massachusetts for his role in overseeing the college admissions fraud ring, and is accused of utilizing numerous underhanded tactics such as bribery and artificially inflating test scores to secure admissions for the children of his wealthy clients.
A desire among major universities and colleges to admit a higher proportion of minority students is said to have played a role in Singer’s scam. Singer told parents to change their child’s race on admissions forms to ‘Black’ or ‘Hispanic.’ Students also were told to exaggerate distant family connections. such as invoking Native American identity on account of generationally separated relatives.
Singer’s scam was specially targeted towards wealthy and affluent clients, and is described by some to have exposed the greater American academic establishment as a farcical mockery of meritocratic principles. As Singer got affluent and entitled children of the rich into schools like Stanford and Harvard on the basis of lies, middle and working-class young Americans were likely rejected admission to make space.
Small-time Democratic Presidential candidate and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has been implicated in connection to the scam.
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