College admissions counselors who advise students and their families in Northern Virginia, D.C. and Maryland are disappointed and dismayed by the cheating scandal that federal investigators say helped wealthy parents get their kids into top universities.
“I think it’s a sad day for college admissions … I think it’s devastating and it’s a shocking scandal, the most dramatic that we’ve ever heard of,” said Lori Vise, independent educational consultant for The College Consulting Collaborative of Cabin John, Maryland.
Counselors point out that the cheaters took away opportunities for some qualified students to gain admission to the school of their choice.
“Students took away spots that could have gone to deserving, hardworking, well-intentioned, motivated students,” Vise said.
A veteran counselor who has advised student clients with admissions to Georgetown, Yale and the rest of the universities named in the federal investigation made particular note that college admission test administrators are among those arrested.
“I found that to be to the most surprising piece of this — that the test scores were so easily changeable,” said Catherine Ganley, senior educational consultant for ForWord Consulting.
“I am completely shocked that, still, in this day and age, that the SAT and ACT have not completely locked down the system,” she said.
In her college admission counseling, Vise specializes in advising students with learning disabilities and is particularly disappointed to learn of allegations that wealthy parents gamed the system by passing off their children as having learning disabilities, getting them special test-taking accommodations, which investigators said was used to facilitate the cheating.
“It’s not an easy accommodation to get … for me to think that students are abusing the system by taking advantage of this really, really important accommodation for students who qualify is terrible,” Vise said.
Admissions counselors said they hope the universities take note of the scandal and make changes to the admissions process.
They added that the admissions process would especially benefit from more transparency.
Ganley also believes that the SAT and ACT should not be required in college admissions, and that universities should include a lottery in their admissions process to give deserving students one last chance at getting in.
