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Confessions of a fixer - terry - 01-07-2015

One person's story about helping athletes commit academic fraud --

<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Confessions-of-a-Fixer/150891/">http://chronicle.com/article/Confessions-of-a-Fixer/150891/#</a>  (long)

Re: Confessions of a fixer - CTcard - 01-07-2015

(01-07-2015, 01:17 PM)terry link Wrote:One person's story about helping athletes commit academic fraud --

<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Confessions-of-a-Fixer/150891/">http://chronicle.com/article/Confessions-of-a-Fixer/150891/#</a>  (long)

That's sobering, if not exactly surprising.

I am more worried about what happens once these kids get to college.

... and I see Oregon on the list of programs this guy has worked with, presumably for basketball.

Re: Confessions of a fixer - CowboyIndian - 01-07-2015

I love the fact that Duke offered one of these guys. 'Elite academics', indeed.

Re: Confessions of a fixer - 82 Card - 01-07-2015

This type of thing is not limited to sports. China has an industry of fixers for getting kids into US colleges:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/what-students-in-china-have-taught-me-about-us-college-admissions/384212/

Re: Confessions of a fixer - fullmetal - 01-08-2015

Yup.  Even less visible is the mechanism by which the princelings are getting into these top universities around the world.  I don't know if Stanford is immune to that influx...

Re: Confessions of a fixer - socalstanfan1 - 01-08-2015

(01-07-2015, 08:46 PM)82 Card link Wrote:This type of thing is not limited to sports. China has an industry of fixers for getting kids into US colleges:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/what-students-in-china-have-taught-me-about-us-college-admissions/384212/

Yep, yep...I'm actually working in China in education, and see this literally every day. The unethical agencies, as well as out-and-out cheating, has become a brobdingnagian issue with cheating scandals rocking the SAT, to the point where the scores of all Chinese students at a testing center in China had their scores invalidated.  There is, of course, brobdingnagian money involved, so this doesn't seem like anything that will be resolved any time soon, and many American universities are so anxious to accept international students who often pay roughly twice as much tuition as American students, that they turn a blind eye to the situation. In looking over the Atlantic article, I would say that one thing the author underestimates is the amount of grades doctored by schools in China, to the point that most students applying to schools in the United States are reporting GPAs close to 4.0 (and much of this fixing of grades is being done by the school itself, so there is no way to determine an A actually earned, and an A just granted); the result will be, ultimately, that American Universities fall back on the SAT and TOEFL scores as the only reasonably reliable means of distinguishing the level of students. But, as mentioned above, the College Board is finding it increasingly difficult to secure its own test centers in Asia.  A crazy situation, indeed.


Re: Confessions of a fixer - Hurlburt88 - 01-10-2015

I lived in China for 4 years and am currently hosting and exchange student.  I thought that the Chinese education system scored on a 0-100 scale, so any translation into the US grade systems is somewhat arbitrary anyway.  Can you comment on that? 

Re: Confessions of a fixer - socalstanfan1 - 01-10-2015

(01-10-2015, 08:20 AM)hurlburt88 link Wrote:I lived in China for 4 years and am currently hosting and exchange student.  I thought that the Chinese education system scored on a 0-100 scale, so any translation into the US grade systems is somewhat arbitrary anyway.  Can you comment on that?

I can speak a bit for HS grades: you are correct about the scoring, and that the letter grade system is not used typically (as far as I know) in Chinese High Schools. We often have to explain the very idea of a GPA to the parents and students. But for those students applying for Universities abroad, the schools will convert scores into grades so American universities can evaluate the students. But grade inflation is rampant in Chinese high schools, with a tremendous amount of students being given As and Bs (or correspondingly high marks on the Chinese 1-100 scale). My understanding is that this is also true among the students not going abroad to study, as well. In general, these grades are not taken as seriously since, for students staying in China for their higher education, their entire application rests on the Gao Kao college entrance exam. So, what I have heard from Chinese teachers here, is even if the scores in the class are artificially high, the Gao Kao sorts them out anyway. In a typical Chinese HS, students only take classes for two years (out of three), and the final year is spent simply cramming for that final college entrance exam. The agencies that "fix" the applications here (to use the language of this thread) are, I believe, an outgrowth of the agencies designed to help students score well on the Gao Kao. Whic raises the question of what, exactly, are students reporting when they apply to American universities and submit their transcripts?

I should say: a lot of students I work with are very hard working and bright, and a pleasure to work with. But the application process provides almost no real clarity for the admissions officers of foreign universities who are hoping to figure out the actual quality of the student under consideration. This is one reason why IB, which uses outside readers, seems to be gaining a lot of traction with admission officers.