Guilty Admissions: The Bribes, Favors, and Phonies behind the College Cheating Scandal

by Nicole LaPorte

Overview

This entertaining exposé on how the other half gets in tells the shockingly true story of the Varsity Blues scandal, and all of the crazy parents, privilege, and con men involved.

Guilty Admissions weaves together the story of an unscrupulous college counselor named Rick Singer, and how he preyed on the desperation of some of the country's wealthiest families living in a world defined by fierce competition, who function under constant pressure to get into the "right" schools, starting with pre-school; non-stop fundraising and donation demands in the form of multi-million-dollar galas and private parties; and a community of deeply insecure parents who will do anything to get their kids into name-brand colleges in order to maintain their own A-list status.

Investigative reporter Nicole LaPorte lays bare the source of this insecurity—that in 2019, no special "hook" in the form of legacy status, athletic talent, or financial giving can guarantee a child's entrance into an elite school. The result is paranoia, deception, and true crimes at the peak of the American social pyramid.

With a glittering cast of Hollywood actors—including Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin—hedge fund CEOs, sales executives, and media titans, Guilty Admissions is a soap-opera-slash-sneak-peek-behind-the-curtains at America's richest social circles; an examination of the cutthroat world of college admissions; and a parable of American society in 2019, when the country is run by a crass tycoon and all totems of status and achievement have become transactional and removed from traditions of ethical restraint.

A world where the rich get whatever they want, however they want it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538717097
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	02/23/2021
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	1,074,197
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Nicole LaPorte is an LA-based senior writer for Fast Company. She previously was a columnist for The New York Times and a staff writer for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, and Variety. She is the author of The Men Who Would Be King: Movies, Moguls, and a Company Called Dreamworks.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 College Night Terror 1

Chapter 2 The Guy 31

Chapter 3 Breaking Glass 52

Chapter 4 Toddler Admissions Mania 80

Chapter 5 Welcome to the Gold Coast 105

Chapter 6 The Sports Connection 127

Chapter 7 The Fall of Troy 156

Chapter 8 Buckley Blues 189

Chapter 9 Don't Cheat 219

Chapter 10 Nailing a Score 240

Chapter 11 Moss Baby 262

Chapter 12 Beantown Showdown 292

Author's Note 315

Acknowledgments 327

Notes 331

Editorial Reviews

10/26/2020

Journalist LaPorte (The Men Who Would Be Kings) delivers a riveting rundown of Operation Varsity Blues, the 2019 FBI investigation that led to the arrests of Hollywood celebrities Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, among dozens of other wealthy parents, in a scheme to manipulate the admissions process at some of America’s most elite universities. LaPorte details the übercompetitive “social and educational milieu” of affluent L.A. neighborhoods, where parents pay up to $25,000 a year for preschools that feed into prestigious primary and secondary schools and, from there, into top colleges. To improve their children’s chances, parents network, donate money, and hire independent college counselors like Rick Singer, the mastermind of the scheme uncovered by the FBI. A former basketball coach, Singer charged as much as $1.2 million to guarantee admission to Georgetown, Yale, and other name-brand schools. With test proctors, college coaches, and athletic directors on his payroll, Singer falsified exam results and created fake athletic profiles to get his clients accepted as student athletes. LaPorte provides plenty of juicy gossip about the rich and famous, but also probes systemic flaws and “inequities of class” in American higher education. Readers will be captivated by this entertaining look behind the headlines. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

LaPorte’s account of the Varsity Blues college admissions case sheds lurid light on the measures some families will take to protect their privilege.” —The New York Times

“In this captivating investigation, reporter Nicole LaPorte exposes the systemic inequality, admissions chaos, and status anxiety that let a breathtakingly unscrupulous former coach run plays on some of the top schools in America. With rigorous reporting and deft storytelling, LaPorte illustrates how these outrageous ‘side-door’ schemes became just another perk available to the ultra-privileged.”

—Ada Calhoun, author of Why We Can’t Sleep

“Fish rot from the head down. In the chronicle of the corruption of the American elite (and the betrayal of the country that elite is meant to lead), the college bribery scandal represents an especially appalling—and revealing—chapter. In GUILTY ADMISSIONS, Nicole LaPorte, writes that chapter with insight and verve. She not only gives us the jaw-dropping details, she also conveys their larger context: the sociology of a gilded class of Southern Californians for whom enough is never enough and of the schools and colleges whose own corruptions they exploit.”

—Bill Deresiewicz, best-selling author of Excellent Sheep and The Death of the Artist

“We’d like to think that everyone has a fair shot at getting into their preferred college, that springboard to capturing the American Dream. The college admissions scandal proved that isn’t close to being the case. In GUILTY ADMISSIONS, Nicole LaPorte artfully captures this fallacy, while exposing a labyrinth of those consumed by celebrity, greed, and class who will stop at nothing to transfer their privilege to their lineage one transaction at a time.”
 —Jonathan Abrams, the New York Times

“It’s a mind-blower, but author Nicole LaPorte deftly charts a course through today’s obstacle course of college applications in her fascinating expose of Rick Singer and the so-called 'Varsity Blues' scandal.”—New York Journal of Books

“GUILTY ADMISSIONS is about excessive privilege and the lengths to which parents will go when that privilege is threatened, in real or imagined ways.” —Vanity Fair

"[A] riveting rundown of Operation Varsity Blues...Readers will be captivated by this entertaining look behind the headlines."—Publishers Weekly

"An engaging tale of the lifestyles of the rich-and-felonious parents of college-bound students. [GUILTY ADMISSIONS is] a lively, soap-operatic account of the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal that led to charges against more than 50 celebrities and other high rollers." —Kirkus

From the Publisher

★ 01/01/2021

In March 2019, the Varsity Blues scandal made headlines with accounts of wealthy Los Angeles residents, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, paying vast sums to ensure their children's acceptance at prestigious universities. In this gripping work, journalist LaPorte vividly evokes a high-stakes world where parents pick preschools for their toddlers with the hope that the right program will lead to Harvard or Yale. Enter Rick Singer, a college admissions coach who promised results with his "side door" method: bribing coaches to falsely claim that applicants were skilled in golf or tennis (admissions offices rarely vetted information about these relatively minor sports). Some parents fooled themselves into thinking Singer's actions were unorthodox but ethical; others played active roles in the subterfuge, purchasing sports equipment and staging photo shoots for images to submit in the applications. Though LaPorte never excuses the parents' behavior, she explains how such a toxic culture led to criminal behavior. Her research is superb; citing court cases and interviewing parents, coaches, and administrators. LaPorte vividly lays bare a world of privilege and entitlement. VERDICT Readers curious about the dark side of wealth will be enthralled by this exposé of corruption in education.—Melissa Stoeger, Deerfield P.L., IL

Library Journal

2020-12-25
A Fast Companysenior writer gives a lively, soap-operatic account of the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal that led to charges against more than 50 celebrities and other high rollers.

Fans of Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin who hope to see the stars vindicated will have to wait for another book. LaPorte suggests that the Hollywood power players were easy marks for the independent college counselor William “Rick” Singer, who used fake athletic profiles, bribery, and other tactics to get students into universities such as Yale, Georgetown, and USC. The actors and their ultrarich peers moved in private school circles that were “cesspools of insecurity about parenting”: “These were families who had been hiring tutors and outsourcing instruction in so many subjects for so long—the personal lacrosse coach, the Spanish tutor—parents were often loath to trust themselves when it came to advising their children.” Adding to parental anxieties were changing expectations at colleges, including that schools that once favored students with well-rounded portfolios have come to prefer a “pointy” applicant who “takes his or her singular passion and turbocharges it in creative ways.” Singer exploited status-conscious parents’ fears by claiming he could “guarantee” admission to high-prestige schools through a “side door,” which involved crimes such as bribing coaches and laundering money through his private “charity.” He also falsified applications after persuading students to give him their passwords to the Common App site and paid someone to take their SATs and ACTs at venues run by people he’d paid off. Though the narrative tone is largely gossipy, LaPorte ably covers all the aspects of the scandal, including the unique atmosphere of LA, where “extreme wealth and ambition collide, undercut by a shamelessly transactional at­titude toward business.” Her fast-paced book has much to interest parents whose offspring are aiming for top-tier colleges.

An engaging tale of the lifestyles of the rich-and-felonious parents of college-bound students.

Kirkus Reviews