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Post by trainermch on May 16, 2019 14:10:33 GMT -5
Here it is by popular demand -- the hardest college to get into by state map... What is that SC one? Clemson?
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Post by c4ndlelight on May 16, 2019 14:15:16 GMT -5
There are limited seats. He fraudulently obtained admission that would otherwise have gone to another paying student. This is not terribly compelling to me. It applies to any Georgetown student. How many of them faked something on their applications but not through Singer? How many were just better at standardized testing than the others, without actually being better students? And that kid who didn't get into to Georgetown because of this guy who faked a tennis resume -- what happened to him? Did he end up homeless on the street or did he settle for Notre Dame instead? We can't replay time. I still think Georgetown should either agree to let this guy keep his credits or pay him back his tuition money. It's not fraud to be a better student (that is venturing very close to Holiday-esque What-aboutism). It is fraud to lie on your application, and if you are caught, you have to deal with the consequences. Georgetown is losing revenue from some student they could have kept for four years because he's being kicked out. And that's not to mention the other damages from being involved in an FBI investigation. The kid submitted his tennis credentials. He's not innocent, and he got caught.
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Post by Disc808 on May 16, 2019 14:23:50 GMT -5
The problem with EE as an example is that computers are sort of an unexpected pregnancy that happened during a three-way between EE and her lovers Logic and Math. So little Computer Science grew up in EE's house, and most of the people who come knocking at EE's door these days are really more interested in taking Computer Science out on a date than they are in visiting EE herself. So when, for instance, MIT has the top-ranked EE program and 1/3 of the undergrads are in that department, is it really because of the EE like Phaedrus does, or is it because of the CS part of "EECS"? Good question... I would say part of the answer is “it depends” on the methodology of the ranking.
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Post by mikegarrison on May 16, 2019 14:24:01 GMT -5
This is not terribly compelling to me. It applies to any Georgetown student. How many of them faked something on their applications but not through Singer? How many were just better at standardized testing than the others, without actually being better students? And that kid who didn't get into to Georgetown because of this guy who faked a tennis resume -- what happened to him? Did he end up homeless on the street or did he settle for Notre Dame instead? We can't replay time. I still think Georgetown should either agree to let this guy keep his credits or pay him back his tuition money. It's not fraud to be a better student (that is venturing very close to Holiday-esque What-aboutism). It is fraud to lie on your application, and if you are caught, you have to deal with the consequences. Georgetown is losing revenue from some student they could have kept for four years because he's being kicked out. And that's not to mention the other damages from being involved in an FBI investigation. The kid submitted his tennis credentials. He's not innocent, and he got caught. Being better at taking tests is not the same thing as being a better student, but you're right, it's not fraud. I know he's not innocent, and I have no problems with kicking him out and not giving him his Georgetown diploma. I have problems with taking his credits away but keeping the money he paid for those credits. I think that's logically unfair. Either he shouldn't have been allowed to be at the school and so you take away his credits and refund his tuition, or you accept that some water is already under the bridge and you let him keep those previous credits.
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Post by Wolfgang on May 16, 2019 14:26:39 GMT -5
Here it is by popular demand -- the hardest college to get into by state map... What is that SC one? Clemson? The SC one is Clemson. Its wikipedia page shows a purplish logo but the graphic design is the same.
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Post by c4ndlelight on May 16, 2019 14:30:50 GMT -5
It's not fraud to be a better student (that is venturing very close to Holiday-esque What-aboutism). It is fraud to lie on your application, and if you are caught, you have to deal with the consequences. Georgetown is losing revenue from some student they could have kept for four years because he's being kicked out. And that's not to mention the other damages from being involved in an FBI investigation. The kid submitted his tennis credentials. He's not innocent, and he got caught. Being better at taking tests is not the same thing as being a better student, but you're right, it's not fraud. I know he's not innocent, and I have no problems with kicking him out and not giving him his Georgetown diploma. I have problems with taking his credits away but keeping the money he paid for those credits. I think that's logically unfair. Either he shouldn't have been allowed to be at the school and so you take away his credits and refund his tuition, or you accept that some water is already under the bridge and you let him keep those previous credits. This is a very odd way of thinking that you wouldn't apply elsewhere. Let's say a corporation pays some bribes to get safety certifications for unsafe products. They're found out, and the certifications are removed. Do you think they are owed the certification processing fees back? Should they get the bribes back?
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Post by jmax on May 16, 2019 14:37:49 GMT -5
I think many people are shocked that it is a highly regarded school. Yes. When I was growing up as a child in the 1970s, USC was just the school that OJ Simpson played for. And then, when I was looking into colleges, USC was never in my radar because I wanted to study engineering. I don't think I ever heard of USC being a really good school until the 1990s when I worked in industry. Some of my coworkers graduated from USC undergrad (followed by highly prestigious grad programs at other schools) and they were always quick to defend USC, like they had a chip on their shoulders. They were smart people so I gave them a break for that one stain on their academic record. Also, if you hang around VT long enough, you'll read lots of posts about how great USC is academically, so I've slowly gotten with the program. But when it was time for my kids to apply to schools, none of them applied to USC. (I did not influence them one way or the other.) One of the VT posters here PM'd me his/her time at USC and I was actually proud of him/her, more proud than I was with my own kids, who were great kids but come on, what parent has not been disappointed in their kids, right? You know what I'm sayin'? USC's academic reputation has changed dramatically since the parent aged posters on this board applied to college. They engaged in a very successful fundraising campaign in the 1990s and invested that money is buying better professors and better students. Prior to that, it was the type of school and any high school graduate could get into. Today, it is quite hard to get into. US News has the engineering school (Viterbi - a Qualcomm founder) ranked #9 for engineering. Don't see a rank for EE specifically. Regardless of the actual rigor of US News or other's ranking systems, USC had made great strides from the jock factory of the 1970s to today. I don't think you see many schools make that kind of a move.
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Post by mikegarrison on May 16, 2019 14:51:10 GMT -5
Being better at taking tests is not the same thing as being a better student, but you're right, it's not fraud. I know he's not innocent, and I have no problems with kicking him out and not giving him his Georgetown diploma. I have problems with taking his credits away but keeping the money he paid for those credits. I think that's logically unfair. Either he shouldn't have been allowed to be at the school and so you take away his credits and refund his tuition, or you accept that some water is already under the bridge and you let him keep those previous credits. This is a very odd way of thinking that you wouldn't apply elsewhere. Let's say a corporation pays some bribes to get safety certifications for unsafe products. They're found out, and the certifications are removed. Do you think they are owed the certification processing fees back? Should they get the bribes back? That's different because those are all part of the original transaction. I see it more like this -- you have a forgery Disneyland pass. You use it to get into Disneyland. While there, you buy a bunch of Princess tea trays and dolls and dresses, etc. that are exclusively sold in Disneyland and no where else. Then Disney finds out about your forged pass and kicks you out. Do they get to take away all the stuff you bought? If they do, do they owe you a refund for it?
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Post by volleyguy on May 16, 2019 15:11:53 GMT -5
This is a very odd way of thinking that you wouldn't apply elsewhere. Let's say a corporation pays some bribes to get safety certifications for unsafe products. They're found out, and the certifications are removed. Do you think they are owed the certification processing fees back? Should they get the bribes back? That's different because those are all part of the original transaction. I see it more like this -- you have a forgery Disneyland pass. You use it to get into Disneyland. While there, you buy a bunch of Princess tea trays and dolls and dresses, etc. that are exclusively sold in Disneyland and no where else. Then Disney finds out about your forged pass and kicks you out. Do they get to take away all the stuff you bought? If they do, do they owe you a refund for it? An earlier poster alluded to the courses as goods and services, and in a retail setting, your analogy makes sense, but courses are not commercial goods or services (there is an entire separate part of the law that uniformly regulates commercial transactions with or without a contract). In the student's case, the courses, or the course credits, are the consideration he receives in exchange for either attendance, or payment, or other reason Georgetown decides to admit him (e.g. his athletic contributions, etc.) In other words, consideration is the thing or things of value that are bargained for between the parties in a contract. Which leads back to, if there is no enforceable contract, there is (or was) no consideration or means to require it.
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Post by Wolfgang on May 16, 2019 15:13:15 GMT -5
The problem with EE as an example is that computers are sort of an unexpected pregnancy that happened during a three-way between EE and her lovers Logic and Math. So little Computer Science grew up in EE's house, and most of the people who come knocking at EE's door these days are really more interested in taking Computer Science out on a date than they are in visiting EE herself. So when, for instance, MIT has the top-ranked EE program and 1/3 of the undergrads are in that department, is it really because of the EE like Phaedrus does, or is it because of the CS part of "EECS"? It depends on the school. Schools have incorporated various combinations of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Computer Science under various combinations of colleges, departments, and programs. At my alma mater, there was no such thing as a Computer Science degree until the 2000s. You just took a bunch of computer-related courses plus individually structured studies (with an advisor) and got a degree in Engineering and Applied Science, not Computer Science. At other schools, Computer Science is under the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, just like math and physics, not Engineering. EEs and CEs (computer engineering) were separate programs within Engineering and you got separate degrees. Some major in both EE and CE because of the many overlaps. And at other schools, there's no such thing as a separate Computer Engineering program, just EE with a computer engineering concentration. At many of these schools, people stayed away from the computer engineers because they were the true nerds and social misfits. And then there's the whole math thing...(i.e., math classes within the Engineering Department vs. math classes within the Mathematics Department).
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Post by mikegarrison on May 16, 2019 15:13:57 GMT -5
If the government tried to seize it for itself, that leads to huge conflict of interest issues in prosecuting theses types of cases. So? That's not a problem for the US government. They will happily confiscate cars, houses, money, artwork -- anything of value if they say it has been used in a crime or is the ill-gotten gain of a crime. And it's really, really hard to get that stuff back, even if it was yours and it was used without your consent. www.justice.gov/afp
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Post by mikegarrison on May 16, 2019 15:17:49 GMT -5
That's different because those are all part of the original transaction. I see it more like this -- you have a forgery Disneyland pass. You use it to get into Disneyland. While there, you buy a bunch of Princess tea trays and dolls and dresses, etc. that are exclusively sold in Disneyland and no where else. Then Disney finds out about your forged pass and kicks you out. Do they get to take away all the stuff you bought? If they do, do they owe you a refund for it? An earlier poster alluded to the courses as goods and services, and in a retail setting, your analogy makes sense, but courses are not commercial goods or services (there is an entire separate part of the law that uniformly regulates commercial transactions with or without a contract). In the student's case, the courses, or the course credits, are the consideration he receives in exchange for either attendance, or payment, or other reason Georgetown decides to admit him (e.g. his athletic contributions, etc.) In other words, consideration is the thing or things of value that are bargained for between the parties in a contract. Which leads back to, if there is no enforceable contract, there is (or was) no consideration or means to require it. I think we have reached the fundamental difference here. The lawyers among us are seeing this whole thing -- application, acceptance, tuition, classes, grades, credits, diploma -- as one transaction. I am looking at it as the application and acceptance was a fraudulent transaction, but the tuition and classes and grades each year were separate transactions that were themselves not fraudulent (presumeably -- if he cheated on his classes too then I have no problem with saying no credit and no refund).
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Post by volleyguy on May 16, 2019 15:31:20 GMT -5
An earlier poster alluded to the courses as goods and services, and in a retail setting, your analogy makes sense, but courses are not commercial goods or services (there is an entire separate part of the law that uniformly regulates commercial transactions with or without a contract). In the student's case, the courses, or the course credits, are the consideration he receives in exchange for either attendance, or payment, or other reason Georgetown decides to admit him (e.g. his athletic contributions, etc.) In other words, consideration is the thing or things of value that are bargained for between the parties in a contract. Which leads back to, if there is no enforceable contract, there is (or was) no consideration or means to require it. I think we have reached the fundamental difference here. The lawyers among us are seeing this whole thing -- application, acceptance, tuition, classes, grades, credits, diploma -- as one transaction. I am looking at it as the application and acceptance was a fraudulent transaction, but the tuition and classes and grades each year were separate transactions that were themselves not fraudulent (presumeably -- if he cheated on his classes too then I have no problem with saying no credit and no refund). I wouldn't say that it is one transaction, but rather, that the existence of a contract creates a framework to adjudicate the issues that arise from transactions made or derived in the process of fulfilling the contract. Once a contract is deemed void or unenforceable, there is no process to decide those issues (a court will generally not unilaterally impose a contract on two parties). It then becomes a bit of a Wild West scenario. This same gray area is what some government entities have landed upon to seize ill-gotten assets, as you mentioned above, because there is no contractual right to demand a return of anything illegally obtained (although there are some valid due process arguments, which the student raised in his lawsuit, but that is a Constitutional argument that may not apply to Georgetown as a private University).
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Post by Wolfgang on May 16, 2019 15:32:45 GMT -5
Here's a link to a page that actually lists each of the schools on the map and, as a bonus, explains why Nevada, Wyoming, Delaware and Alaska don't have a school listed. Alabama hard to get into? Anybody can get in there.................all you have to do is sign up. I did the usual undergrad-to-grad in the 1980s in Engineering. I got to know all the schools. Then, when I went back to grad school for a totally unrelated field of study in 2010 (and this time, for fun not for future career advancement), I did research all over again and was surprised (and not surprised) that schools I thought were "average" were actually stellar in that field of study, e.g., Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Arizona. My brother studied biology and then got his MS and Ph.D in a related field. When he was looking around for Ph.D programs, he was surprised to discover that UC Riverside was one of the top programs in that field because usually, grad program reputation often follows the reputations of the faculty (or the lead researcher who brings in all those grant $$$) and the $$$ funding of that program. So, in addition to looking at Cornell and UC Berkeley, he also took trips to interview with UC Riverside and Illinois. Grad schools are a totally different animal from undergrad.
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Post by hammer on May 16, 2019 15:49:14 GMT -5
Here it is by popular demand -- the hardest college to get into by state map... Why does Hawaii look like blood splatter? LOL! Carleton College in Minnesota doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is Kenyon over Oberlin in Ohio. I had never even heard of Kenyon until this past year. Also, in case anyone is wondering, that orange partial logo of California is of Joe's Refrigeration and HVAC Technology Institute (Pasadena, CA), my alma mater. Suck it, Stanford! At Stanford we admit we suck (in relation to Cal Tech), and besides, you have a more powerful arsenal, a cannon. When my Science Olympiad students apply to Cal Tech, the door is locked. Ok, one got in this year, but many more have matriculated @ Stanford.
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