Students make their way, any way at all

It isn’t much of a leap from Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to the SAT cheating scandal at Great Neck High school.

As we’ve been reading in the dailies, up to 20 students have been or soon will be charged with misdemeanor crimes associated with paying someone else to take their college entrance exams for them. At the same time, some five former graduates of the Great Neck schools face more serious charges after allegedly standing in for students in exchange for payments ranging from $500 to $3,500. They face jail time of up to four years if convicted.

Apparently a savvy Great Neck faculty member sounded the alarm when a few students achieved unbelievably high scores on the SATs, compared with their rather unimpressive class work.

Is anyone surprised? My guess is that in coming weeks, additional incidents of cheating will be discovered in Great Neck and in other communities where students can come up with money to pay someone to take the test for them. It would be fascinating to know if any parents knew about the under-the-table deals. Sadly, that would not surprise me either.

There is nothing fair about the process of applying to colleges. Some students have enough money to take preparatory classes. Some have “coaches” who help them with writing their essays. Some hire college entrance specialists who help them “package” themselves. These coaches, who build lucrative careers on the anxiety of college-bound students and their parents, do everything from suggesting summer programs that will look good on an application to facilitating travel to the most far-flung corners of the world, all to create an outstanding applicant. Meetings with the Dalai Lama? Hands-on research with orangutans in Borneo? It’s been done.

To be clear: Higher education is beneficial to most people who take their years in college seriously. And competition is fine. We all need to exceed our own expectations of ourselves. We need to push and try harder and work more diligently to get what we want, especially entrance to a top university.