Disturbing Tale of Fraud and Abuse at a Prep School Rattles College Admissions

Marie Bigham woke up Friday morning to an email inbox already filled with with messages from people forwarding her the same article. Bigham, the founder and co-leader of an organization called Admissions Community Cultivating Equity and Peace Today, spent much of the rest of the day analyzing the New York Times story that explained in disturbing detail how a predominantly black Louisiana school had abused students, falsified their transcripts, and lied about their personal stories, all in an effort to get them into elite colleges.

It wasn’t just Bigham. Her organization’s Facebook group, which has over 5,000 members who work in various roles in college admissions, debated the article all day. High-school admissions counselors, college admissions deans, and test-prep tutors all weighed in, Bigham said, but each took away something different from the story.

Bigham, who is based in New Orleans and has worked as a college admissions counselor, worried that the story would be used as fodder in an already heated debate about affirmative action. Others saw it as a repudiation of a system that relies too much on standardized testing. Still others thought it showed that colleges should do a better job scrutinizing high schools.

“That story encompasses everything that’s gone wrong in education right now,” Bigham said.

One thing they all agreed on: It was horrifying.

The New York Times described a private, unaccredited school, T.M. Landry College Preparatory School, that fostered a cultlike atmosphere where students were made to believe that if they subjected themselves to abuse, they could get a ticket to one of the country’s most selective colleges. The school became somewhat famous after YouTube videos of its students opening their college acceptance letters went viral. The school was featured on the Today show, Ellen, and CBS This Morning, which led to donations from people across the country.

But according to The New York Times, the school’s founder, Michael Landry, has “pleaded guilty to crimes related to violence against students.” Students said that they were humiliated in front of their classmates and forced to kneel for long periods of time, and that black students were pitted against white students. Some students said they saw Landry, the head of the school, choke other students or slam them on desks.

The school, which operates year-round, is based on an untraditional model where classes are optional and there is a heavy emphasis on test preparation. Parents told The New York Times that they were worried their children were not learning basic reading and writing skills. But Landry threatened to alter or withhold students’ transcripts if they left the school.

Over the years, T.M. Landry sent students to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Wesleyan, and Cornell. But parts of their applications were falsified, sometimes against the students’ will and other times without the students’ knowledge, the Times reported. Once in college, T.M. Landry graduates have had mixed success. Some have struggled, while others have excelled.

‘Thriving and Engaged’

Several selective universities on Friday called the allegations of fraud troubling and expressed concern for — and pledged support to — the students affected.

“They are thriving and engaged members of our community,” Casey Bayer, a spokeswoman for Wellesley College, wrote in an email.

Students of color have already been mired in a nationwide debate this fall over how selective colleges consider race in admissions. Ben Chang, a Princeton University spokesman, added in an email that the institution “remained committed to attracting and supporting talented students, including students from groups that have been underrepresented in higher education and denied the opportunities they need to flourish.”

College officials also reiterated, as The New York Times reported, that the universities are not connected to the school’s director, who reportedly told his students that he could use his influence with college deans to make or break their applications. (The founders of the school, Michael and Tracey Landry, have not commented publicly on the Times’s story, but a Facebook account for the school posted on Friday: “The truth will come out!!!”)

Julie J. Park, an associate professor at the University of Maryland at College Park who studies higher education, said she did not think this story was evidence of widespread abuse at high schools across the country. She saw this as a tragic but unusual example of a school leader exploiting families.

“While I think there’s a lot that needs to be changed about admissions, I don’t think this is a symptom of the problem,” Park said. “This is extreme.”

Angel B. Pérez, Trinity College’s vice president for enrollment and student success, agreed. He characterized the allegations of fraud as a very rare occurrence in the sprawling landscape of college admissions.

For the most part, Pérez said, colleges trust that information submitted by schools is accurate. But the people who review applications are on the lookout for obvious red flags, he said. With a student’s application, they often review a school profile, a document submitted with a student’s individual files that outlines a school’s curriculum, graduation requirements, and average standardized-test scores, among other things. T.M. Landry’s profile, reviewed by The Chronicle, said that about 140 students are enrolled and that 100 percent of graduates attend four-year universities.

If there are still questions, an admissions officer would then call the school, Pérez said. He added that vetting widespread fraud should not be the responsibility of the admissions officers.

“We read hundreds of thousands of applications over the years, from hundreds and thousands of high schools,” he said. “We’re not police officers … we consider our high schools partners in this work.”

‘Fuel to the Fire’

Pérez added that the timing of the story heightened pressure on low-income students and students of color, who must already push back against narratives that they don’t get into college on their own merit. “This is a really sad situation given what’s happening with affirmative action right now,” he said. “This is only going to add fuel to the fire.”

The story comes amid an intense legal fight over how and whether colleges can use race when evaluating applicants. In October, Harvard defended its consideration of race in admissions in a three-week trial that a judge is expected to rule on in the coming months. The university was accused of discriminating against Asian-American students by an anti-affirmative action group that has challenged other universities and is hoping to bring the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In students’ college applications, T.M. Landry “mined the worst stereotypes of black America to manufacture up-from-hardship tales that it sold to Ivy League schools hungry for diversity,” the Times reported.

This practice was particularly disturbing, one former admissions officer said. That person declined to be identified because their employer had not authorized them to speak publicly.

“They were evil geniuses, because who doesn’t love a good rags-to-riches story?” the former admissions officer said. “The kid who came from nothing but then went to Harvard. These are feel-good stories that everyone wants to read.”

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.