The $25 million bribery case that has made headlines this week is the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department. Some 33 parents, including several M.B.A.s from Harvard, Stanford, Kellogg and Michigan, have been charged with paying an admissions consulting firm to take SAT and ACT tests for their children and to bribe college coaches and other insiders to get their children into the most elite undergraduate schools in the country (see Harvard & Stanford M.B.A.s Snared In College Admissions Scam).
The inevitable question: Does this happen in elite M.B.A. admissions? Admission consultants, after all, play an even bigger role in elite M.B.A. admissions than they do in undergraduate admissions. More than 400 consultants work in the M.B.A. space in the U.S. alone, and some estimate that fully a third of all applicants to top 10 schools now use a paid consultant. Does anyone cheat?
Of course, they do. It's commonly accepted that many schools have a "dean's list" of favored candidates, typically the children of big donors or connected parents. "It happens but it is different," says Sandy Kreisberg, a prominent M.B.A. admissions consultant known as HBS Guru. "At every - school, there are X number of alums/donors who by dint of contributions, status, relations with the school, could have a REAL influence on any candidate they wish to get behind. I would say, for those Bigfeet, they usually sponsor one or two kids a year. Sometimes none."
And in the past, there have been several instances where cheating on the GMAT was widespread and publicly exposed. In one instance, the FBI charged that a single person took the GMAT and the GRE 212 times for other applicants in a two and one-half year period along, roughly once every four or five days. All told, the exam sitter and his friends were accused of taking a total of 590 exams for mostly business school applicants from January of 2001 to July of 2003 (see He Conquered The GMAT & Went To Jail For It).
"I'd like to believe that it can't happen in the M.B.A. world, but I don't," says Linda Abraham, founder of Accepted.com, an admissions consulting firm. "The M.B.A. world had the ScoreTop scandal about 10 years ago so it's definitely not immune to admissions scandals. An admissions site, ScoreTop, had different levels of membership in which the most expensive allowed access to live GMAT questions, which were copied or memorized by paid test takers on behalf of Scoretop. That cheating scandal in 2008 led GMAC to void the scores of 84 test takers, some of whom had already been accepted to business school or have graduated. "It wasn't quite as brazen as the college admissions scandal, but clearly, it gave some an advantage that had nothing to do with merit or ability," adds Abraham.
But there are major differences at the graduate level that make what the FBI uncovered highly unlikely. For one thing, many of the candidates whose parents bribed officials did so leveraging athletics as a pathway for admission. Most of the college officials who were indicted in the undergraduate scam were coaches who could tell admissions they wanted a specific student accepted into the school. While being a varsity athlete may give you a leg up on some applicants, no business school has a set of coaches who are specifically recruiting players for their teams.
M.B.A. classes, moreover, are a mere fraction of the incoming undergraduate classes at colleges and universities. "There just aren't as many 'VIP' applicants," notes Adam Hoff, a cofounder of Amerasia Consulting, which specializes in M.B.A. admissions counsel. "So there is a lot more wiggle room to mark people as 'VIP' candidates (in an undergraduate class), such that they get favorable treatment. I'm not saying that it is impossible for someone to get hooked up and admitted to HBS or Wharton, but there just aren't that many spots and so if you were to admit people based on favors or a winking pay-to-play situation, that would get tricky in a hurry."
"And beyond the numbers game, there is also the reality that a 'favor' admit would stand out more like a sore thumb in a B-school class," says Hoff. "With college, you certainly have to absorb the grades and test scores of someone who might not be as deserving, but almost all other admissions factors are subjective or qualitative. With business school, the programs are building class profiles that include not only GPA and test scores, but also years of experience, industries, and even firms in some cases. I just don't think there is nearly as much 'buying your way in' going on, whether we are talking about the technically legal (donating money to the school and so forth) or the blatantly illegal variety. Whether there should be a distinction is a whole different conversation."
Most admission consultants agree it would be impossible for a fraud as widespread as the one currently in the news to occur in the M.B.A. field. But they do acknowledge that the damaging headlines will have an impact on what they do and how they do it. "Unfortunately, this type of negative event ratchets up anxiety and likely spurs interest in consulting for the wrong reasons, both legitimate consulting and illegitimate firms who cheat the system," says Jeremey Shinewald, founder and CEO of the mbaMission, a leading M.B.A. admissions consulting outfit. "An event like this gives many applicants and their families a sense that entitled individuals are working in ways that they simply cannot compete with. My main concern is that some qualified individuals will feel so discouraged by the perceived level of competition that they won’t even bother applying.
"Over the years," adds Shinewald, "we have seen literally tens of thousands of qualified people with no connections at all get into top programs. Those with true merit should be heartened to know that we have seen very well connected applicants - children of major donors - who are completely unqualified get rejected. We have certainly seen many qualified children of donors get accepted as well, but the truly unqualified are weeded out. I am satisfied that the M.B.A. playing field is about as level as we would expect it to be."
