GUILTY ADMISSIONS

A Fast Company senior 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.