An admissions official at the University of Southern California rejected the idea that students can buy their way in but acknowledged that some applicants are “of special interest” to the school.
Testifying at the first trial of parents caught up in the “Varsity Blues” bribery scandal, Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Rebecca Chassin told a jury about a “VIP list” of applicants given special consideration for athletic prowess, their parents’ wealth or their social connections.
“There is a VIP program at USC, correct?” attorney Robert Sheketoff asked Chassin, a witness for the prosecution, during cross-examination on Tuesday. Sheketoff is defending former Wynn Resorts Ltd. executive Gamal Abdelaziz, accused of paying $300,000 in bribes to get his daughter into the university as a basketball player, though a former classmate testified she didn’t even play well enough to qualify for her school’s varsity team.
“There is a process by which students that are of special interest to constituents around campus will receive a look before their decisions are finalized,” Chassin said. “I stated that we do not make offers of admission in exchange for money.”
Sheketoff asked if applicants on the very-important-person list could help with a $6 billion USC fundraising campaign.
“Many of the students are on there because of the hope that they will, you know, contribute to the university financially,” said Chassin, who has worked in admissions at USC for two decades. “Some of the students are not on there for that reason. We don’t really separate that out in the admission office—we just know that someone around campus is interested in this.”
He asked whether a student on the list was three times as likely to win admission to the university as a regular student.
“I don’t know the data,” Chassin said.
She did testify that athletes recruited to the school by coaches had an 85% to 90% chance of being admitted, compared with 15% for an applicant in the general pool.
Turning The Tables
Such special considerations may not be a closely guarded secret in American college admissions. But lawyers for Abdelaziz, 64, and private equity executive John B. Wilson, 62, tried to turn the tables on federal prosecutors Tuesday by brandishing the VIP list. They are trying to convince the jury that their clients thought they were merely playing the donation game when they worked with William “Rick” Singer, the admitted mastermind of the biggest college admissions scam the U.S. says it has ever prosecuted.