Does The College Admission Scandal Extend To MBA Admissions

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 MBAs 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 MBAs Snared In College Admissions Scam).

The inevitable question: Does this happen in elite MBA admissions? Admission consultants, after all, play an even bigger role in elite MBA admissions than they do in undergraduate admissions. More than 400 consultants work in the MBA 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 MBA 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 MBA world, but I don’t,” says Linda Abraham, founder of Accepted.com, an admissions consulting firm. “The MBA 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 level had 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.

Another leading MBA admissions firm, mbaMission, says that every year it turns away candidates who want to cheat their way in. “In terms of cheating, I am certain that there is GMAT fraud,” says mbaMission founder Jeremey Shinewald, “and a few times a year we reject large sums offered to us to commit application fraud for very obvious reasons. It definitely happens at the MBA level – we would be naive to think that the MBA system is incorruptible. We obviously turn these applicants away.”

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.

Do people lie to get into MBA programs? “During my time in admissions, I have heard of a one-off ‘faked credentials’ of applicants, who might have in the past ‘borrowed’ their story from their spouse, or submitted falsified testing data,” says Judith S. Hodara, a former admissions official at Wharton and a co-founder at Fortuna Admissions, a top MBA admissions consulting firm. “I do not think that the schools talk about it too much because it does not reflect all that well on their processes. As a direct result, many schools looked for fail-safes, both in the ways that the standardized tests are administered, and spot checks on employers letters of recommendations.

“While I would not discount the possibility that this would never happen, I think that part of what happened on the undergraduate side was the many points of entry for the families involved in the deception. With their hired admissions counselor, they rigged the test taking, the essays and the extra-curricular activities, particularly athletic, to create an almost ‘bionic applicant’ who would appear foolproof to the admissions committees. Because of the combination of elements, they were successful. In MBA admissions, there are not quite as many points of entry.”

MBA 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 co-founder of Amerasia Consulting, which specializes in MBA 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.”

It’s also true that parents play less a role in graduate admissions. “It’s less about the parent, and more about the students themselves, so perhaps you can make the argument that the students are less likely to get involved in bribes,” thinks Betsy Massar, founder of Master Admissions, an MBA admissions consultant. “But as for cheating on tests or taking advantage of accommodations for extra time, or falsifying a resume? Of course. Do students sometimes write their own recommendations? Of course. And yes, there will always be the ‘my parents bought the building’ to get the student in. That’s going to happen, too. I’d be na?ve to think it doesn’t happen. The shocking thing, though, is the sneakiness of the whole operation, and that’s what’s sickening.”

Many admission consultants also insist that Edge College & Career Network, the firm at the center of the scam, was a rogue actor, hardly representative of what goes on in the business of helping applicants present their best self to schools. “I do believe that a high percentage of consultants are good and fair actors, and that this week’s behavior is considered such an incredible outlier,” ” says Hodara of Fortuna Admissions. “It is in no way reflective, as you know, of the ethical standards that we all believe in- as we help students, and their families navigate the admissions processes.

“Admissions counseling for so many of us is a calling. It calls for patience and understanding, being a good listener, an enthusiastic cheerleader, and yes, “the heavy” on occasion. You need to really like getting to know someone and to understand what keeps them up at night- to be there when they are thrilled about an outcome, or dejected after a deny.”

Most admission consultants agree it would be impossible for a fraud as widespread as the one currently in the news to occur in the MBA 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 Shinewald of mbaMission.

“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, but they will still try to do whatever they can to compete regardless because doing nothing seems futile. 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 MBA playing field is about as level as we would expect it to be.”