6 ms·

Scoop: Silicon Valley VC out after hiring disgraced college “coach”

32 points by todsac 8y ago

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
OK, as I started reading this article I thought, "well, OK, maybe he really did think everything was above board" until I got to the amount. $176,000 for a "college admissions consultant"? Bullshit, if he didn't explicitly know there was shady stuff going on I can't believe there wasn't at least a "see no evil/hear no evil" wink wink. But Jesus, what's up with all these super-rich people who either (a) have totally incompetent kids or who (b) believe they have totally incompetent kids to the tune that they need all these hundreds of thousands of dollars to get into college. I always considered myself to have a privileged upbringing with relatively-upper-middle class parents, but I had to pay for my SAT prep books out of my own part-time job money.
- mc32 8y ago
  Not only that but they have the gall to virtue signal all day about equal opportunity... but when push comes to shove, obviously it doesn’t apply to them.
- csours 8y ago
  I think being ultra-wealthy must 'pickle' people's brains somehow.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    Studies have shown that wealth reduces your empathy.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  I think one of the sadder parts is that the parents of these kids know they’ve raised idiots.
  - gdulli 8y ago
    It may not be that. These people live a lifestyle of status symbols over substance. It's important to be seen as having kids with a certain kind of success. They could feel pressured to buy success for their kids as insurance despite feeling their kids are smart. It could also be that these people got the same sort of help from their own parents. And therefore to them this is just standard behavior divorced from any context of morality or the child's true development.
    - isoskeles 8y ago
      > These people live a lifestyle of status symbols over substance. Do you mean everyone in the US? We don't have a student debt crisis because only the ultra-wealthy decided to live beyond their means.
- felipemnoa 8y ago
  >>but I had to pay for my SAT prep books out of my own part-time job money. Serious question, why? Why would your parents not pay for something that is school related. I can see paying for my toys with my own money, but if you are middle class I would expect for your parents to pay for education related stuff.
  - asark 8y ago
    If your kid's able and inclined to pay for their own test prep books it's probably better to let them do it. More likely to actually use it that way, I'd guess.
  - gdulli 8y ago
    Giving a child responsibility is the opposite route of buying their way through life. Maybe the parents thought it would have a good effect.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    I had a regular part-time job since I was a sophomore in high school. From that point I paid for all of my "incidental" expenses. In truth, I'm sure if I had begged for money for those books my parents would have given it to me, but I really liked the freedom and independence my part time job allowed me to have, and my parents liked instilling the sense of responsibility in me by having a budget, prioritizing my expenses, etc.
- ghaff 8y ago
  The article now says "Overall, Schaepe paid approximately $630,000 to Singer, via cash and stock donations to a nonprofit foundation Singer ran (which appears to have been a front)." It's not remotely credible that someone who paid anything like that amount of money just thought there were introductions or whatever going on. To your other point, all of the schools I've seen listed are decent enough but quite a few are certainly not the most selective of the most selective.
  - bredren 8y ago
    One question to ask this person would be, what other one-off non-investment expenses in cash and stock of $600k+ are you incurring that are completely legit and above the board? When I see stuff like this, it just seem like something where "oh-my-gosh we made a terrible mistake" it is more likely part of a pattern of behavior its just in this instance they got caught.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  It's the modern aristocracy; this kind of behavior has existed since the beginning of humanity. And it likely won't ever end. I found an interesting example of this reading through David McCullough's 1776[0]. One major weakness George Washington sought to exploit in the British military was the lack of talent and creativity among the British leadership. Back then, British military officers were commissioned based on their wealth alone, not their talent. Washington leaned heavily into this throughout the revolution through his use of guerilla tactics and promoting officers, like Henry Knox, based on tactical aptitude. This gave way to successes like the Knox Expedition[1], many of which were consequential to winning the war. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776_(book) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_train_of_artillery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_train_of_artillery
  - exolymph 8y ago
    Napoleon changed the French army with a similar focus on merit and skill over money or title.
- rdiddly 8y ago
  Adversity is the rock against which you sharpen your knife. If that rock is always covered with silk pillows, you are going to grow up dull indeed. You would think money would, while maybe not buying happiness, at least free you from the kind of sniveling, insecure, desperate worrying these parents seem to be engaged in. Apparently not. "We're just one Harvard rejection away from totally still having plenty of money OMG!!!" It's like their brains have been hijacked. It's like being in that movie "They Live" before finding the magic sunglasses.
  - bredren 8y ago
    I think one problem for these folks is there isn't much to upgrade to for themselves. But there is intergenerational social status that can be "attained" and peacocked at just the right moment. Parents are naturally proud of the "accomplishments" of their children. But I think in the case of the USC "students" and this school it was probably more about the desires of the children to be at a particular place among their peers.
  - almost_usual 8y ago
    I'm assuming it's another status symbol these parents feel they need to have in order to 'fit in'.
- dominotw 8y ago
  Why did you have to pay for your own books?
- caprese 8y ago
  Parents often try to buy the best chances they can afford for their children This is totally separate from their child's existence or lack of competence, its about why join the rat race with the plebs when you have a resource they don't when the only reason everyone else is in the rat race is because they don't have an abundance of your specific resource And as a deck hand on a super yacht told me "you'd be surprised what people spend in private", and I've come to realize this probably applies to you as well
- spectre256 8y ago
  Yeah, with all the research about how well correlated legitimate academic achievement is with family wealth, what does it say about you when you have to pay extra for one of these "consultants"?
- sbierwagen 8y ago
  >But Jesus, what's up with all these super-rich people who either (a) have totally incompetent kids Regression to the mean. IQ is only .73 heritable, so it's a one in four chance that two above average people can produce a child of "just" average intelligence.
myroon5 8y ago
His page was removed but still in Google's cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gxwL2X7ZxmoJ:https://lsvp.com/team/chris-schaepe/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gxwL2X...
gph 8y ago
I'm kind of curious what it means to run a non-profit as a front. I sorta know from news/pop culture that a lot of rich people use non-profits as a way of funneling taxable income into championing their own causes and throwing galas for themselves. But it sounds like Singer was using it more as a money laundering front? Or was he basically paying himself an exorbitant amount to be an executive of the non-profit, while not really doing much? Is it really that easy to abuse the non-profit system in the US?
vondur 8y ago
I always assumed if you donated that kind of money to certain private colleges that you could get your kids accepted.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wmf 8y ago
  Various articles say that a straight donation needs to be $2-10M so these bribes are significantly cheaper.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  ??? That's not a lot of money. You donate USD50 Million, most schools are gonna make sure your kid, (and through your kid, your family's money), keep going to their institution. At less than say, 1 million? That's not really gonna turn any heads at a place like USC or Texas. Probably would get you some time in the luxury boxes for football and basketball games though. (At least, I would think it would??? Unless football at schools like Texas, USC, Ohio State, Alabama etc is even bigger than I think it is.) But yeah, the guy or gal who donates USD50 Million plus... You better believe at any school, he or she will be getting his or her OWN luxury box.
dawhizkid 8y ago
This story makes no sense to me. Why would someone who has all the money in the world to prepare their kid to get into the best schools pay $180k to get their kid in a mid-ranked public school with a 40% admissions rate? Like how badly unqualified could his son be to require that kind of assistance to get into UT Austin (no offense, but this is not Harvard or Stanford we’re taking about here..)
- bredren 8y ago
  If you're coming in from out of state, (presumably the family is based in CA), public school admissions can be more difficult than for in-state applicants. From what I remember even for in-state applicants, when admissions years are big meeting the minimum requirements does not guarantee matriculation. So it could be that the child had halfway decent scores but for a variety of reasons wasn't likely to make it in on a straight application. 40% admission means a most people are still getting rejected. Or it could be otherwise.
  - gretch 8y ago
    Exactly I enrolled at UT in 2008 and back then there was a state wide policy where if you were in the top 10% of high school class, you were automatically accepted into any state public school (including UT). This meant that any kid who is 5th in their class of 50 somewhere in west texas was going to take a spot from someone who might have been extremely capable from out of state. Also, it sounds like the deal was not just to be admitted to the school, but also to be a manager in the athletics program. Imo, that's a pretty cool life experience and maybe worth 180k for a rich person
    - ghaff 8y ago
      >also to be a manager in the athletics program Really? Does anyone really go to college with the dream of being a manager of a sports team? I was actually co-manager for a year or two but that's because the coach sought me out to do public relations stuff. It was an interesting diversion but not the sort of thing I had ever thought about on my own and (I'm guessing) probably not that hard to get a coach to take you on so long as it wasn't something like the football team.

32 points by todsac 8y ago

OK, as I started reading this article I thought, "well, OK, maybe he really did think everything was above board" until I got to the amount. $176,000 for a "college admissions consultant"? Bullshit, if he didn't explicitly know there was shady stuff going on I can't believe there wasn't at least a "see no evil/hear no evil" wink wink. But Jesus, what's up with all these super-rich people who either (a) have totally incompetent kids or who (b) believe they have totally incompetent kids to the tune that they need all these hundreds of thousands of dollars to get into college. I always considered myself to have a privileged upbringing with relatively-upper-middle class parents, but I had to pay for my SAT prep books out of my own part-time job money.

mc32 8y ago
Not only that but they have the gall to virtue signal all day about equal opportunity... but when push comes to shove, obviously it doesn’t apply to them.
csours 8y ago
I think being ultra-wealthy must 'pickle' people's brains somehow.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  Studies have shown that wealth reduces your empathy.
village-idiot 8y ago
I think one of the sadder parts is that the parents of these kids know they’ve raised idiots.
- gdulli 8y ago
  It may not be that. These people live a lifestyle of status symbols over substance. It's important to be seen as having kids with a certain kind of success. They could feel pressured to buy success for their kids as insurance despite feeling their kids are smart. It could also be that these people got the same sort of help from their own parents. And therefore to them this is just standard behavior divorced from any context of morality or the child's true development.
  - isoskeles 8y ago
    > These people live a lifestyle of status symbols over substance. Do you mean everyone in the US? We don't have a student debt crisis because only the ultra-wealthy decided to live beyond their means.
felipemnoa 8y ago
>>but I had to pay for my SAT prep books out of my own part-time job money. Serious question, why? Why would your parents not pay for something that is school related. I can see paying for my toys with my own money, but if you are middle class I would expect for your parents to pay for education related stuff.
- asark 8y ago
  If your kid's able and inclined to pay for their own test prep books it's probably better to let them do it. More likely to actually use it that way, I'd guess.
- gdulli 8y ago
  Giving a child responsibility is the opposite route of buying their way through life. Maybe the parents thought it would have a good effect.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  I had a regular part-time job since I was a sophomore in high school. From that point I paid for all of my "incidental" expenses. In truth, I'm sure if I had begged for money for those books my parents would have given it to me, but I really liked the freedom and independence my part time job allowed me to have, and my parents liked instilling the sense of responsibility in me by having a budget, prioritizing my expenses, etc.
ghaff 8y ago
The article now says "Overall, Schaepe paid approximately $630,000 to Singer, via cash and stock donations to a nonprofit foundation Singer ran (which appears to have been a front)." It's not remotely credible that someone who paid anything like that amount of money just thought there were introductions or whatever going on. To your other point, all of the schools I've seen listed are decent enough but quite a few are certainly not the most selective of the most selective.
- bredren 8y ago
  One question to ask this person would be, what other one-off non-investment expenses in cash and stock of $600k+ are you incurring that are completely legit and above the board? When I see stuff like this, it just seem like something where "oh-my-gosh we made a terrible mistake" it is more likely part of a pattern of behavior its just in this instance they got caught.
save_ferris 8y ago
It's the modern aristocracy; this kind of behavior has existed since the beginning of humanity. And it likely won't ever end. I found an interesting example of this reading through David McCullough's 1776[0]. One major weakness George Washington sought to exploit in the British military was the lack of talent and creativity among the British leadership. Back then, British military officers were commissioned based on their wealth alone, not their talent. Washington leaned heavily into this throughout the revolution through his use of guerilla tactics and promoting officers, like Henry Knox, based on tactical aptitude. This gave way to successes like the Knox Expedition[1], many of which were consequential to winning the war. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776_(book) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_train_of_artillery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_train_of_artillery
- exolymph 8y ago
  Napoleon changed the French army with a similar focus on merit and skill over money or title.
rdiddly 8y ago
Adversity is the rock against which you sharpen your knife. If that rock is always covered with silk pillows, you are going to grow up dull indeed. You would think money would, while maybe not buying happiness, at least free you from the kind of sniveling, insecure, desperate worrying these parents seem to be engaged in. Apparently not. "We're just one Harvard rejection away from totally still having plenty of money OMG!!!" It's like their brains have been hijacked. It's like being in that movie "They Live" before finding the magic sunglasses.
- bredren 8y ago
  I think one problem for these folks is there isn't much to upgrade to for themselves. But there is intergenerational social status that can be "attained" and peacocked at just the right moment. Parents are naturally proud of the "accomplishments" of their children. But I think in the case of the USC "students" and this school it was probably more about the desires of the children to be at a particular place among their peers.
- almost_usual 8y ago
  I'm assuming it's another status symbol these parents feel they need to have in order to 'fit in'.
dominotw 8y ago
Why did you have to pay for your own books?
caprese 8y ago
Parents often try to buy the best chances they can afford for their children This is totally separate from their child's existence or lack of competence, its about why join the rat race with the plebs when you have a resource they don't when the only reason everyone else is in the rat race is because they don't have an abundance of your specific resource And as a deck hand on a super yacht told me "you'd be surprised what people spend in private", and I've come to realize this probably applies to you as well
spectre256 8y ago
Yeah, with all the research about how well correlated legitimate academic achievement is with family wealth, what does it say about you when you have to pay extra for one of these "consultants"?
sbierwagen 8y ago
>But Jesus, what's up with all these super-rich people who either (a) have totally incompetent kids Regression to the mean. IQ is only .73 heritable, so it's a one in four chance that two above average people can produce a child of "just" average intelligence.

myroon5 8y ago

His page was removed but still in Google's cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gxwL2X7ZxmoJ:https://lsvp.com/team/chris-schaepe/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gxwL2X...

gph 8y ago

I'm kind of curious what it means to run a non-profit as a front. I sorta know from news/pop culture that a lot of rich people use non-profits as a way of funneling taxable income into championing their own causes and throwing galas for themselves. But it sounds like Singer was using it more as a money laundering front? Or was he basically paying himself an exorbitant amount to be an executive of the non-profit, while not really doing much? Is it really that easy to abuse the non-profit system in the US?

vondur 8y ago

I always assumed if you donated that kind of money to certain private colleges that you could get your kids accepted.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wmf 8y ago
Various articles say that a straight donation needs to be $2-10M so these bribes are significantly cheaper.
bilbo0s 8y ago
??? That's not a lot of money. You donate USD50 Million, most schools are gonna make sure your kid, (and through your kid, your family's money), keep going to their institution. At less than say, 1 million? That's not really gonna turn any heads at a place like USC or Texas. Probably would get you some time in the luxury boxes for football and basketball games though. (At least, I would think it would??? Unless football at schools like Texas, USC, Ohio State, Alabama etc is even bigger than I think it is.) But yeah, the guy or gal who donates USD50 Million plus... You better believe at any school, he or she will be getting his or her OWN luxury box.

dawhizkid 8y ago

This story makes no sense to me. Why would someone who has all the money in the world to prepare their kid to get into the best schools pay $180k to get their kid in a mid-ranked public school with a 40% admissions rate? Like how badly unqualified could his son be to require that kind of assistance to get into UT Austin (no offense, but this is not Harvard or Stanford we’re taking about here..)

bredren 8y ago
If you're coming in from out of state, (presumably the family is based in CA), public school admissions can be more difficult than for in-state applicants. From what I remember even for in-state applicants, when admissions years are big meeting the minimum requirements does not guarantee matriculation. So it could be that the child had halfway decent scores but for a variety of reasons wasn't likely to make it in on a straight application. 40% admission means a most people are still getting rejected. Or it could be otherwise.
- gretch 8y ago
  Exactly I enrolled at UT in 2008 and back then there was a state wide policy where if you were in the top 10% of high school class, you were automatically accepted into any state public school (including UT). This meant that any kid who is 5th in their class of 50 somewhere in west texas was going to take a spot from someone who might have been extremely capable from out of state. Also, it sounds like the deal was not just to be admitted to the school, but also to be a manager in the athletics program. Imo, that's a pretty cool life experience and maybe worth 180k for a rich person
  - ghaff 8y ago
    >also to be a manager in the athletics program Really? Does anyone really go to college with the dream of being a manager of a sports team? I was actually co-manager for a year or two but that's because the coach sought me out to do public relations stuff. It was an interesting diversion but not the sort of thing I had ever thought about on my own and (I'm guessing) probably not that hard to get a coach to take you on so long as it wasn't something like the football team.