Competition in American Society Seen Through the Long Island SAT Cheating Incident

Despite grassroots level anti-elitism, Romney and Gingrich, who are increasingly dominant in the Republican Party primary race, are both out-and-out members of the intellectual elite. Romney is considered to be the most likely winner. As such, no matter who wins next year’s election, the White House will continue to house a Harvard alumnus.

On the other hand, since the “Occupy Wall Street” movement began, polarization has become a popular topic of American conversation. Regardless of how wealth is distributed, The National Review and other such representatives of conservative popular opinion have begun to acknowledge the inequality of social opportunity. The New York Times and the Washington Post have stressed that upward mobility among the members of the American lower class has fallen behind countries such as Germany, France, Canada, etc. The root cause of this phenomenon lies in the differentiation of educational opportunities in America: The children of the poor remain poor mainly because of their low level of education.

That the intellectual elite continue to control America’s “superstructure” shows that the social status of the next generation of America’s middle class lies not in the inheritance of wealth, but in obtaining a good education, especially the opportunity for an elite education. Last year “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” aroused unprecedented controversy, especially since afterward the eldest daughter of the “Tiger Mother” was admitted to Harvard and other prestigious schools; it touched a nerve with the competition anxiety of the middle class.

The test culture of China and other Asian countries, and above all the “one test determines a lifetime” college entrance exam, have encountered a fair amount of social criticism. It was scarcely imagined that America also had a deep seated college entrance exam culture, which gave birth to a “test prep” industry worth upwards of several billion dollars per year. My new book about entrance strategies for prestigious American universities, “Realizing the Harvard Dream,” published by the Beijing Zhonghua Book Company, addresses this topic. However, amidst the annual college application year-end deadline craze, the Long Island SAT cheating incident exposed several months ago is growing more and more important, and has pushed the American College entrance exam craze to an unprecedented height.

The Scandal isn’t an Isolated Case

The gist of this case is that with America’s highly standardized SAT and ACT college entrance exams, many high school students hire “hired guns” to take the test for them and earn a high score. When the case first became public, people thought that it was just an internal, rare and isolated incident at one Long Island high school. But now, several months later, more and more cases are being exposed. Tens of students from many different schools and school districts are involved — and this may be just the tip of the iceberg.

Just like the “Tiger Mother” controversy, this cheating case has been closely followed by America’s elite media, from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal to every major TV network. This is because, not only has this fraud broken the rules of “fair play,” it is also directly reflected the future socioeconomic opportunities for the next generation of the upper and middle class. New York State Senator and Chairman of the Senate’s higher education committee Kenneth LaValle revealed the seriousness of a case of fraud like this: “[The SAT] will determine the course of their life.”

On a certain level, the effect on society of America’s college entrance test culture is even more extreme than China’s. For example, every school district’s average SAT score directly influences the rise and fall of local real estate prices. The above mentioned “path of life” implication is even more striking. This is because, with an emphasis on “comprehensiveness,” SAT and ACT scores are an important factor in applications to American universities, including Ivy League universities. Extensive survey results indicate that a student’s future opportunities for social success are highly correlated to the reputation and ranking of the university he/she attended. Besides the fact that Wall Street is full of Ivy League students, Atlantic Monthly approached this issue from a financial angle and revealed a strong relationship: Several years after graduating, the average yearly income of students from the best few universities is higher than that of two-thirds of the graduates from the school ranked 50th.

The price of having a “hired gun” take the SAT for a student is reported to be between $2,500 and $3,500, definitely not a sum that lower class families can afford, and as an ex-state representative pointed out, not a high school student’s allowance, either. Therefore, the parents of the students involved must have known what was going on. The district in Long Island where this case occurred is full of rich and intellectual elites and is a gathering place for those of Asian and Jewish descent. The competition to get into prestigious schools is particularly fierce. The schools where known cases have occurred include not only “elite” public high schools, but also private prep schools. The cheaters revealed so far include an Iranian-American and a Jewish American, but so far there are no ethnic Chinese.

One hired gun revealed thus far had scores are between 2140 and 2220 points (out of 2400), equivalent to the top 1-3 percent of test takers. Not only is this good enough to get into the top 20 American universities, as long as one’s other factors are passable, there is even a chance of getting into an Ivy League school (25 percent of students enrolled at Princeton didn’t score above 2100).

Thus public reaction to this case of cheating has been quite intense. Even though those involved were just high school students and recent college graduates and a big name lawyer said that this shouldn’t even count as a misdemeanor, the New York state authorities persist in prosecuting this case as a felony. As for the College Board, which manages the SAT test, they have declared that they will spare no expense and have hired ex-FBI chief Louis Freeh to lead the task of strengthening the SAT’s security measures. That competition to enter universities has entered such unscrupulous territory that it not only reflects the red-hot intensity of American society’s competition, it also illustrates money’s corrupting influence on the opportunities of elite education.

The writer works in North America doing scientific research.