Kroll International, a private investigations company, has just turned in its four-months-long probe of admissions practices at the University of Texas at Austin. It blows the doors off.
To every single applicant who ever got turned down by UT, I say this: Your wildest most paranoid imagining of why you got screwed and how they really do admissions at UT was nowhere near wild or paranoid enough.
We’re talking about admissions meetings where university officials shred all their notes before leaving the room, like Bookie Bob with his flash paper.
We’re talking about kids so dumb and so unqualified in every other respect that the admissions director begs not to have to let them in, but UT President Bill Powers tells him to do it anyway.
One of my favorite vignettes from the report: “It was stated by the admissions director that the student under discussion was ’so bad for so many reasons, there is no way I can admit this student.’”
At that point, Powers’ chief of staff Nancy Brazzil, who has already told the admissions people that she “speaks for the president,” says to the admissions director, “Do we need to talk to Bill?”
The Kroll report says: “Then, sometime after the meeting, the President’s Office called the Admissions Office and said, ‘Nancy talked to Bill and we have to do this.’”
I love that. “Do we need to talk to Bill?” It’s like The Sopranos.
Read it all, and despair.