FALL RIVER — As the mother of one the top students at Somerset Berkley Regional High School, Julie Ramos Gagliardi said the national college admissions cheating scandal that has unfolded over the past couple weeks is heartbreaking, especially for students in Gateway Cities like Fall River whose lives could be changed by admission to one of the top colleges in the country.
Long days and seemingly endless effort went into making her son, Michael, a well-rounded, high achieving student. A senior, his resume from his time at S-B includes being captain of the football team, running track, playing three instruments (cello, guitar and saxophone), co-president of the school’s DECA club, a member of Big Buddies, and vice president of the senior class. He has a GPA of 4.08 and has also worked a part-time job since he was 15 years old.
At 1510, his total SAT score was almost perfect; in fact, he did attain a perfect score of 800 on his math SAT. What got him that stellar score wasn’t someone taking the test for him, as allegedly happened in the college cheating scandal, but hard work in the form of hours of study after school, on the weekends, and taking the test a few times. When he wanted to take the physics and calculus SAT subject tests in preparation for his dream of going to MIT, his parents got him a tutor to help with those studies.
“As parents, we feel like we should give him the resources for him to be able to use his skills to succeed. So it’s hard not to be resentful when you hear about the cheating scandal,” said Ramos Gagliardi, who is also a member of the S-B School Committee. “It doesn’t help the kid to pay off someone so they can get into college. And what does it teach them in the long run?”
As parents, she said she and her husband, Nick, try to teach their sons that they’re responsible for their own work. For Michael, that meant filling out his own FAFSA financial aid forms and his own college applications. He applied to 10 schools and was accepted at seven of them.
Though he didn’t get accepted to his dream college, MIT, Ramos Gagliardi said she knows Michael will be successful in life no matter which college he selects. “I take more offense to it for students in Gateway Cities like Fall River. To attend a college like Harvard could be life-changing for a student there…. Those kids have overcome all kinds of obstacles and to think their spot may have been taken by someone who cheated the system is heartbreaking.”
Fall River Superintendent of Schools Matthew Malone agreed with those sentiments. "Our students deserve a fair, equitable, and honest chance to compete on a level playing field for competitive higher education opportunities that should be open to the highest achiever with the most merit in their application package,” he said. “Recent events have illustrated that wealth trumps merit when a rigged system is empowered and perhaps supported to ensure that the children of those with power and influence receive more opportunities than those who do not. Quite frankly, I understand why such a rigged system would need to exist to support the egos of the privileged few — because the students from Fall River and (B.M.C.) Durfee High School are indomitable when it comes to a fair competition. That's right, pound for pound, it’s no contest."
Kathrine Esten, who was the valedictorian of her class at SBRHS in 2017, said the news of the scandal stings, especially since universities she was wait-listed for or rejected by were among the list of schools involved. “I'm not sure what else I could have done besides have celebrity, millionaire parents. I don't see it as someone ‘took my spot,’ but instead that there wasn't a spot for me in an admissions system that runs like this. However, my biggest takeaway is that the ‘prestigious’ schools involved are vastly overrated and meritocracy is a myth in most higher education.”
A political science and history major in the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Esten was wait-listed at Georgetown University and not accepted at Yale University.
When SBRHS students who are in the midst of the college application process reach out to her now with their concerns about being a high-achieving student at a state school, she tells them their college degree shouldn’t be about “the name at the top of their diploma, but instead about challenging themselves and learning about a field they're passionate about. I've had a great experience so far at UMass Amherst and I'm proud of the work I did to get where I am.”
For Esten and Diman Regional Vocational Technical School graduate Dylan Barcelos, the scandal confirms what they and their peers have suspected all along. “A college degree doesn't mean the same thing to different income levels,” said Esten.
Although one’s individual effort is important, class plays a considerable role in college admissions, said Barcelos, who graduated sixth in Diman’s Class of 2018.
Barcelos, who was a cancer research intern under the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and Boston Children’s Hospital while he was at Diman, is currently majoring in biochemistry at UMass Amherst. “The college scandal sheds light on the fact that wealthy students not only have more resources, but can also cheat their way into college…. I hope this issue will be resolved and the impact class has on acceptance will be discussed more often.”
After losing his single-parent mother when he was only 19 years old, Christopher Carreiro put himself through school starting out at Bristol Community College and then UMass Dartmouth and, finally, Roger Williams Law School. An attorney and Swansea selectman, Carreiro said he was very upset to hear about the scandal, though he also said it’s been suspected for a long time.
Ultimately, he said, the parents who were involved in the scandal were not doing their kids any favors in the long run. “There are no shortcuts in life. You can’t get from A to C without B. Learning is a part of life’s experience and you need motivation and tenacity to be the best person you can be,” said Carreiro.