By: Anna Chuang

On July 1, Gordon Ernst, a 55-year-old former Georgetown University tennis coach, was sentenced for two-and-a-half years for the Varsity Blues scandal.

This is a case in which wealthy parents pay large amounts of money so that their child can get into top-tier colleges. The investigation for this scandal was named Operation Varsity Blues after a movie named Operation Varsity Blues.

Ernst earned a total of about $3.5 million through his bribes, and recruited about 2 dozen students. The children who were recruited weren’t even competitive players.

As stated in The New York Times, “More than 50 people have been charged in connection with the scandal.”

Ernst worked with William Singer, commonly known as “Rick” Singer. Singer is a private college counselor who is the leader of this scheme, offering what he called “side doors” to wealthy families so that their children can be guaranteed to get into top schools.

According to Town & Country, Singer said, “If I can make the comparison, there is a front door of getting in, where a student just does it on their own. There’s a back door, where people go to institutional advancement and make large donations, but they’re not guaranteed in. And then I created a side door that guaranteed families to get in. So that was what made it very attractive to so many families, is I created a guarantee.”

The article also said that he arranged students to do SAT and ACT tests so that Singer and his bribed proctors could correct the student’s answers.

Ernst was charged with the harshest punishment so far, of 30 months. John Wilson, an Ex-Staples Inc. Executive who also participated in a college admission scandal before Ernst, was charged with only 15 months in prison.

According to The Seattle Times, “U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani called Ernst’s actions ‘egregious,’ and said they appeared to stem from a desire to portray himself as someone with wealth because that’s what he viewed as the measure of success.”