The University of Southern California admitted applicants from wealthy families as walk-on athletes for years, often after their parents made donations of millions of dollars, though many never appeared on a team roster, a new Los Angeles Times investigation found.
The controversy bears similarities to the 2019 Varsity Blues admissions scandal, which involved multiple highly selective universities, including USC. But unlike some of those implicated in Varsity Blues, the students admitted to USC as walk-on athletes mostly did play the sports listed on their applications, just not at a highly competitive level.
According to a review of documents acquired by the L.A. Times, one international applicant with poor grades who was described internally as a “mediocre student at best” was accepted as a walk-on golfer after his father donated $3 million to the USC golf program.
The L.A. Times investigation of thousands of internal records found that administrators often manipulated the admissions process to favor applicants from the families of business executives, real estate developers, sports team owners and others with deep pockets. Applicants from those families often had an 85 to 90 percent acceptance rate, even if their academics were mediocre. By contrast, USC’s acceptance rate typically hovers below 10 percent over all.
Families that spoke to the newspaper denied making donations in exchange for admissions.
USC also downplayed the matter, telling the L.A. Times, “This fraud involved a limited number of employees exclusively in athletics who are no longer with the university.” Officials also said they added new safeguards in 2020 and “have learned from it in order to ensure it does not happen again.”
USC officials declined to discuss individual cases, the newspaper noted, citing privacy laws.
