Bonnie Goldstein

Opinion contributor

The “nationwide conspiracy” to rig the college admissions competition by bribing college coaches and standardized test administrators will likely cause parents of 17-year-olds all over America to draw a distinct moral and legal line between editing their kid's essay and hiring a 36-year-old Harvard graduate to impersonate him at the test center.

Something overcomes parents when their children start 11th grade. Suddenly, every family activity is pulled by the gravitational force of their tender child’s potential post-secondary positioning. Parents talk about acceptance odds to each other, to their children, to their teenagers’ placement counselors, to tutors and test prep instructors, and to friends when their kids aren't around.

Understanding the application system is an essential part of a parent’s continuing education. Tips are passed along, admission anecdotes shared, optimistic statistics and safety schools cited. The latest cycle of celebrity schadenfreude and academic umbrage will not change their anxiety over their fledglings’ first solo flight.

Today's parents run the college rat race

In 2005, the guidance counselor at my son’s Washington, D.C., prep school told parents their “clerical” support would be expected. Taking that as my cri de coeur, I completed and submitted 11 online versions of the Common Application for undergraduate admission. I knew if I didn’t do it for him, it would never get done.

My own WWII-era parents paid not the least bit of attention in 1966, when I worked with my St. Paul high school guidance counselor to apply for early decision at Northwestern University’s journalism program. By the time my acceptance came in January, I had met a boy from Minneapolis who kissed me on a rec room stairway while we were both on a double date with other people. All that spring we played our own version of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and, thinking I’d love him forever, I declined the invitation to leave town for school. That choice is one of my longest lifelong regrets.

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Admissions departments for four-year colleges use sliding standards to winnow down the tiny percentage of high school seniors who make the cut for each freshman class. Not only are odds low within the large field of highly competent contenders for scarce places, the advantage goes to athletic program candidates, children of alumni and students who have demonstrated remarkable achievement.

Of the remaining openings, it’s no longer a secret there are privileged “back-door” slots earmarked for the children of particularly large donors. (In 1998, long before he was under-qualified for a White House security clearance, Paramus, New Jersey, high school student Jared Kushner was an under-qualified applicant for Harvard class of 2003. Luckily, the boy’s parents had pledged $2.5 million to the Ivy League college where a young Kushner would matriculate, ProPublica’s Daniel Golden reported.)

A lesson tutors can't teach

With all those advantages to other people’s kids, parents of the remaining 2 million rising college freshmen are hoping for an edge. The 33 wealthy high-profile parents of college-age students indicted this week for their alleged role in bribing their kids' college acceptances went the back door one better. They are accused of getting “guaranteed” enrollment for their offspring using a “side door” described the mastermind of the scheme, who pleaded guilty to racketeering, money laundering, tax evasion and obstruction of justice.

The privileged parents have been arrested for conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and posted bonds adding up to many millions of dollars, and some have lost prestigious positions. The conspirators include several founders, chairpersons and CEOs of large corporations, international lawyers, developers, a fashion designer, a casino operator and at least two celebrity actors. By all indications, their careers and bank accounts will survive this scandal.

The father of one side door student, actor William H. Macy, was nominated for an Oscar for his role as a hapless criminal in “Fargo” and currently stars in Showtime’s long-running series, “Shameless.” In season one, his character’s clever son had a similar fictional business taking other students' SATs for cash.

The snookered higher education institutions have fired the crooked coaches. Testing companies have sacked their stealthy supervisors. None of the more than 700 accepted students whose enrollment allegedly was fixed, have yet been penalized by their schools. I have little doubt the lessons of their parents’ cheating will be a far bigger part of those students education than any they will learn in a classroom. The good news is, they have been given a teachable moment they could never get from a tutor.

To succeed you have to want it

It could be some of the students will be asked to leave or withdraw on their own. College is not for everyone. After my nearly pathological disregard for my son's boundaries got him a half dozen acceptance letters, he was so disengaged he let me choose which school was best for him. When he got there, he threw up during orientation, and spent his whole first semester never going to class. It cost me $50,000 to figure out he did not want to go to college.

To succeed in college, even kids with limitless advantages, have to want to be there.

One of the side door students in the spotlight, Olivia Jade, had already begun her career as a beauty tips “influencer” with more than 1 million followers on Instagram and nearly 2 million more on YouTube before she left home for her freshman dorm. The budding performer, a daughter of an actor mother and fashion designer father, told her fans, “I don't really care about school, as you guys all know." The 19-year-old and her sister, also allegedly a side door entry, will not be returning to campus.

Meantime, my son has schooled himself via hard knocks and lucky breaks. Now in his 30s, he is independent and self-reliant with a home he pays for and a job he enjoys. It doesn’t matter if your education is nontraditional as long as you get one.

Bonnie Goldstein is a writer, investigator, mother and wife in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter: @kickedbyanangel.