Rozette Rago for The New York Times
The corruptions of American college sports and the status anxieties of the wealthy have achieved a spectacular commingling, as a federal indictment on Tuesday charged that N.C.A.A. coaches were paid to fix admissions for rich children at elite colleges and universities, like Georgetown, Yale and U.S.C.
An entrepreneur devised this ingenious scam less than a decade ago, and it involved multiple fixes, a sort of corruption minuet. Parents with cash to burn could pay to have a test taker sit in on the SAT or ACT in place of their teenagers.