Quotes of the Day: Quite Ingenious -- and Quite Busted

After reading our Quote of the Day, you might get an inkling as to the reason why Paul Pless, former dean of admissions at the University of Illinois College of Law, no longer has a job there....

I am a maverick and a reformer so I started a new program for U of I undergrads to apply in their junior year and we don’t require the LSAT. We have additional essays and an interview instead. That way, I can trap about 20 of the little bastards with high GPA’s that count and no LSAT score to count against my median. It is quite ingenious.

Paul Pless, former dean of admissions at the University of Illinois College of Law, in a 2008 email about iLEAP, a program that offered early admission to University of Illinois undergraduates with high GPAs (and no LSAT scores).

(The reaction of the other party to the correspondence, after the jump.)

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Here’s how Pless’s pen pal reacted, according to the investigative report prepared for the law school by Jones Day and Duff & Phelps (which Elie wrote about earlier this week):

The strategic aspect of iLEAP was not lost on Pless’s acquaintance, nor was Pless’s ingenuity: “That is clever. Jack up the GPA without risking the low LSAT (so long as their GPAs don’t crash after they’re accepted—you might want to keep the offer GPA-conditional in some way). But nice gaming the system; I’m so proud.”

Pless replied: “That will be a condition. Plus, if I don’t make them give me their final transcript until after they start, I report the GPA
that was on their application.”

To this, the acquaintance remarked: “nice.”

Not so nice: getting accused by your university employer of “knowingly and intentionally” miscalculating key data, and then having to resign from your $130,000-a-year deanship.

U. of I. probe of law school reveals intense culture, falsified data [Chicago Tribune]
Investigative Report: University of Illinois College of Law Class Profile Reporting [Jones Day and Duff & Phelps]

Earlier: Illinois Law and the Lone Gunman Theory of Admissions Fraud
Another Law School Caught In A Lie
Illinois Law Restates Its Numbers: The Deception is Deeper Than We Thought

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