Rich parents still exploiting loopholes to get their kids into Ivy League via golf, fencing and crew

They’re gaming the system.Seven years after the Varsity Blues scandal that saw parents like Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin scamming to get their kids into elite colleges by bribing coaches to recruit them as athletes or using fraudulent test scores, the wealthy are still using niche sports to give their kids unfair — though not illegal — advantages.

“Families definitely come to me and say, ‘You know what? I want my child to be a recruited athlete,'” boutique college admissions counselor Chris Rim told The Post.“They know [certain sports] require really specialized and expensive coaching and equipment, and I think they think that it’s going to make them stand out.”Top schools need to fill their squash, fencing, rowing, sailing, golf, water polo, and skiing teams.

And they do — often with recruited athletes who need to clear far lower academic hurdles than their peers thanks to their specialized athletic skills.With Ivy League admission rates in the low single digits — for the class of 2030, Yale accepted just 4% of applicants — the ultra-privileged are exploiting this fact, signing junior up for fencing lessons and club water polo before he’s lost all of baby teeth.Rim, founder and CEO of Command Education, says that clients now start their kids in hyper-specialized sports as early as third or fourth grade.“It’s a strategy that families might use if they notice early on, like, ‘Hey, my child is not really gonna be the best academic student,'” Rim said.“They’re like, ‘Is crew really going to be the best thing? Or is it going to be lacrosse? Or is it going to be squash?'”At Harvard, a full 86% of recruited athletes applying to the school ended up being admitted, compared with just 6% of non-recruited applicants.One study of almost 400,000 NCAA athletes at more than 1,000 colleges found that the sports with the most disproportionate representation of players coming from top-1% income earning zip codes were squash, sailing...