Sam Eshaghoff was busted for impersonating SAT test takers. (VICTOR ALCORN)
These dim bulbs cheated to get into party schools!
Two of the four Great Neck North High School grads caught in a mushrooming SAT cheating scandal attend the notoriously hard-partying Arizona State University and University of Colorado at Boulder, where students are as likely to be toking on a bong as hitting the books, sources told The Post yesterday.
Two got accepted at Tulane University in New Orleans — but their acceptance was rescinded once the college found out about the cheating scandal, a spokesman said yesterday.
A fourth attended Baruch College in New York — like New Orleans, a city known for its anything-goes nightlife.
“None of these kids were known as the smart kids,” the source said. “I guess they needed the help to get into college.”
One of the two booted from Tulane apparently went on to one of the other three schools.
Arizona made No. 131 in US News & World Report’s rankings of national universities; Colorado was 94th and Tulane a somewhat more respectable 50th, while Baruch came in at No. 25 among regional universities in the northeast — its best ranking ever.
Arizona State and Colorado are huge state schools noted for their “Animal House”-like frats, while temptation lurks around every corner in the Big Apple and the Big Easy.
But the party may be over before it starts for the alleged cheats since, like Tulane, the other three schools have tough codes of student conduct that don’t allow lying and cheating.
“If we catch a student falsifying information before they [enroll], we revoke their accept-ance,” said Bronson Hilliard, a University of Colorado spokesman, who said he was unaware that a Colorado freshman was involved in the scandal. “If it happens after they have enrolled, they are punished under the code of conduct. In either case, it involves a dismissal.”
Spokespeople for the other two colleges had no comment.
Also yesterday, Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice — whose office blew the lid off the scam this week — said cheating on college entrance tests is widespread and that security should be beefed up as soon as this weekend, when nearly 700,000 students are expected to take the SAT.
“If we don’t send the message to these kids now,” she said, “they’re going to be the future corrupt politicians, the corrupt CEOs, the corrupt accountants, because they’re going to say, ‘Look, I did this when I was 17 and I got a slap on the wrist. Cheating pays.’ ”
When students are caught cheating, the colleges to which they have applied for admission should be informed, she said. That is currently not the case.
The four college freshmen and two current seniors at Great Neck North allegedly enlisted hired brain Sam Eshaghoff, 19, an Emory University sophomore, to take the exams for them between 2009 and last January.
Five of the six paid Eshaghoff between $1,500 and $2,500 to take the tests, according to Rice.
The sixth was Eshaghoff’s girlfriend, the school source said, who didn’t have to pay.