This whole comment thread has been a crazy way to find out the ways people justify immoral behavior to themselves.
Do you think my comment is doing that? Or are you just commenting on the other comments.
FWIW, just to be clear, I don’t think “manipulating, exploiting or scamming” are good things to do!
This kind of minor fraud is completely normalized within middle and upper classes. It's half the way many kids end up at these schools in the first place, thinking of the "pay-to-play" scandal at USC a while back.