<p>"The resume and other application materials a Delaware man used to dupe Harvard University into admitting him was rife with inconsistencies overlooked by the Ivy League colleges admissions staff." I wonder why Harvard wanted this guy so badly that their process failed.</p>
<p>Man</a> who fooled Harvard had error-riddled resume - BostonHerald.com</p>
<p>^^“A Harvard spokesman says the university has toughened its applicant screening process.” Let’s make things a bit harder to get into Harvard.</p>
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<p>As if it isn’t already hard enough…SMH.</p>
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<p>Well, yes, let’s do exactly that if it’s possible to fake your way (sloppily, at that) into Harvard.</p>
<p>Dave, I can understand posting the link to the Herald article. It’s fun to poke fun at Harvard because Harvard is kind of the Kleenex or Coke of American colleges: it’s the brand name that everyone recognizes.</p>
<p>But aren’t you kind of asking to have it both ways? First, let’s poke fun at Harvard for sloppy admissions practices, and then let’s poke fun at Harvard for trying to fix the problem.</p>
<p>The writer hasn’t visited College Confidential it seems “A grade report from the College Board shows that the Milton, Del. man earned the highest marks on 16 advanced placement exams. Most students take only one or two.” . That was considered an inconsistency in his application. To be honest that probably isn’t in the top 100 AP exam testers applying to Harvard.</p>
<p>That occurred to me, too. But I hate to generate any more press of any kind for the College Board or the testing-industrial complex.</p>
<p>From that article I cannot really lay blame on Harvard. It assumes like all colleges that applicants are honest so it doesn’t review or check everything in an application for honesty and could easily have missed that a rec letter mentioned enrollment in Philips Andover in Junior year and that transcript showed all four. 16 AP scores may be high but for Harvard many applicants have a high number (they don’t mention whether the forged transcript showed a lot of AP courses). Since colleges do not require official scores for APs for admission purposes. he could easily forge a copy of the score reports and send them and not raise any suspicion that they did not come from CB itself. </p>
<p>It sounds like he had some very good forgeries of documents including transcripts. What I would like to know is what he did for SAT scores since the official score has to come from CB. Did he forge those and how could he forge the send from CB (which sends them electronically to Harvard along with numerous other applicant’s scores) or, instead, did he just actually have very high scores that CB sent, which would be further reason for Harvard not to be suspicious?</p>
<p>Not sure what kind of screening Harvard can even add. It is impracticable to screen every application for honesty, which would require its taking steps to verify info provided; no college has the time or resources to verify every application. Some schools like the UCs have gone to doing a random sample of applicants to verify info provided and that would be the way to do it and avoid large costs and delays.</p>
<p>Drusba, Wheeler went to Bowdoin which I believe points to him having good/great scores.</p>
<p>“rife with inconsistencies” it says
yet the only inconsistency it names is the number of years attended</p>
<p>the only thing wrong with him is his scoring high marks on 16 AP exams which should have been around 25 instead as an admitted harvard applicant</p>
<p>(and don’t ask, cause i have no clue how many different ap exams there are)
still, these journalists need to do more research instead of relying on filler adjectives</p>
<p>Harvard or any other school doesn’t have to verify the facts of every app. They only need to verify the facts of those they admit. Even more narrowly, they could say that they will verify the facts of those of accept admission. Easy enough to hire an outside firm at x$ per admit to verify facts. Probably add about $300,000 or so to admissions costs per year for admit verification. Given 30,000 applications, just add $10 to the application fee – it’s not as if applicants will be deterred by an additioinal $10.</p>
<p>@kelly</p>
<p>If I remember the story correctly, he was in fact admitted and did attend. He was only caught because he began the process to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship and then some inconsistencies were noted by his Harvard recommenders. I believe during his investigation he also applied to transfer to Stanford and was admitted. Stanford revoked his admittance when Harvard reached its verdict and contacted Stanford.</p>
<p>If he had the talent to fool Harvard like that, I think he deserved to stay there.</p>
<p>The real solution to the riddle is: Phillips Andover.</p>
<p>Updated article from the Boston Globe:</p>
<p>[A</a> liar enabled - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/12/30/a_liar_enabled/]A”>http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/12/30/a_liar_enabled/)</p>
<p>Wheeler did his homework better than Harvard did.</p>
<p>The young con artist knew exactly how to grab the attention of the nation’s most selective college admissions committee.</p>
<p>He invented a fantasy resume, which included elite schools he never attended, a plethora of implausibly perfect test scores and a gushing but phony letter of recommendation from a faculty adviser he never met. He submitted a personal essay stuffed with overwrought psychobabble about the deficiency of undergraduate studies at MIT — where he falsely claimed to be enrolled. He added a short piece of prose about his parents’ divorce — which never occurred. It included a touching but entirely fictional reference to his mother showing him the letter his father wrote about his decision to leave her, and later letting it “flutter from my fingers to the carpet.’’</p>
<p>Having 16 5’s by graduation time isn’t that unbelievable. And the discrepancy between the Rec letter and the transcript on how many years he had gone to Andover would probably come across as a typo by whoever wrote his letter.</p>
<p>As the last poster’s article alludes to, his real skill was knowing what to give them. I was just thinking, if I were to completely fabricate an application, test scores, recomendations and all, would I still get in? I don’t know that I would…lol. That’s pretty sad, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Also, that was pretty gutsy of him to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship. Was he going to plagarize/lie his way through that too?</p>
<p>He had already gotten the Hoopes Prize, and was the first person to win it as a junior. Of course, he got that by completely plagiarizing a prominent Harvard professor…</p>
<p>In fact, the Rhodes was what killed him. He probably could have gotten through alright if he hadn’t overextended himself, but when he applied for the Rhodes they took too close a look at his transcript going back to high school and it all fell apart.</p>
<p>I would have hailed this guy if he actually pulled it through…I didn’t read the article, too lazy.
So did he get arrested?</p>
<p>my hero…</p>
<p>From article:
Um… not students applying to Harvard. Ivy Leagues weren’t even on my radar and I took 10 APs and got 5s on them. I really don’t see 16 AP exams as unusual.</p>
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<p>Prince, he did. He pleaded not guilty at first, but later changed his plea to guilty on fraud charges for all his financial aid.</p>