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<p>1)Nope, not an accidental death:</p>
<p>From Widipedia:</p>
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<p>As far as lying, that’s open to debate:</p>
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<p>Hunt, that’s the guy. I think he was in TD.</p>
<p>We also had, a year or so ahead of me, the budding novelist - father a very well known publishing figure - whose book, which came out while he was in school, turned out to be heavily plagiarized. That was discovered after he’d graduated. He was in my entryway but not a friend.</p>
<p>The Harvard case involved rescinding admission. Not the same as when you’re already in school and something appears that suggests the school may have thought otherwise if known.</p>
<p>Adam Wheeler recently applied for an internship at The New Republic. Here’s a link to the resume he submitted:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/Wheeler-redacted.pdf[/url]”>http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/Wheeler-redacted.pdf</a></p>
<p>Wow! I give him an ‘A’ for pure audacity!</p>
<p>"
Harvard can be rather imperious and self important. Remember years ago they revoked the admission of a young woman who had a conviction on her record (accidental death, I recall). The woman faced justice, served her sentence [a rather light one, obviously] and did not lie on her college application in any way."</p>
<p>She had killed her mother, and it wasn’t an accident.</p>
<p>"BOSTON, April 13— The high school senior whose acceptance to Harvard University was rescinded last week after the university learned that she had killed her mother is facing a widening web of accusations that she has been deceptive about her behavior and misled Harvard officials about the circumstances under which her mother died.</p>
<p>Harvard’s student newspaper, The Crimson, said today that the student, Gina Grant, told the Harvard graduate who interviewed her as part of the admissions process that her mother had died in an automobile accident.</p>
<p>Harvard had admitted her, these officials and faculty members said, partly on the basis of her story of how she had overcome childhood adversity…</p>
<p>Ms. Grant pleaded no contest to bludgeoning her mother, Dorothy Mayfield, to death in 1990, hitting her in the head at least 13 times with a lead crystal candlestick holder in their comfortable suburban brick home in Lexington, S.C. Ms. Grant was 14 years old at the time.</p>
<p>In the week since Harvard rescinded her admission, sharply different portraits of Ms. Grant have emerged in South Carolina. James Metts, the sheriff of Lexington County, whose officers investigated her mother’s death, said today of Ms. Grant, “She is a cunning, intelligent manipulator.” She “showed no remorse” regarding her mother’s murder, he said."</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Is Now Asking If a Would-Be Student Who Killed Her Mother Then Lied About It - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/14/us/harvard-now-asking-if-would-be-student-who-killed-her-mother-then-lied-about-it.html]Harvard”>http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/14/us/harvard-now-asking-if-would-be-student-who-killed-her-mother-then-lied-about-it.html)</p>
<p>CNN is reporting that Wheeler started at Bowdoin and was dismissed for academic dishonesty. Hmmmm. No mention of Bowdoin on the resume. I wonder how many of the awards he lists will be taken away?</p>
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[quote]
O.K., so this fellow is definitely a nut and Harvard got duped. A sensational story like this occurs at an elite school every couple of years, so it’s not novel. [\quote]</p>
<p>He sunk himself. My guess is he got way too arrogant about how easy he found it to con his way around. </p>
<p>I also imagine if this one non-brilliant guy could pull off so much, many others can too. As the irrational exuberance for ‘top schools’ grows, so too does the incentive (and likely technology has surpassed the gate-keeping abilities of many or most schools and their staff). </p>
<p>Tip of the iceberg I say. The non-sensational cases get purposefully buried or missed.</p>
<p>mapesy, I agree: that is one hell of a resume. thanks for posting</p>
<p>What’s so surprising to me is how amaterurish a lot of the fakery was. For example, it’s being reported that the MIT transcript he submitted had letter grades on it. MIT has number grades–5,4,3, etc. You’d think that someone working in transfer admissions would know that. His recs from MIT profs used the names of Bowdoin profs. A simple google would have shown that they weren’t teaching at MIT. His Andover transcript listed courses that don’t exist at Andover. One would think that H admissions sees a lot of Andover transcripts and would notice that. </p>
<p>But what really blows my mind is that he apparently submitted a forged HARVARD transcript to the Rhodes nominee selection committee at Harvard. He reportedly had a couple of As, mostly Bs and at least one D–not the kind of transcript you’d need to get a Rhodes nomination from Harvard. And the LORs he submitted for the Rhodes were apparently real letters from Harvard profs which he had substantially embellished. I would have thought that before giving someone the nomination, the fellowship committee would ask to see a transcript sent directly from the registrar’s office, not one submitted by a student and would have LORs sent directly to it. </p>
<p>Guess not!</p>
<p>^^talk about not doing their homework!</p>
<p>^ This just demonstrates what I know has always gone on. Contrary to the impression created, schools are not wringing their hands, hand picking particular individuals as they weight them side by side, creating the perfect balance of a class profile, pouring over the minute details of applications …AT ALL. It is simply a big numbers game and is treated as such.</p>
<p>^^^
I don’t see how this follows. The point is that everything he submitted was fake - including numbers and other information. They fact that they did not verify the information was false has nothing to do with how they ultimately interpreted the false information. It’s apples and oranges. They could have wrung their hands, pouring over a fake application as easy as a real one.</p>
<p>If I submit a completely fake job application they could pour over all the minute details of it to make a decision to hire me. Then, when they send their HR department to check out if what I wrote was true, I might get caught. One has nothing to do with the other.</p>
<p>^ Nah. If the case load per ad com was low, they were intimately familiar with transcripts, highschools, awards, and blah blah blah and really were paying attention (as everyone seems to think), they would realize the obvious.</p>
<p>^^^^
Well, I just disagree.
And if it were a pure numbers game everybody with a 4.0 and 2400 would get in wherever they wanted. And they don’t.</p>
<p>They may be sloppy, and with 30,000 applications, I doubt there are just a few apps per adcom. But that doesn’t prove it’s a pure “numbers game.”</p>
<p>One thing I am curious about–the resume submitted to TNR was blatantly obvious in its dishonesty. 5 minutes of Googling proved it to be false on most every count. Wheeler was taking credit for books written by and academic talks given by Harvard professors. Obviously, they didn’t hire him, but did they bother to tip Harvard off?</p>
<p>First, the resume is dated 2010, so by the time it was submitted, Wheeler was gone from Harvard. </p>
<p>Second, I don’t think it’s that easy to tell it’s fabricated. Wheeler DID win both those prizes and I was stunned when I saw he won the Hoopes prize as a junior. He won by submiitting someone else’s work. But if someone googled, they would have CONFIRMED that he won those prizes. (In fact, the fact he accepted the prize money is part of the reason he’s charged with larceny.) </p>
<p>He also really did win a Karman Foundation fellowship, which means he bamboozled it as well as Harvard. See <a href=“http://www.dekarman.org/PriorRecipients.aspx[/url]”>http://www.dekarman.org/PriorRecipients.aspx</a> which lists him as a recipient. </p>
<p>The talks do show up as being given by a Harvard prof. It’s surprising that he didn’t alter the titles at all. Those should have been caught…and maybe they were. </p>
<p>[Adam</a> Wheeler Accused Of Falsifying Documents From Harvard, MIT, Phillips Academy Held On $5,000 Bail - wbztv.com](<a href=“http://wbztv.com/local/school.fraud.charges.2.1700523.html]Adam”>CBS Boston - Breaking News, Sports, Weather, I-Team Investigations)</p>
<p>I read that his real SATs were around 1200/1600. And he got some real grades at Harvard. So I guess it shows you don’t need perfect SATs to get As and Bs (and one D) at Harvard.</p>
<p>Well, I guess I was more suspicious of all the publications and invited talks by an undergrad in a such a short period of time, so that’s what I was looking at. The books “under review” would be difficult to confirm, but the co-authored ones–it would have been easy to check with that Professor. I would think TNR would try to corroborate publications, given that he was applying for a magazine job. Also, many of the "invited talks " appear to have been given by actual Professors.</p>
<p>I didn’t catch the date at first --I was just assuming he had applied last summer or something. I guess this was part of his “Plan B”.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t the “Languages” section of the resume arouse suspicion, even if nothing else does? Old English, Classical Armenian, and Old Persian? Really. What incredible arrogance.</p>
<p>Edit: Here’s a link to a blurb on the TNR website about the resume Wheeler submitted when he applied for an internship at the magazine. Wheeler didn’t get the internship:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/75025/adam-wheelers-resume[/url]”>http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/75025/adam-wheelers-resume</a></p>
<p>Aren’t SAT scores submitted electronically from the College Board directly? How would you fake those?</p>
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<p>I agree with this. This case is only an extreme. If they were so careless as to let such obvious falsification get by, how are we supposed to think they do a better job weeding out the small-time embellishers. I bet there are plenty of applicants that beef up their accomplishments to varying degrees with absolutely no verification attempts or negative repercussions. Stories like these are just going to encourage that type of kid in the application pool because the benefits are so high compared to the risk. If this guy hadn’t been so arrogant, he may never have been caught.</p>