Student Accused of Conning Harvard (Updated)
[Guest post by DRJ]
Do the best students go to colleges like Harvard? Maybe not:
“The 23-year-old Wheeler claimed he got a perfect score on the SAT, straight A’s at prestigious prep school Phillips Academy Andover and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on his application to Harvard in 2007, prosecutors said. In reality, he had never attended either school, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said.
Prosecutor John Verner said in court Tuesday that Wheeler essentially stole $45,000 in financial aid, scholarship money and academic awards from Harvard.
His web of academic deceit unraveled in September when he sought the school’s endorsement for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships and a professor found evidence that he had plagiarized from another professor, Leone said.
“This defendant’s actions cheated those who competed honestly and fairly for admissions and for the scholarships that this defendant fraudulently obtained,” he said.
Wheeler, an English major who would have graduated from Harvard this spring, tried to transfer to Yale and Brown after he got caught at Harvard, Leone said, again by falsifying his achievements and recommendations.”
Wheeler’s parents blew the whistle on him when Yale’s admissions called to verify his application. If this story is true, they did him a favor.
— DRJ
UPDATE: Wheeler was also accepted at Stanford:
“Fool them once, shame on Harvard. Fool them twice … shame on Stanford?
Adam Wheeler, who is accused of scamming his way into Harvard University, apparently didn’t stop there.
After being kicked out of Harvard last fall for his alleged fraud, the 23-year-old applied to and was accepted to Stanford University
for the 2010-2011 school year, MyFoxBoston.com reported Wednesday.
***
Stanford has rescinded Wheeler’s acceptance.”
mmm, i’m not in favor of conning, but he did do pretty good for it being a (alleged) con. Which seems kind of embarrasing on harvard.
I have experienced in my life a shocking lack of verification, when it comes to credentials. People can get pretty far by buffaloing people.
Of course as a yalie, i am legally required to rag on them. nyah, nyah, nyah.
A.W. (e7d72e) — 5/18/2010 @ 2:06 pmon his application to Harvard in 2007
So he spent the last couple of years at Harvard, and his academic performance was good enough that he was applying for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships? That does not say much for the supposedly high standards there.
Subotai (a875fa) — 5/18/2010 @ 2:27 pmHarvard must grade easy- good thing he didn’t go to a state school for engineering.
tim (670c83) — 5/18/2010 @ 2:28 pmEnglish major.
I think Harvard should consider offering a diploma in return for $180,000 upon acceptance of a new applicant. That would avoid the waste of four years. This would apply to the non-science majors where their intellectual development is probably at its maximum on admission.
Does anyone remember the movie “Soul Man” ? It was pretty funny. It was about a white kid who stains his skin brown to get into Harvard. Needless to say, it was widely panned as much as Red Dawn was. I have the director’s cut of Red Dawn which is much better as the lefty additions are removed.
Mike K (82f374) — 5/18/2010 @ 2:36 pmHow do you fake a perfect SAT score? IIRC the schools get those directly from the testing service. If I was on the Harvard Board of Directors, I’d be calling for the heads of the top bureaucrats in the Admissions Department for what must be epic levels of incompetence and institutional laziness.
M. Scott Eiland (c552ec) — 5/18/2010 @ 3:05 pmAbsolutely, M. Scott. What happened to Harvard College admissions’ in-depth knowledge of America’s high schools, especially prep schools like the ones this student claimed to attend, and did admissions do anything to verify his high school transcripts?
As for the SAT, Harvard claims it only accepts test scores from the testing agency. What’s up with that?
Finally, Harvard’s admissions process:
Apparently the admissions committee really enjoys fiction.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 5/18/2010 @ 3:19 pmHeh! Heh! Heh! I like this kid for some reason. I know why, he made idiots look like idiots. He should not have taken the scholarship money, though. Heh! Idiots. Full of themselves bloated idiots. Heh!
nk (db4a41) — 5/18/2010 @ 3:24 pmI see a bright future in Dem politics for this dude!
elissa (cc5503) — 5/18/2010 @ 3:49 pmLet’s all just take a deep breath and count to 10. The dirty little secret at Harvard is that if they weed-out all the students guilty of running one sort of con game or another, the student/faculty ratio would drop to single digits.
Moreover, if faculty members were subject to the same examination, Harvard would be hard pressed to fill the bar stools at the faculty club.
ropelight (2985b5) — 5/18/2010 @ 4:05 pm…a professor found evidence that he had plagiarized from another professor
Clearly Elena Kagen did not review this case. Instead of being prosecuted, Harvard would have given him a job.
TimesDisliker (b9ea2a) — 5/19/2010 @ 7:32 amUh, Mr. Wheeler? It’s someone named “The Chicago Machine” on Line 1.
Icy Texan (deac71) — 5/20/2010 @ 2:28 am