When I was in grad school, a student in my class was kicked out after it was discovered her bio was fake. She had actually faked her way through Yale undergrad first, saying she was a first-gen Puerto Rican. She was married to an older lawyer, who wrote her application for her, and advised her to take all upper level seminars so he could do the work for her. That worked out and she got into an Ivy grad school where it did not work out. I was friends with her at the time and she was crying all the time, even during class. She told me that it was because her brother had been diagnosed with lymphoma. Later when it was all exposed, she admitted she had been crying because she was freaked out and depressed about being on the brink of failing her classes. She also said she had been under tremendous stress since undergrad, trying to keep a fake identity from being found out. At orientation, they put her with Puerto Ricans but she knew nothing about Puerto Rico and didn’t speak Spanish. She had said she was from a low income area in New Orleans but then someone else at Yale was from there and she knew nothing about it. A five year stressful fiasco that resulted in public humiliation and expulsion. Not sure if Yale ever found out and revoked her undergrad degree (or if that’s even possible given that she passed all her classes.)
5 Likes