That’s easy. I don’t think any school sends acceptances via postal mail. Maybe there are still a few but I don’t believe Yale is one of them.
Maybe she applied test optional
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This seems like the least challenging obstacle for someone who was skilled enough to fake transcripts. Fake id (and potentially having someone else sit the exam for her)? It seems to me if student under 21 manage to buy alcohol, there are kids out there who have found a way to fake standardized testing.
How much extra checking of transcripts, records, and credentials do colleges complete for applicants who are homeschooled? I imagine that they must do something to verify the submitted information. Could she have gotten around issues like the transcript and school official email addresses if she claimed to be homeschooled?
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One of the saddest (and most puzzling) parts of the story is thinking about what a colossal waste of time her efforts were. There are so many more productive and interesting ways for a young person to spend their time and energy instead of scheming their way into a college with a fake identity.
Believing that a bachelor’s degree from an Ivy League college is somehow worth upending your whole life is just wildly misinformed (I think). What would the end game really be? Continuing on to graduate school or a profession as Katharina Lynn from North Dakota? Lying to any potential friends or potential romances throughout college and beyond? Getting married as Katharina Lynn? Giving up her high school friends and community eventually because she can’t introduce them to each other. Lying to potential employers and coworkers about her identity? Relocating to a new location and changing her name again after college where no one knows her as either her real identity or Katharina Lynn? Unless it really was a social experiment or some kind of prank, it just seems like it would be easier to just go to another college, work hard, and succeed there than believe Yale is going to be the golden ticket worth all that.
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Why do you think she’s international? North Dakota is part of the US. If she wanted to apply as an international, she could have pretended to be from Mongolia or Kenya or Iceland.
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Unless someone was simply paid to do all of this on her behalf.
I find it hard to believe her parents weren’t complicit - especially if she’s a full-pay student. (I imagine it must be far more difficult to forge tax returns if she needed financial aid.)
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I don’t. I think she applied domestic as full pay.
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12 posts were split to a new thread: Scammers and conmen, college or otherwise
Either way (I imagine that would have cost a pretty penny) it does reveal how warped the idea of ivy importance is to some people.
I would imagine that while Yale is ramping up checks per the headline of the article, that other ivies are quietly doing that too. Who’s to say there aren’t others who did this too, and just haven’t been caught? (Yet… I forget the timeline of the varsity blues scandal but it really just needs the first domino to fall, right?)
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There’s a new thread about conmen and scammers, see link immediately above. Let’s try to stay on topic with this thread. Thanks!
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Huh. That would be a way to game the system without having to fake an entire school history. It doesn’t seem so, but my “seem” is based on limited information.
They’d still need outside verification of college readiness, beyond mommy signing the GC form, e.g. CC courses, online AP providers
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The article says she claimed to have graduated from Tioga High School, which is a small school that only lists 24 graduates in the school profile. The school does not offer calculus, AP, or other college level classes.
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Maybe, since she legally changed her name, there was some way she had her HS transcripts forwarded to her fake account where she may have set up a fake new HS, and then forwarded it?? Dunno, this kinda manipulative thinking is way off my radar!
A comment in article states that the town is oil boom town. The schools in those towns constantly have kids in and out, and teachers in and out. This woman may have been able to get a copy of someone’s transcript and the school profile and gone from there. A yearbook/roster could have given her a list of teachers to write letters of rec and to enhance some activities.
I can see there being no one to verify anything. Yale has to be more careful, but I can see that happening.
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This would explain how somebody managed to put it together, but it still points to somebody who knew the system well. A high school student from the Bay Area would not be at all familiar with how small town high schools work, etc. On the other hand, a person who has done their research on ways to create fake profiles with fake credentials would have done research on the various ways that such a profile would be put together.
I will also repeat that the behavior of this woman as a Yale student is not the behavior of somebody who spent time researching and planning and implementing a scam like this, for the purpose of being accepted to Yale and attending Yale. She didn’t really seem that she wanted to be attending Yale.
I will also repeat that nothing about her story of “How I did it” actually describes what needs to be done to create a fake profile, but it does sound like what a person who does not understand how admissions work would believe such a scam would work.
You don’t need to learn how to be an expert in Adobe to create fake LoRs or even fake transcripts. You don’t need to “get around Yale security” in order to submit the various elements of the fake application either. In fact, the latter sounds very much like a red herring. Also, submitting a fake profile is not a criminal offense, but hacking into the applications system of a university is both a state and federal crime.
So her story does not pass the smell test, at least for me.
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Would Cluely hire her?
Considering the founders of Cluely, she sounds like exactly the sort of person who they would hire. Her side gig would provide much-needed revenue when their main product bombs.
[fake quote]
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Remember this woman admits she lied to get into Yale, so I don’t think we should accept what she told the “reporter” at face value.
Lets keep a basic fact in mind. The common app asks you to list all former legal names. So, even if she did legally change her name, she had to list her birth name on her application. It’s highly unlikely that Katharina Lynn applied and listed her original Chinese name. Failing to do so in and of itself constitutes fraud and would justify expulsion.
But I have my doubts she legally changed her name.
Scamming Yale is one thing. Creating fake ID good enough to get on an airplane is a serious offense. And while she may have been able to figure out who taught at a small high school so she could forge LORs, I suspect it would have been far more difficult to create a North Dakota driver’s license or other real ID good enough to get on an airplane. North Dakota requires that you go in person to a motor vehicle bureau to get a license. It has pretty stringent standards for proof of residency to get one. So, if she DID change her name, that wasn’t going to be enough to get real ID in North Dakota.
I have my doubts she legally changed her name. If she had, she would have used id in her new name to fly.But that new ID would have been from CALIFORNIA, not North Dakota. She used her old id with her birth name. This is what lead to her getting caught as her suitemate claims to have seen a luggage tag with her birth name and then found an id in that name in her purse (according to the fraudster). Again, if she had legally changed her name, she would not have been carrying around her old id with her old name.I don’t know how it works in California, but in the state I know the most about, when you legally change your name you have to surrender your old ID to get new ID. You don’t get to have 2 driver’s licenses in different names or 2 passports in different names.
Obviously, I am only speculating. But if she legally changed her name, I don’t think she’d be walking around with ID in her old name.
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I wonder what she was hoping to gain from doing the interview. Anonymous sympathy?
It certainly wasn’t fame, since she didn’t reveal her real identity.