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
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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