UMC suburban college student lied about background to become prestigious Rhodes Scholar

[Anonymous]

Mckenzie what kind of car did your rich mom buy you in 10th grade?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re: the three week hospital stays. My guess is the initial hospitalizations turned into psych holds for whatever reason. As a PP stated above, if it was severe epilepsy or a battered body, those details would have been shared by here if there was evidence.

Your “guess” is just complete BS. Why are you making stuff up and then treating your made up crap like it’s fact when it isn’t. To the extent that anything from the hospital stay has been revealed, it’s listed her as being treated for a seizure disorder. That’s the only fact we know.

Nope. There is mention of "seizure-like activity," not "seizure disorder" in any of the excerpts of the medical documentation.

I work with interpretations of EEGs. I know the wording to indicate "pseudoseizures," or what we now euphemistically call "psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES)." I'm not diagnosing her, obviously, but I am saying the wording is not consistent with a medical diagnosis of epileptic seizures. That wording is much different.

I think continuing to perpetuate the error of "seizure disorder" as a diagnosis is a pretty clear attempt to elide the (more acceptable) medical connotation with the (embarrassing and not as convincing) likely psych nature of the inpatient stay. And inpatient stays aren't that long without either very clear diagnoses or some psych component.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only would high school tuition have been paid, September happens to be the same month QuestBridge apps are due. Maybe she stumbled upon QuestBridge, say on reddit or college confidential, and it got her thinking...

I recall stumbling upon those QuestBridge threads on college confidential and being amazed at the schools some of the kids were getting into.

I contend the entire thing was an admissions con. Her being class president tells us she was a striver long before gunning for a Rhodes. Her QuestBridge list likely had HYPS at the top, followed by the other Ivies.

What would her long term goal be? What would she get out of this that she couldn't get by just being a brilliant student?

Harvard. Before this foster crap she was a dime a dozen spoiled rich white girl with As. She wanted to go to HYPS... Penn wasn’t the goal, it was probably at the end of her Questbridge rank.

Actually she wasn’t. She was a scholar athlete with top grades and president of her class. That’s not dime a dozen. And she did it while missing the first month of class in her junior year and then living in 3 different foster homes the rest of that year. She continued living in the last foster home in her senior year. See how many kids can maintain top tier status with all of that instability in junior year when grades are the most critical for college admisssions.

Only a rich kid would phrase a response like this. Instability? She was at a posh $30,000 a year day school in the lily white suburbs. She wasn't kicked out of school and forced to attend some crap hole public high school in the slums of East St Louis. And nothing about her forcing the foster care issue is normal. A normal rich 16-18 year old is going to move in with family or friends from school. She wanted to be in foster care because it provided a way to erase her old pumpkin spice latte rich white girl life and exploit Questbridge and an Ivy League school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re: the three week hospital stays. My guess is the initial hospitalizations turned into psych holds for whatever reason. As a PP stated above, if it was severe epilepsy or a battered body, those details would have been shared by here if there was evidence.

She clearly played for sympathy. I agree it was a psych hold.

Her mother not speaking publicly about it is interesting. I feel like perhaps McKenzie needs to be taken by the hand. I just do not understand how your daughter gets this far. Shouldn't she have told Penn? Questbridge?

How would her mother know of all the QuestBridge, how she got into Penn, and how it was being paid for details? And honestly, getting into Penn with her real rich girl CV isn't really abnormal, so I don't think Penn would shock her. I would assume the mom was curious about how it was all being paid for, but aside from that not much she could do. It sounds like this Rhodes thing is the first time this all hit the media, including back home, which explained a lot, including Questbridge, right?

How could she not know? Mackenzie bragged about all this publicly.

[Anonymous]

What I want is Makenzie to write a Tell all book. How did she do this? It's impressive as it's own achievement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re: the three week hospital stays. My guess is the initial hospitalizations turned into psych holds for whatever reason. As a PP stated above, if it was severe epilepsy or a battered body, those details would have been shared by here if there was evidence.

She clearly played for sympathy. I agree it was a psych hold.

Her mother not speaking publicly about it is interesting. I feel like perhaps McKenzie needs to be taken by the hand. I just do not understand how your daughter gets this far. Shouldn't she have told Penn? Questbridge?

How would her mother know of all the QuestBridge, how she got into Penn, and how it was being paid for details? And honestly, getting into Penn with her real rich girl CV isn't really abnormal, so I don't think Penn would shock her. I would assume the mom was curious about how it was all being paid for, but aside from that not much she could do. It sounds like this Rhodes thing is the first time this all hit the media, including back home, which explained a lot, including Questbridge, right?

How could she not know? Mackenzie bragged about all this publicly.

Her getting into an Ivy with Questbridge was in local newspapers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re: the three week hospital stays. My guess is the initial hospitalizations turned into psych holds for whatever reason. As a PP stated above, if it was severe epilepsy or a battered body, those details would have been shared by here if there was evidence.

She clearly played for sympathy. I agree it was a psych hold.

Her mother not speaking publicly about it is interesting. I feel like perhaps McKenzie needs to be taken by the hand. I just do not understand how your daughter gets this far. Shouldn't she have told Penn? Questbridge?

How would her mother know of all the QuestBridge, how she got into Penn, and how it was being paid for details? And honestly, getting into Penn with her real rich girl CV isn't really abnormal, so I don't think Penn would shock her. I would assume the mom was curious about how it was all being paid for, but aside from that not much she could do. It sounds like this Rhodes thing is the first time this all hit the media, including back home, which explained a lot, including Questbridge, right?

How could she not know? Mackenzie bragged about all this publicly.

??? How would the mother know what she put on her Questbridge application? She wasn't even living at home at the time, and it doesn't sound like the two were talking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP

Okay, PP.


Doesn't change anything about the fabrications and lies. Let's wait until she takes this to trial and see what shakes out. She's an adult -- if she wants to air it all out and have her story tested and publicly evaluated for truth, she can do that.

I suspect the mother has plenty of evidence. What's shocking is that a doctor with one child couldn't control that one child. I suspect the mother got bad advice in the beginning.

Maybe she is still getting bad advice.

The mom probably had her own life and not very involved. I suspect she paid for the last year of private as you have to prepay.

Someone close to the girl if not the girl has been in this thread and repeatedly said the ritzy day school gave her a "full scholarship" for 12th grade. Her school is $30,000 a year. But then someone recently claimed she was in the foster system for two years. So did she get "full scholarships" for both 11th and 12th?

She pulled the stunt in September of her junior year. I assume she chose the time because the tuition (which her mother had paid as usual) had just become non refundable. And the person was arguing very carefully: they said she lived with foster families for two years. Mackenzie was in the foster system for less than a year, from the fall of her junior year until the August before her senior year. But she continued to live with her last foster family throughout her senior year of high school. So: one year in the foster system, one year of scholarship, two years “living with foster families.”

With Mackenzie, you have to parse every word.

Agree she stretched the truth, but if not she probably would not have gotten a scholarship and she was in a no win situation in terms of college if they look at parents income and parents wouldn't pay. Two years in foster care is no picnic.

But let's be clear -- it was a year or less actually in "foster care," unless you are counting overlapping from fall of one year to summer of the next as two years, just because there are numerically two separate years bridged.

Foster care lasts until the 18th birthday. She was already past her seventeenth birthday.

I don't mean to say that any time in foster care is an easy step, but this story has so much manipulation and parsing of language very carefully to drive it, that I don't want to keep perpetuating inaccuracies.

Do you have teenagers? Because many of them get upset when one of their friends switches out of their art class or there’s a new, “mean” math teacher. It would be absolutely traumatic and disruptive to live outside your family unit for two years. I’m not saying she didn’t amp up the pathos in her story but us insane to act like her situation isn’t a major hardship. Of course her difficulties pale in comparison to kids raised entirely in foster care but I don’t think she hid the timeline nor did she hide the pricey private school. And no, I am not the girl or her friend posting! I’m just someone who works with teens who finds the idea of a disturbed newly 17 year old masterminding this for college admission absurd.

None of what you wrote excuses inaccuracies of fact. You can make all the impassioned pleas you want, but why not stick to the truth? Is it really necessary to bend and stretch it to make your point? Then that either says something about you, or about your point, or both.

I will say it again: I don't mean to say that any time in foster care is an easy step, but this story has so much manipulation and parsing of language very carefully to drive it, that I don't want to keep perpetuating inaccuracies. So I'm calling yours out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP

Okay, PP.


Doesn't change anything about the fabrications and lies. Let's wait until she takes this to trial and see what shakes out. She's an adult -- if she wants to air it all out and have her story tested and publicly evaluated for truth, she can do that.

I suspect the mother has plenty of evidence. What's shocking is that a doctor with one child couldn't control that one child. I suspect the mother got bad advice in the beginning.

Maybe she is still getting bad advice.

The mom probably had her own life and not very involved. I suspect she paid for the last year of private as you have to prepay.

Someone close to the girl if not the girl has been in this thread and repeatedly said the ritzy day school gave her a "full scholarship" for 12th grade. Her school is $30,000 a year. But then someone recently claimed she was in the foster system for two years. So did she get "full scholarships" for both 11th and 12th?

She pulled the stunt in September of her junior year. I assume she chose the time because the tuition (which her mother had paid as usual) had just become non refundable. And the person was arguing very carefully: they said she lived with foster families for two years. Mackenzie was in the foster system for less than a year, from the fall of her junior year until the August before her senior year. But she continued to live with her last foster family throughout her senior year of high school. So: one year in the foster system, one year of scholarship, two years “living with foster families.”

With Mackenzie, you have to parse every word.

Agree she stretched the truth, but if not she probably would not have gotten a scholarship and she was in a no win situation in terms of college if they look at parents income and parents wouldn't pay. Two years in foster care is no picnic.

But let's be clear -- it was a year or less actually in "foster care," unless you are counting overlapping from fall of one year to summer of the next as two years, just because there are numerically two separate years bridged.

Foster care lasts until the 18th birthday. She was already past her seventeenth birthday.

I don't mean to say that any time in foster care is an easy step, but this story has so much manipulation and parsing of language very carefully to drive it, that I don't want to keep perpetuating inaccuracies.

Do you have teenagers? Because many of them get upset when one of their friends switches out of their art class or there’s a new, “mean” math teacher. It would be absolutely traumatic and disruptive to live outside your family unit for two years. I’m not saying she didn’t amp up the pathos in her story but us insane to act like her situation isn’t a major hardship. Of course her difficulties pale in comparison to kids raised entirely in foster care but I don’t think she hid the timeline nor did she hide the pricey private school. And no, I am not the girl or her friend posting! I’m just someone who works with teens who finds the idea of a disturbed newly 17 year old masterminding this for college admission absurd.

None of what you wrote excuses inaccuracies of fact. You can make all the impassioned pleas you want, but why not stick to the truth? Is it really necessary to bend and stretch it to make your point? Then that either says something about you, or about your point, or both.

I will say it again: I don't mean to say that any time in foster care is an easy step, but this story has so much manipulation and parsing of language very carefully to drive it, that I don't want to keep perpetuating inaccuracies. So I'm calling yours out.

Well, I’m calling you out. Much of the manipulation, parsing of language, and exaggerations were done by Penn’s own PR team in promoting her Rhodes Scholar achievement. But the same articles which had Penn as their source and which included exaggerations by the reporter herself are hung around MF’s neck as though she wrote them and as though she was the source. Why a you not all over Penn and the Inquirer for their role in this. Why are you perpetuating the inaccuracy that all of this came from her? Why are you not holding Penn and the Inquirer responsible for their roles?

You’re so anxious to stomp on a young kid that you’re the one ignoring the facts:

FACT - She was a legitimate Questbridge Scholar. Questbridge said so at the time and their Director said so again after a recent review of her application even in light of new information. You obviously don’t like the fact that she qualified, but she did. And she’s not responsible for the fact that the Questbridge system allowed her to qualify. That is the truth and you’re the one who’s not sticking to it.

FACT - She got into Penn legitimately. Exaggerations didn’t play a role in that. Once she got there she excelled in the classroom. And she completed all of the requirements for her MSW based on Penn’s own written notification to her. Yet, Penn threatened to rescind her BA and is still threatening to withhold the MSW which they themselves said she had already earned. Any exaggerations in her Rhodes application had nothing to do with her MSW. She withdrew from Rhodes, so that is no longer an issue, but Penn continues to withhold her degree anyway. That is indefensible. If it happened to me, I’d sue the university too.

This misrepresentation of Penn as somehow the victim here has to stop. Their behaviour throughout this entire situation has been sloppy, incompetent, irresponsible, and hypocritical. Time to call them out for the corrupt organization they are. Their recent treatment of the women on their swim team shows that this bullying and intimidation of women students is a pattern on their part. It’s time they were called out for it.

[Anonymous]

Hey. Start a thread about U Penn f you want, but a) stay on topic, and b) stop perpetuating inaccuracies.

[Anonymous]

I guess my end question is why did a resources teen who grew up in a 4000 sq ft house and was privately educated her entire life decide foster care was the answer when she has so many other options, including her father, other relatives and friends/network at her private school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only would high school tuition have been paid, September happens to be the same month QuestBridge apps are due. Maybe she stumbled upon QuestBridge, say on reddit or college confidential, and it got her thinking...

I recall stumbling upon those QuestBridge threads on college confidential and being amazed at the schools some of the kids were getting into.

I contend the entire thing was an admissions con. Her being class president tells us she was a striver long before gunning for a Rhodes. Her QuestBridge list likely had HYPS at the top, followed by the other Ivies.

What would her long term goal be? What would she get out of this that she couldn't get by just being a brilliant student?

Harvard. Before this foster crap she was a dime a dozen spoiled rich white girl with As. She wanted to go to HYPS... Penn wasn’t the goal, it was probably at the end of her Questbridge rank.

Actually she wasn’t. She was a scholar athlete with top grades and president of her class. That’s not dime a dozen. And she did it while missing the first month of class in her junior year and then living in 3 different foster homes the rest of that year. She continued living in the last foster home in her senior year. See how many kids can maintain top tier status with all of that instability in junior year when grades are the most critical for college admisssions.

Only a rich kid would phrase a response like this. Instability? She was at a posh $30,000 a year day school in the lily white suburbs. She wasn't kicked out of school and forced to attend some crap hole public high school in the slums of East St Louis. And nothing about her forcing the foster care issue is normal. A normal rich 16-18 year old is going to move in with family or friends from school. She wanted to be in foster care because it provided a way to erase her old pumpkin spice latte rich white girl life and exploit Questbridge and an Ivy League school.

You’re full of it.

She never claimed to have been kicked out of school. Her attendance at a posh school in the suburbs was no secret. She never misrepresented this. Penn knew perfectly well what prep school she attended when they admitted her as a Questbridge Scholar.

You hav no evidence that she forced the foster care issue or that she concocted a scheme to exploit Questbridge and an Ivy, yet you’re stating that as a fact. Here you are doing exactly what you are accusing her of doing. And how would anyone “force” a foster care issue anyway? Social Services are extremely reluctant to remove children from their homes. Extremely reluctant. And where was the mother through all of this? Why wasn’t she “forcing the issue” in the other direction to have MacKenzie returned to her home? Why wasn’t she begging for he daughter’s return and expressing her willingness to agree to counseling and/or anything else that the system might require of her? How did she let MacKenzie go so easily?

Are you saying that MacKenzie is some force of nature that she intimidated her mother, duped social services, duped the medical professionals, duped the police, duped Questbridge, and duped Penn? If so, she must be incredible and the world must be full of incompetents everywhere we turn up to and including the highest levels of our top universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hey. Start a thread about U Penn f you want, but a) stay on topic, and b) stop perpetuating inaccuracies.

I am on topic, tough guy. Penn is part of the story about how she became a Rhodes Scholar. Their endorsement as key to her achieving that.

And I’m not perpetuating any inaccuracies. It’s the claims of the MF critics which are replete with inaccuracies, wild speculation, and outright lies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only would high school tuition have been paid, September happens to be the same month QuestBridge apps are due. Maybe she stumbled upon QuestBridge, say on reddit or college confidential, and it got her thinking...

Are you saying that MacKenzie is some force of nature that she intimidated her mother, duped social services, duped the medical professionals, duped the police, duped Questbridge, and duped Penn? If so, she must be incredible and the world must be full of incompetents everywhere we turn up to and including the highest levels of our top universities.

Basically yes? Not that she intimidated her mother. I’m sure there is truth to the wretched relationship they had, but basically everything else is what people are questioning. Foster care is absolutely miserable. She was in the foster care system for 1-2 years, that is a fact. I do wonder how many days while in the foster system she actively spent w foster parents in foster homes versus staying w people in her orbit that she knew.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess my end question is why did a resources teen who grew up in a 4000 sq ft house and was privately educated her entire life decide foster care was the answer when she has so many other options, including her father, other relatives and friends/network at her private school?

Good question.