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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I lean towards the kid having some sort of sociopathic mindset & whatever happened with her mother has been highly, even premeditatively, worked to her advantage. She's obviously intelligent, driven, ambitious & as described in at least one article, charismatic. (HS class president) It's her responses to being interrogated as a liar in her Rhodes application that are the tell. Stonewall defiance that the extensive lies she committed to paper are anything but the truth (well her personal truth, whatever the F that means). She lied. Period. Is this what any Ivy education allows one to do???

I also think she manipulated the people she had contact with during that hospital phase & later at Penn after being called out, and worked her perspective to sympathetic advantage. This whole scenario just doesn't pass the smell test. She was a teen wanting to be the boss of her life & figured out a way. She certainly isn't the first in the history of the world to do whatever she though it would take to achieve that.

So, say your child has a sociopathic mindset. She wrongly accused you of some things (there is a big question mark, but lets say the accusations were without merit), breaks off and becomes estranged. But she seems to be doing well on her own, had some major achievements and is off to great things. Would you actively try to destroy her career as in reaching out to newspapers with your version of truth? How many parents here are calling IRS because their bratty kids are not declaring their babysitting or lawn mowing income? The mother's behavior looks very off to me, I think most parents in this situation would just sigh and keep going with their lives.

Who said it was proven to be the mother who tipped off Penn? Does not the fact that this likely MI daughter has invented a scenario, starring the mother, that doesn't even align with the likely exaggerated version of what originally happened, concern you? Maybe the crazy comes from somewhere and the mom isn't entirely innocent, but what the daughter wrote is not factual. Which is why she was asked to decline.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Real question… does the personal statement actually have to be true. Can’t it be just a writing sample. I seriously never thought the personal statement was supposed to be “the truth”.

You never state all statements in this essay are true.

Both my kids took an incident in their life and wrote a fictional story around it, full of 1/2 truths and embellishments.

Jim Steinman Went to Amherst and wrote a personal statement that he wrote a novella while hiking the pacific trail.

He did neither.

So this is what it takes to get into Ivy. Create a work of fiction, present as truths they want to reward & you jump the line. Good to know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real question… does the personal statement actually have to be true. Can’t it be just a writing sample. I seriously never thought the personal statement was supposed to be “the truth”.

You never state all statements in this essay are true.

Both my kids took an incident in their life and wrote a fictional story around it, full of 1/2 truths and embellishments.

Jim Steinman Went to Amherst and wrote a personal statement that he wrote a novella while hiking the pacific trail.

He did neither.

So this is what it takes to get into Ivy. Create a work of fiction, present as truths they want to reward & you jump the line. Good to know.

Yeah, but don't get caught. How could anyone think they could get away with claiming to be "first generation" with a mother who is a radiologist?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real question… does the personal statement actually have to be true. Can’t it be just a writing sample. I seriously never thought the personal statement was supposed to be “the truth”.

You never state all statements in this essay are true.

Both my kids took an incident in their life and wrote a fictional story around it, full of 1/2 truths and embellishments.

Jim Steinman Went to Amherst and wrote a personal statement that he wrote a novella while hiking the pacific trail.

He did neither.

So this is what it takes to get into Ivy. Create a work of fiction, present as truths they want to reward & you jump the line. Good to know.

It’s a writing sample. This is all blown out of proportion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real question… does the personal statement actually have to be true. Can’t it be just a writing sample. I seriously never thought the personal statement was supposed to be “the truth”.

You never state all statements in this essay are true.

Both my kids took an incident in their life and wrote a fictional story around it, full of 1/2 truths and embellishments.

Jim Steinman Went to Amherst and wrote a personal statement that he wrote a novella while hiking the pacific trail.

He did neither.

So this is what it takes to get into Ivy. Create a work of fiction, present as truths they want to reward & you jump the line. Good to know.

Yeah, but don't get caught. How could anyone think they could get away with claiming to be "first generation" with a mother who is a radiologist?

She should have just stuck with ward of the state since that is true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t doubt that her mom is a total piece of work. But there is a big difference between being the child of a radiologist snd attending private school - making her someone who had multiple examples of academic and financial success in her peer group, school and family during her entire childhood — and someone who was plucked out of foster care by Penn after a lifetime surrounded by people with GEDs and a crap high school. Come on now.

You don't believe that rich people can perpetrate horrific abuse on their kids? It must have been really bad for CPS to take the daughter out of the home permanently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real question… does the personal statement actually have to be true. Can’t it be just a writing sample. I seriously never thought the personal statement was supposed to be “the truth”.

You never state all statements in this essay are true.

Both my kids took an incident in their life and wrote a fictional story around it, full of 1/2 truths and embellishments.

Jim Steinman Went to Amherst and wrote a personal statement that he wrote a novella while hiking the pacific trail.

He did neither.

So this is what it takes to get into Ivy. Create a work of fiction, present as truths they want to reward & you jump the line. Good to know.

It’s a writing sample. This is all blown out of proportion.

What? Penn and the Rhodes Committee obviously didn't think so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t doubt that her mom is a total piece of work. But there is a big difference between being the child of a radiologist snd attending private school - making her someone who had multiple examples of academic and financial success in her peer group, school and family during her entire childhood — and someone who was plucked out of foster care by Penn after a lifetime surrounded by people with GEDs and a crap high school. Come on now.

You don't believe that rich people can perpetrate horrific abuse on their kids? It must have been really bad for CPS to take the daughter out of the home permanently.

Yes I do. Don’t be simplistic. She could be a rich kid who suffered terrible abuse by terrible parents. Which is awful. What she is not is someone who had no real access to elite education and no chance at a significant career and no books at the broken down local school until Penn spotted her and swooped in. I’m talking about the class issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I lean towards the kid having some sort of sociopathic mindset & whatever happened with her mother has been highly, even premeditatively, worked to her advantage. She's obviously intelligent, driven, ambitious & as described in at least one article, charismatic. (HS class president) It's her responses to being interrogated as a liar in her Rhodes application that are the tell. Stonewall defiance that the extensive lies she committed to paper are anything but the truth (well her personal truth, whatever the F that means). She lied. Period. Is this what any Ivy education allows one to do???

I also think she manipulated the people she had contact with during that hospital phase & later at Penn after being called out, and worked her perspective to sympathetic advantage. This whole scenario just doesn't pass the smell test. She was a teen wanting to be the boss of her life & figured out a way. She certainly isn't the first in the history of the world to do whatever she though it would take to achieve that.

So, say your child has a sociopathic mindset. She wrongly accused you of some things (there is a big question mark, but lets say the accusations were without merit), breaks off and becomes estranged. But she seems to be doing well on her own, had some major achievements and is off to great things. Would you actively try to destroy her career as in reaching out to newspapers with your version of truth? How many parents here are calling IRS because their bratty kids are not declaring their babysitting or lawn mowing income? The mother's behavior looks very off to me, I think most parents in this situation would just sigh and keep going with their lives.

The mother’s actions are what makes me believe the student more. The fact that she would try to ruin the girl’s life after an estrangement and abuse? This is a sign to me that the mother really is an evil abusive person. Those who are saying that the abuse wasn’t real because the charges were dropped clearly don’t understand that we have two different justice systems in this country. A rich white doctor is far more likely to get away with abusing a kid than a middle class or low income person who is not white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real question… does the personal statement actually have to be true. Can’t it be just a writing sample. I seriously never thought the personal statement was supposed to be “the truth”.

You never state all statements in this essay are true.

Both my kids took an incident in their life and wrote a fictional story around it, full of 1/2 truths and embellishments.

Jim Steinman Went to Amherst and wrote a personal statement that he wrote a novella while hiking the pacific trail.

He did neither.

So this is what it takes to get into Ivy. Create a work of fiction, present as truths they want to reward & you jump the line. Good to know.

It’s a writing sample. This is all blown out of proportion.

What? Penn and the Rhodes Committee obviously didn't think so.

Yea, after the lawsuit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MacKenzie Fierceton was a 2020 Rhodes Scholar and UPENN Masters student. She has been stripped of both as the admissions committees at her universities has found the lied about her entire background.

She wasn’t homeless and low income. She went to a private school and rode horses in the tony St. Louis suburbs.

Categorizing herself as a first-generation, low-income student with a history of horrific abuse — who also earned nearly straight A’s and was student-body president in high school — Fierceton certainly fit the bill. She was admitted to Penn in 2015 to study political science, then began studying for a clinical master’s degree in social work in 2018.

When Fierceton’s Rhodes scholarship was announced, the Philadelphia Inquirer profiled the academic star in November 2020, noting that she “grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system [and] bounced from one foster home to the next.”

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-dredging

Whatever happened, this is an important post on this board, because SOME posters seem to think that universities do not dig - they do - and when (not if) they catch up with you, they have a WHOLE lot of power. Get used to the idea that lying on an application or any school documentation has life long consequences, because they do. Universities are well connected and that can be used in your favor, or very much not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real question… does the personal statement actually have to be true. Can’t it be just a writing sample. I seriously never thought the personal statement was supposed to be “the truth”.

You never state all statements in this essay are true.

Both my kids took an incident in their life and wrote a fictional story around it, full of 1/2 truths and embellishments.

Jim Steinman Went to Amherst and wrote a personal statement that he wrote a novella while hiking the pacific trail.

He did neither.

So this is what it takes to get into Ivy. Create a work of fiction, present as truths they want to reward & you jump the line. Good to know.

It’s a writing sample. This is all blown out of proportion.

What? Penn and the Rhodes Committee obviously didn't think so.

Yea, after the lawsuit.

The article I read said Penn started questioning her after the anonymous tip came in, and they informed the Rhodes Committee -- both investigated and found her to have lied. So what was "blown out of proportion?"

[Anonymous]

https://nypost.com/2022/01/11/rhodes-scholar-denied-honor-after-dishonesty-about-life-story/


Well it seems she was in foster care and estranged from her mother. The definition of first generation

“ As the Chronicle reports: “If ‘first generation’ means the first in one’s family to attend college — the widely used, common-sense meaning — Fierceton’s answer would be plainly false.”

However, according to the school’s website, this definition can also include students who are the first in their families to “pursue higher education at an elite institution.” Fierceton’s mother did not attend an Ivy League university, though the Chronicle does not note where Morrison went to college.

Furthermore, the website for Penn First Plus, the school’s inclusivity initiative, broadens the definition of first-generation to include students who “have a strained or limited relationship with the person(s) in your family who hold(s) a bachelors degree.”

By the time she applied to Penn, Fierceton was estranged from her mother and supporting herself. Still, the school found Fierceton describing herself as “first-generation” on her application to graduate school to be “objectively inaccurate.”“

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real question… does the personal statement actually have to be true. Can’t it be just a writing sample. I seriously never thought the personal statement was supposed to be “the truth”.

You never state all statements in this essay are true.

Both my kids took an incident in their life and wrote a fictional story around it, full of 1/2 truths and embellishments.

Jim Steinman Went to Amherst and wrote a personal statement that he wrote a novella while hiking the pacific trail.

He did neither.

So this is what it takes to get into Ivy. Create a work of fiction, present as truths they want to reward & you jump the line. Good to know.

It’s a writing sample. This is all blown out of proportion.

What? Penn and the Rhodes Committee obviously didn't think so.

Yea, after the lawsuit.

Most applications are phrased so that you have to discuss a personal event or circumstance - so they ABSOLUTELY count if you lie to get into the university.

Most applications do NOT state "in so many words or less tell us a STORY about...."

Don't do it. They can and will revoke your diploma. I have seen it first hand.

[Anonymous]

For those who actually get caught, that is.