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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Her claiming she's a poor foster care kid is akin to trying weed at a party in 12th grade and telling everyone for the rest of your life you're recovered drug addict.

ZERO CHANCE she EVER disclosed to anyone on these scholarship committees her mom is a successful medical doctor. I would bet anything.

You weed analogy is absurd.

At the point she applied, she had no legal “mom”. She had been removed from her mother’s custody by social services. Why would she be reporting anything about her biological mother who was no longer supporting her?

Her biological mom is still her mom but once she enters foster care she is a ward of the state. Mom probably paid child support to the state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Secondarily, she was in foster care for a year. And yes, being in the foster care system is a serious thing. At that point she was cut off from her mother and could not expect her mother to financially support her, so sure it "deletes" her mom from her life, from a financial perspective.

So it was only "a year"? So literally only 12th grade, beginning right around the time she was applying to Questbridge? That's not suspicious or anything. Who paid for 12th grade tuition at her private school? Where did she live her senior year?

No, it was not a year. She was hospitalized in September of her junior year in high school just after she turned 17, and was removed from her mother’s custody to foster care after more than 3 weeks in the hospitalized. She aged out of foster care when she turned 18 the following August. So she was on her own or in foster care for 2 years.

Why are you asking posters for the basic information about this case when the information is readily available, some of it even linked from this thread. You are apparently expressing opinions and outrage about a situation for which you are uninformed. Makes no sense. Get informed, then post.

Some states allow kids to stay in foster care until they are 21.

She did not age out of the system according to all the articles and documents. She seems to have told people that she did but in fact she voluntarily left. That is one of the misrepresentations that is detailed in the Penn response (p76): https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21174416-penn-answer

[Anonymous]

I just want to comment on a foster child applying for need as his or her own household. That part of her application is correct and she really didn't need to provide more info there.

One of my kids was attending a private university when, just before senior year, he turned 24, the age where kids are considered independent by FAFSA. I figured the private school surely wanted my info so I included my info and called the financial aid office. I still remember the officer saying, "Why did you do that?" And he removed my info. This is a top 30ish school. These huge schools have seen students with every kind of unusual family situation. She was not the first foster child. If they had wanted more info, there would have been instructions regarding this.

That said, I do think she misled them on her admissions essay and I don't think it was necessary. She's a very bright young woman and I think she would have been admitted at Penn or a similar top school.

[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 and 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.

This. I just Googled the mother, she's very pretty for her age and has that classy Type A perfectionist look. Interesting Facebook discussion when the alleged "abuse" (later dropped) incident happened in 2014. Locals call the teen evil and spoiled and nobody buys her side. Also note the mother has a different surname, making the incident and thus mom's lucrative profession impossible to randomly find on Google back when the schemer was applying to college and QuestBridge.

https://www.facebook.com/STLPD/posts/a-high-ranking-physician-at-st-lukes-hospital-has-been-charged-with-two-counts-o/10152766147629885/

[Anonymous]

Think she changed her name after the admit.

And weird you are flagging down he Mom as pretty.

[Anonymous]

Not down

The mom

[Anonymous]

This all reminds me of Alec Baldwin's wife. Both privileged rich white girls raised in nice homes, private school lifers. Both make up some fantastical bio to seem unique and interesting and advance themselves.

[Anonymous]

Just providing a correction (tangential) to the common misconception on this thread that "foster kids are entitled to free college" or "foster kids get guaranteed scholarships."

This is categorically untrue.

Some (but not all) states provide limited grants or funds (or tuition waivers) to youth in care (or aging out) (in that state) attending public CCs or universities within the state, but this is not universal, nor do I know of any state where foster youth receive full funding (and certainly not for all years of an undergraduate degree!). There are also some private foundations/scholarships awarded to foster youth who apply, but there are not a ton, and they are generally small amounts.

What is true is that foster youth are considered independent for FAFSA (federal aid) purposes.

A foster youth attempting to enroll at a private university out of state is likely at the mercy of any need-based (or theoretically merit-based) aid they might receive.

Most foster youth never earn post-secondary degrees for a host of reasons, but economic constraints chief among them.

If you are working with a youth in care in VA, note that Virginia will provide up to $5,000/year for higher education to foster youth (residents of VA), if they qualify and apply each year from the state. The same applies for MD (for MD residents) - up to $5,000/year. These are called Education & Training Vouchers and there is a bureaucratic process to access them; students have to apply yearly (and qualify yearly); and so on.

Signed,

Someone who knows that financial hurdles are a huge barrier for many youth in care, especially youth who grow up in care, in achieving their post-secondary dreams

P.S. Most foster youth do not win Questbridge scholarships -- their schooling has been so impacted/disrupted by being in the system, they tend to attend high schools (often several, unfortunately) which leave them uncompetitive...though there are certainly really smart kids in care who just haven't had a chance to academically succeed

P.P.S. Not going to share my opinion about this case other than to say the fact that this person went from living at home with parent/guardian to immediately placed with a non-family ("not kinship") foster placement seems....highly, highly atypical

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Think she changed her name after the admit.

And weird you are flagging down he Mom as pretty.

Let me guess, right around the time she decided to gun for a Rhodes Scholarship (and worried about the google hits on her name).

[Anonymous]

I was the middle class scholarship kid at a private high school full of really rich kids. Many of my smart accomplished charming friends were sometimes vicious unappreciative a-holes to their parents. They had no awareness of just how good they had it and would exaggerate the tiniest things that wouldn't even be a blip on the radar of my interactions with my own imperfect parents. Reading all the articles, it seems like similar occurred here, taken to the next level of course, with maybe some underlining mental health issues thrown into the mix.

[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.

Maybe I missed mention of her SAT, but I'm assuming it was strong because she was class president, multi-sport varsity athlete, and had a 3.99 GPA at an elite private high school. She was already a match for Penn without this work of fiction. What the fiction got her was a free BA and a MSW (?), which is about a $400,000 haul.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Her claiming she's a poor foster care kid is akin to trying weed at a party in 12th grade and telling everyone for the rest of your life you're recovered drug addict.

ZERO CHANCE she EVER disclosed to anyone on these scholarship committees her mom is a successful medical doctor. I would bet anything.

Did you read the long legal analysis post that I wrote earlier? It's a fact that she was in foster care, and thus she's legally allowed to report herself as low-income. She had no need to disclose to anyone that her mom was a successful medical doctor.

Now, you can dispute that she put herself in foster care, or whatever else some of these posters are baselessly alleging, but that has not been proven with facts.

Yes, her mom was a successful medical doctor. So what? She was in foster care, so her biological family's financial status is not material. By the way, if you actually read Penn's detailed response, they themselves state that they contacted the Questbridge CEO and asked the Questbridge CEO to review her QB app. The Questbridge CEO stated that the way she filled out her QB app was fine, and specifically that she was allowed to represent herself as low-income.

Oh, so her few months (?) in "foster care" just deleted her mom from her life? Deleted how 13 years of private school was paid? Deleted that she grew up a rich white girl with a medical doctor mom in a mansion for 17 or 18 years? Yeah, totally "justifiable" to NEVER mention ANY of that to anyone. If you're a con artist trying to steal and get over on people.

Nice rant but all irrelevant. As a legal matter, yes, her mother was out of her life whether you like it or not.

How were the last 2 years of her high school paid? I’m not aware that he mother paid for them; I expect that she did not since MF was now a ward of the state. It’s possible that the state paid for it but unlikely. More likely is that the school covered the cost with financial aid.

I saw pictures of the house she grew up in, and it is not a mansion.

The fact is that she missed the first month of her junior year of high school as the result of injury, hospitalization, and a diagnosed seizure disorder. She then had that year disrupted by the need to relocate to foster care. With that kind of disruption to her life it’s amazing that she graduated from high school much less achieve at honors level and be elected student body President. She literally spent half of her high school career, the more important half for college admissions in foster care and beyond. For those 2 years she was not at all living the life of a rich kid in a “mansion”.

She doesn’t need to justify why she didn’t mention how and where she grew up to anyone. She included the information that was required. Her high school guidance reviewed her application and endorsed it. To this day, Questbridge says that she filled it out appropriately.

Please don’t get all hysterical on us with self-righteous indignation. You have posted baseless accusations filled with exaggerations and misrepresentations. Maybe you should look yourself in the mirror instead of condemning her for the same things you’re doing.

PS - She’s not a con artist and she didn’t steal anything.

DP
No. Saying you have seizures or information that you were hospitalized for seizure-like episodes is not "a diagnosed seizure disorder." That requires actual EEG evidence of specific epileptiform patterns, which it nowhere indicates were identified.

Diagnosed seizure disorders are things such as Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, West syndrome, "benign childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes," etc.

What has been made available is entirely consistent with an emotionally disturbed young woman with "non-epileptic seizures," or pseudoseizures. I'm sure it would have been named if it were an actual specific diagnosed disorder -- that's much more dramatic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t Penn and the Rhodes committee have access to the hospital records in their investigation? I thought they did.

I have to think that they would be highly inclined to find any way they could for her to keep her scholarship and degrees, because this looks so embarrassing for both institutions. Therefore I think the odds of wrongdoing by Fierceton seem high. Universities never, ever want to admit they made admissions mistakes.

I don’t think they were wrong to admit her - she could clearly do the work and excelled. I do think this is a reflection of what happens when universities and awards etc put a lot of chips down on the “personal hardship” narrative.

I question the honesty of her academic achievements in light of these revelations.

Astute point.

[Anonymous]

An article says she's still headed to Oxford, so how was her life interrupted? I wonder how she's paying for Oxford...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This girl clearly went through trauma in high school and was indisputably in foster care until she aged out. I don’t really care if she was melodramatic in the telling!

Indisputably? Penn asked for real names of the troubled foster siblings she wrote about and she refused to name them. So if she's making up foster siblings, what else is she lying about? Where did she actual live during this time? Was she even actually placed in a foster home?