Faking: Harvard & MIT

Survival is instinctual and in an earlier post I reported:

Anhinga in Costa Rica - Faking Is Not All Bad

In Tortuguero National Park of Costa Rica, we were fortunate enough to observe a catch by the Anhinga. A seven inch fish was the latest victim……… The fish looked truly dead. In normal circumstances, one flick was enough. It had two. Or was it three?

The bird was now relaxed. Why rush when you can wait till the previous fish is fully down? Spread your wings a bit – there is a huge audience of tourists. It was a beautiful sight – a female Anhinga spreading out its wings. 

Suddenly. 

Suddenly. Very suddenly. The little fish came to life. Made a couple of strong wriggly movements, slid into the water and swam off. By the time the Anhinga realised, it was a split second too late. The fish disappeared into the mangrove roots.                                          

Then we find a pilot falsifying his qualification and flew for 13 years. More>>>>

Now the Harvard Crimson reported on a student applying for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships:

Former Harvard Student Indicted For Falsified Applications, Identity Fraud

By XI YU and JULIE M. ZAUZMER, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

May 17, 2010

A former Harvard student was indicted Monday for falsifying information in his applications to Harvard and for several scholarships.

Adam Wheeler, 23, was indicted on 20 counts of larceny, identity fraud, falsifying an endorsement or approval, and pretending to hold a degree. Wheeler was allegedly "untruthful" in his applications to the University and in scholarship applications, according to a statement released Monday by Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone.

As a senior in September 2009, Wheeler allegedly submitted fraudulent applications for the Harvard endorsement for both the United States Rhodes Scholarship and the Fulbright Scholarship.

The University Diaries called him:

The American Adam

Everyone’s talking about Adam Wheeler, the incredibly enterprising, incredibly precocious confidence man who lied and faked his way into Harvard University, and, once there, got tens of thousands of dollars in various money awards.

Read all about it here.

But Adam is an amateur by comparison with Marilee Lee, the admission dean of MIT, Marilee Lee did the same and it took 28 years for her to be found out.

Time Magazine Reports:

“When Jones applied for a job at M.I.T. in 1979, it would have been perfectly reasonable for the university to pay attention to her academic record. School officials had little else to judge her by. Twenty-eight years later, the situation is different. They know she's good at her job. She has demonstrated real merit. Why should her employer care about the paper stuff? But, of course, they did care, and she did lie. And she maintained the lie for 28 years until she was outed by anonymous sources. And this wasn't just any lie. It was a lie in the very area in which Jones' job requires her to expect the truth. The dean of admissions, of all people at a university, has to be pretty firm on the question of résumé padding.”

More>>>>

The Tech, MIT.

By Marissa Vogt

February 5, 2008

“Jones was also well-respected among administrators, faculty, and her colleagues in the Admissions Office. She received a 2001 MIT Excellence Award for Leading Change, given for her ‘visionary’ approach to college admissions.”

More>>>>

Faking Posts:

Coffee in Panama – Faking Is Not All Bad

Anhinga in Costa Rica - Faking Is Not All Bad

The Cockroach Catcher: full review on Amazon, Reader’s views.