Fake Ivy League Transcript, dundunpoop Options

[Melissa]

http://www.wbir.com/news/national/story.aspx?storyid=56588

A former Yale student has been charged with deceiving the Ivy League school to gain admission.

For about a year, Akash Maharaj lived in Morse College, a residential college at Yale University.

Maharah was arrested in September and charged with forgery and larceny for allegedly taking a year's worth of financial aid from Yale.

He is accused of submitting a fake transcript from Columbia University and a fake letter of recommendation.

Jeffrey Brenzel, the Dean of Admissions, said cases of suspected fraud in the application process are rare.

In a statement, he said that every applicant "signs a statement on the application to the effect that the information contained is accurate and the student's own work."

"The penalty for making fraudulent statements in an application is recession of admission," Brenzel said.

He said the university receives close to 23,000 applications for freshmen admission and 800 transfer applications.

Reaction from students was mixed.

"I know students fib about things that they've done and exaggerate, but totally lying to get into a school like Yale is just wrong," John Carlos, a sophomore, said.

"If I had been able to do it without actually having to do any work, might not have been such a bad thing," Meghan Fashjin, a graduate student, said. "Clearly he's talented; somebody should hire the guy."

One student said Yale admissions should have been more careful, but with more than 23,000 applications they are bound to take at least some at face value.

"No system's perfect, anybody can get away with anything really if they try hard enough," Dan Dwyer of New Haven said.

Maharah is due in court Monday.

... now that I think about it, it's really not that hard to fake a transcript. All you need is good editing skills and a copy of your actual transcript and an envelope with your university's letterhead - and that's available everywhere.

[mizzkewl06]

makes me wonder how many other people (before & now) have done this?!?

[Melissa]

Seriously.

While I'm sort of impressed that some people can pull shit like this off, I feel like the value of my acceptance is diminished. :(

[Sandraaa]

Lmao! Dumbf**k! Now his education is messed up!!

[*paperplane*]

This sort of reminds me of one of my IB teachers telling my class about some student who did his IB oral presentation relating something in a book to an African tribe that he completely made up. When she found out, she went as far as to get his IB diploma rescinded or something, and I can't remember what kind of consequences it had on his college education (because I guess he told her it was made up several years after the fact). We all thought it was really impressive that this guy had managed to create such a detailed and realistic fake tribe, but our teacher got pissed that we viewed it that way, rather than with indignation at how he cheated.