Little white lies are the basis of civilization as we know it. Sure, your friend’s favorite pair of sandals may be fugly, and no, your mother’s chocolate chip cookies are not, and will never be, as good as your grandmother’s, but telling them that does nothing but ensure that your friend lets you puke in your hair, and your mother enforces your curfew this summer. Because sometimes, the truth hurts, and sometimes, the truth isn’t worth the hurt. As long as your little fib is to spare someone’s feelings, no bad can come from it — unless you run into that dude from your history lecture at Chili’s Fajita Rita Mondays when you told him you had to study, but what kind of guy asks you on a date in college anyway? The problem with lying is when you do it to make yourself look better.
Meet Sara (no last name provided), a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, which is regarded as something of a “training ground” for students who excel in math, science, and the like. AKA there’s no way in hell I would have ever gotten accepted there. Anyway, the pressure on the school’s students to get into a prestigious college is apparently major, and it sounds like dear Sara completely cracked under it. Because, in an attempt to impress her parents, she faked not only acceptances to both Harvard University and Stanford University, but major scholarships to both universities.
We’ve now gone beyond white lie territory to delusional land, but Sara took it one – no, two – steps further. First, she told her her parents that she’d be the first ever student to take part in a dual admissions program, in which she’d spend two years at each prestigious school, because they were so desperate for her attendance. Then, to sweeten the deal, she claimed that Mark Zuckerberg, himself, made a personal phone call to the high school student in an effort to convince her to choose Harvard over the marginally less prestigious Ivy.
The jig was up for Sara when her tale of intellectual superiority was picked up by several news outlets; media in her home country of Korea even dubbed her “Genius Girl.” Word got back to the folks at Harvard, who blew her cover in a statement to People:
“We have been made aware of an alleged admissions letter sent to [the student] by Harvard University. We can confirm that this letter is a forgery…Despite recent media reports, there is no program in existence through which a student is admitted to spend two years at Harvard College and two years at Stanford University.”
No word on whether Sara has been accepted to any other schools, but she may want to start looking into applying to ITT Tech under an alias..
[via People]
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