Conning Harvard: Adam Wheeler, the Con Artist Who Faked His Way into the Ivy League (Additional reporting)

196 Pages·2012·1.59 MB·English

by  Yu

CONNING HARVARD
CONNING HARVARD
Adam Wheeler, the Con Artist Who Faked
His Way into the Ivy League
J Z
ULIE AUZMER
With additional reporting by Xi Yu
Dedicated to all those who uphold Harvard’s standards
Copyright © 2012 by Julie Zauzmer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing
from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe
Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480, Guilford,
CT 06437.
Lyons Press is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.
Some of the reporting and research for this book was funded by and conducted
for The Harvard Crimson. Such materials are used here with permission.
Project editor: Meredith Dias Layout: Mary Ballachino Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zauzmer, Julie.
Conning Harvard : Adam Wheeler, the con artist who faked his way into the
Ivy League / Julie Zauzmer ; with additional reporting by Xi Yu.
p. cm.
Summary: “Conning Harvard tells the story of Adam Wheeler’s lie-filled path
into Harvard, his compulsive conning of grant and scholarship boards after
enrolling, and the eventual discovery of his fraudulent past”—Provided by
publisher.
ISBN 978-0-7627-8743-2 (hardback) 1. Cheating (Education)—United States.
2. Wheeler, Adam (Adam B.) 3. Harvard University—Students. 4. Harvard
University—Funds and scholarships. 5. Swindlers and swindling—United
States. I. Yu, Xi. II. Title.
LB3609.Z38 2012
378.1’98—dc23
2012018145
CONTENTS
Copyright
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
To indicate as explicitly as possible the instances where the author
could not know the exact words spoken by the participants in this
story, some dialogue in this book appears without quotation marks.
That dialogue should be read as the author’s effort, based on
statements made by one or more participants in each conversation,
to reconstruct actual conversations in the manner most faithful to
the likely words exchanged between the speakers.
INTRODUCTION
This book chronicles an academic fraud of stunning proportions. Over a period
of six years, Adam B. Wheeler tricked the smartest institutions in the country
time and time again. He plagiarized application essays to get into one of the
country’s best liberal arts colleges. He stole a Pulitzer Prize winner’s work to
win a poetry prize. Then he took on Harvard University—the world’s most
recognized institution of higher education, whose very name has meant prestige,
privilege, excellence, and exclusivity for centuries.
Adam Wheeler was an expert forger and a skillful liar with seemingly few
scruples about fabricating his academic credentials whenever the occasion arose.
In snagging admission to Harvard, he unfairly attained an honor that millions of
students worldwide dream of. In striving to scam institutions at the pinnacle of
higher education—Yale, Brown, Stanford, the Rhodes and Fulbright
scholarships, and more—he astonished the nation with the story of his audacity.
Many were outraged that he took a precious spot at Harvard that could have
gone to an honest applicant, not to mention thousands of dollars in prizes that
selection committees could have bestowed on deserving young scholars. Others
were impressed by his skillful cons or even smugly amused to see Harvard
outsmarted for once.
But whether one perceives him as the hero or the villain of his tale, this
ultimately is not about Adam Wheeler. His fraudulent path is extraordinary, but
on its own, his story is unimportant.
What is important is that high school students today face unprecedented
pressure when it comes to college admissions. What is important is that as many
as 14 percent of essays are plagiarized, 50 percent of transcripts are faked, and
90 percent of recommendation letters are forged among some groups of college
applicants. What is important is that a generation of teenagers, raised in an