Yale Daily News reports that a 26-year-old student "defrauded Yale University wholesale," faking records, transcripts, and major elements of his identity. After burning through $46,000 in financial aid, Yale tried to pull a hush job on the guy-whose name isn't in the articles-with a quick, quiet dismissal, but the alleged fraud sticking to his "not guilty" plea, Yale and the mysterious man will be airing their dirty laundry in court, starting next week.

The story has so many twisting elements, it reads like a daytime soap: Gay lovers' spat! Race-related unrest! Forgery, identity theft, mental instability! The defendant may have duped NYU, Columbia, and Yale with falsified transcripts and tales of charitable works in Sri Lanka (probably fake) and a childhood in Trinidad and Tobago (probably real). YDN indulges the byzantine plot here.

Equally distressing (read: disgustingly juicy) is the fact that he made it this far. Records suggest at least four years of financially-aided education, and while we understand that transferring credits can be a total bitch, that's gotta add up to at least one associate's degree in "Fraudulent Psychopath," right? YDN explores college-app forgery here, but really, all you need is this sentence:

The revelation that someone could infiltrate Yale shatters the mystique of the Ivy League as an impregnable bastion of the elite.

Raise the alarm! Our ranks have been broken! We'll follow this story as it unfolds; so far, my frantic Googling offers zilch; I can't even find stuff on the September charge.

The other night I was watching TV while drunk and stumbled across something called the Fast Money MBA Challenge on CNBC. I immediately decided I was imagining things. IvyGate has since received confirmation that this program does actually exist, and we're not quite sure how to handle it.

The Challenge, which debuted August 1 and will run through August 22, pits teams of MBA candidates from eight of the nation's top business schools against each other in College Bowl-ish duels. Dylan Ratigan, host of CNBC's usual Fast Money shit-off, runs the special with predictably douchey swagger.

The eight b-schools in competition are MIT (Sloan), Texas, Columbia, NYU (Stern), Chicago, UCLA (Anderson), Dartmouth (Tuck) and Yale. (Click on the picture to enlarge the bracket). Wharton and Harvard probably fancy themselves above this, but we think they're just scared little hobbit-bitches who are afraid to put their reps on the line.

And as the Challenge has demonstrated, even the mightiest can pull a Nasdaq-circa-2000. In the first round, number-one seed MIT lost to icky state school yokels Texas, and permanent safety school Chicago fell hard to UCLA. Whether the game is basketball or stock quotes, MIT and Chicago will always be intercollegiate competition ne'er-do-wells.

Watch the clip below for a taste of the Challenge that a) demonstrates to a tee why people hate corporations and b) solidifies wiseacre Dylan Ratigan's status as the most grating television personality in the world today. It's Columbia versus NYU, a match that Ratigan cleverly dubs the "Subway Series." Columbia wins, as the bracket shows, effectively renewing its right to treat NYU like shit for another few years.

--JIM NEWELL

Beware MBAs bearing gifts.

Nate Pierce, a JD/MBA student at NYU, contacted a few top schools back in January to tell them about his cool new idea: a service that would compile the resumes of other JD/MBAs and put them in touch with each other and potential employers. Apparently many schools don't keep up-to-date lists of JD/MBAs -- the god-kings of grad school society -- and therefore there's no central database of these uber-qualified job candidates. It's simple, really: You give him your resume, he makes sure an employer sees it. For free.

At this point, anyone with even the slightest shade of street wisdom would be wondering, what's in it for him? Nate's waaay ahead of ya. He reassured students in his initial pitch:

"Please note that I am not doing this for my own agenda -- I have already secured employment following graduation.  I am doing this project because I think it will benefit many JD/MBAs, and because I myself would like to be a part of a national network of JD/MBAs."

Shame on you for thinking he would try and make money off his fellow students!

Here's the problem: he sorta is. Just last week, a dean at NYU's career services office sent out a mass e-mail to administrators at Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, and other places where Pierce had been hawking his wares:

From: Irene Dorzback
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 4:05 PM
To: [Redacted]
Subject: Re: TIME SENSITIVE JD/MBA Resume Book

Colleagues:

I just learned from a law firm that our student, Nate Pierce, has sent a promotional letter to the law firms offering the "top schools" JD/MBA resume book to them for a $500 fee. There are 52 resumes in the book (which I have not seen). No where in his communication to you did he indicate that he would be charging a fee and I don't believe your students believed he would be profitting "off their backs."

[snip]

Best,

Irene

We hear some of the students who signed up for the database were none too pleased. (Although Pierce told us that no one has opted out so far.) So Pierce sent out a notice to students explaining why he was now collecting from employers: 

I have incurred significant costs, in both time and out-of-pocket expenses, putting everything together (approximately $9,000 in time and effort and $3,000 in actual expenses for jointdegree.com, jdmba.com, and a software tool to enable employers to search the resume book based on key criteria).

He adds that he was planning to offer a complimentary copy to businesses that don't want to pay.

We got in touch with Pierce to hear his side. Somewhere in his 1,816-word reply, he acknowledges his mistake in not disclosing the fee and explains what he meant to say in his original e-mail:

I was trying to assure JD/MBAs, administrators, and employers that I was not piloting the project for my own exposure, which is entirely true.  I have already accepted an offer upon graduation, and my resume is not included in the employer edition. So no exposure for me (until now).

Machiavellian manipulation or honest mistake? The call is yours: we've included all the e-mails after the jump (minus the seven-screen monstrosity he sent us). Either way, he's now bound to get more exposure than if he'd done it right. So it goes.

Read the rest of this entry »

If students had a rallying cry today, it would probably be "We're bored as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore!" And where are the legions of bored people congregating? Online, naturally.

The anonymous chat site Bored at Butler -- a reference to Columbia's Butler Library -- launched last fall and quickly became Columbia's id. Students don't vent; they fume. The discussion doesn't devolve; it starts on the ground level. No subject is off limits, from racial stereotypes to sex positions to whether the girl in the green sweater in Room 209 is a virgin. You'll also find the occasional nonstop solicitation. This conversation excerpt is pretty representative:

"sex now?"

"I'd be game"

"but alas"

"where is everyone else"

"we're all guys"

Now the site's creator, Jonathan Pappas '06, has used the B@B template to create Bored at Lamont for restless Harvard kids and Bored at Bobst for NYU. Pappas thinks the Columbia site's popularity was "difficult to recreate elsewhere" since it's the result of a "culture specific to Columbia." But wait, what's more universal than sounding off online behind a comfy veil of anonymity?

"The goal of these Web sites was to create a forum for truly free speech," he wrote in an e-mail. "Taking away inhibitions results in a colorful display of extreme brilliance and extreme ignorance." Take it away, comments section.