Harvard: Where You Get In If You Can Lie Well Enough

At this point, we should just start a program at Harvard for people who cheated their way in; these are the future leaders of America, people. If you think a little jail time is going to keep this Jim Halpert look-alike out of a corner office on Wall Street, you must be working at the White House on finance reform.

Adam Wheeler managed to transfer to Harvard as a sophomore, in itself an impressive feat, but made more impressive by the fact that he blatantly fabricated his entire academic career to get in. He told Harvard that he had scored a 1600 on his SATs, attended Phillips Academy and then MIT before deciding to transfer, all the while posting straight-A averages. Apparently, even applicants are above reproach on Harvard Yard, and nobody bothered to check the veracity of any of these claims (making me wonder why I ever had to take the SATs, let alone do well on them), and Wheeler was on course to graduate this year with a degree in English.

So where did he go wrong? The bastard got greedy and applied for Rhodes and Fulbright Scholarships, which necessitated that professors briefly read his CV before writing him the requisite fluff pieces. One of these professors actually looked at his resume, realized that it was really similar bio to another professor’s at Harvard, and blew the whistle. That fake MIT degree comes in handy though, as Wheeler has to be able to count up to twenty, which is the number of indictments he is being slapped with. He’s probably going to do jail time for stealing financial aid money to fund his education spree. For a kid so smart, it seems sort of stupid to blow $45,000+ for two years of skunky beer and pulling all-nighters in the library.

Regardless, now that this kid is on the radar, he’s going to go far. He got into the Ivy League the real fucking way—he picked himself up from his bootstraps, and without the help of Mommy, Daddy and Kaplan SAT review. While he might not have the degree to prove it, Adam Wheeler probably learned more getting into college than most students learn in four years spent there legitimately, so good for him; plus, a story about how you cheated your way into Harvard is always more interesting than a story about how you earned your way into Harvard, so he’s got that going for him, too. Little victories.

EXCLUSIVE: Skull and Bones, 2010-2011

UPDATED

Yesterday, we dropped Scroll and Key and Wolf’s Head. Now, thanks to an anonymous tipster (as always… grain of salt), here are this year’s future leaders of the free world. Yale’s big kahuna Secret Society, Skull and Bones, revealed:
Skull and Bones

  • David Broockman
  • Matt Zuckerman
  • Paul Needham
  • Kunal Lunawat
  • Jesse Reising
  • Kevin Wang
  • Lily Blair
  • Lusdymer Pichardo
  • Kevin Fitzroy Beckford
  • Kate Grace
  • Temeica Bethel
  • Nicole de Paz
  • Jonathan Eng
  • Mallory Baysek
  • S.B.K. Weintraub

Friends and commenters, let us know if we’ve made any mistakes, and we’ll be quick to correct. We wouldn’t want to misidentify any Boners.

EXCLUSIVE: Yale Secret Society Taps – Scroll and Key + Wolf’s Head

Yes, it’s that time of year! Through an anonymous tip, I am happy to provide–for your delectation–the 2010-2011 tap classes of two of Yale’s first-string societies: Wolf’s Head and Scroll and Key. Although we can’t vouch for 100% accuracy, we’ll put our editorial weight behind these lists based on source credibility. Not much editorial content to add: either you know these hot young future oligarchs, or you don’t. (Or, like me, you don’t go to Yale. Sorry, we’ll put up a post on Dartmouth on Thursday!) Who wants to be America’s next top secret society member? These Yalies do:

Scroll and Key

  • Silia DeFilippis
  • Abraar Karan
  • Ka Mo Lau
  • Andrew Gu
  • Jackie Delligatti
  • Katie Bolling
  • Stephen Feigenbaum
  • Cory Finley
  • Elisa Gonzalez
  • Grace Needlman
  • Zach Rotholz
  • Emma Sokoloff-Rubin
  • Michael Boyce
  • Jill Hagey
  • Ben Stango

Wolf’s Head after the jump, and some insights from our tipster:

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“Real World” Girls Identified as Penn Sorority Sisters

The Penn girls who headed to the Real World house have been identified! Emily and Chelsea (pictured, in a shot from Drumheller’s Facebook page) have made Penn proud, and are — and let us not overstate this — the most famous people at Penn since the days of Ben Franklin. And when was he ever on TV?

Emily, a member of the Theta sorority, headed on an ill-starred date with cast member Andrew at Buca di Beppo after a night of passion at the only bar in Washington, apparently. “Who ever said they were attracted to smart girls?” said Andrew of his Ivy League-educated date. She admitted, with all the grace and elegance of a Quaker, “I was thinking about standing you up!” Maybe he was right? Emily expounds delightfully on her Catholic-school upbringing and her ring and how much she wants to be on TV (well, the last part is subtext).

Chelsea, a sister of Tri-Delt, catalyzed an old-school ruckus after returning from the bar with “rocker” Josh. What not to do as a houseguest? Respond to a housemate’s question “What are you looking for?” with “Not your brains!” and a profanity. One would think a sorority member would be more invested in shared-living experiments! But at least she’s keeping her Ivy snob-quotient up by telling off a Real Worlder for inadequate intellect. [We've heard rumblings about a THIRD sorority member from Penn at the bar and on TV... but we're not sure enough to post. Any tips, commenters?]

We’ve long thought that the Ivies deserve their own reality show, and hopefully, these ladies can keep the MTV momentum going. Let’s bring The Hills to Penn: call it The Walk?

Screenshots from The Real World after the jump!

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BREAKING: Inconsiderate Ivy League Sex Epidemic Strikes Again

BREAKING: Inconsiderate Ivy League Sex Epidemic Strikes AgainBattle stations, daily newspaper feature writers, battle stations!! Three examples makes a trend piece, and we’ve just received word of yet another complaint over too-public sex on an Ivy campus. First it was the Yale showers. Then, a Brown kitchen. Now some Dartmouthers have been called out for commandeering … a toilet stall. Wrote a disgusted (sour grapes?) freshman girl:

Date: 27 Feb 2007 11:45:30 -0500
From: [redacted]
Subject: Important!
To: [28 freshmen]

Dear Cohen Floor 2,

As psyched as I am that some of you are getting laid, the bathroom of 203 at 6:15 in the morning is not the time or the place… if you feel the need to do it in public, perhaps the common room would be more appropriate. This way, you won’t disturb your floormates/suitemates or have them walk into the bathroom on you! 

Great, fab, have a good day

xoxo

More background from our tipster:

The girl who sent out this email was woken up out of a cold sleep at 6:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning by some loud moaning. She assumed it was coming from another room down the hall, and decided to go to the bathroom (across the hall) only to discover another girl from our floor and an anonymous guy having a little fun in one of the toilet stalls (not the shower, a la Yale)…the kind of fun where you have both hands and both feet on the ground (as my floormate saw under the door). The reason we know that this was another girl from our floor: her Dartmouth ID was found on the floor of the stall later on that morning.  

OK, we’re slow-clapping here on that last part.

With three Ivies down, that means five have some homework to do! Now, make sure you have the assignment right: we’re not looking for people having sex in public places. We’re looking for people who have been scolded, preferably by people with tenure, for having sex in public places. So you can’t just do it; you must do it very, very detectably. This is the beginning of something beautiful. Anyone have Jenny 8. Lee on speed dial?

BDH: Brown Lacrosse Wooing Duke Rape Defendant

<em>BDH</em>: Brown Lacrosse Wooing Duke Rape DefendantWhoa, today’s Brown Daily Herald has a major scoop: Brown is actively recruiting Reade Seligmann, one of the three Duke rape case defendants, to transfer and play for its lacrosse team. That’s it, basically — no other details, besides Coach Lars Tiffany saying  Seligmann likes Brown, and Brown likes him likes him back. We’ll hold the editorial comments as we get ready to visit Durham this weekend, but obvs, this is a huge vote of confidence in Seligmann’s innocence. Anyone at Duke or Brown have more info?
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Welcome to the Realness, 02138

Welcome to the Realness, <em>02138</em>If you read this blog with any regularity, you know it’s been a constant struggle to criticize 02138, a magazine we know we should hate but somehow, inexplicably (well, sometimes explicably), can’t. What we can say, thanks to this spectacular item from Boston’s Weekly Dig, is that 1) 02138 is not a happy place to be right now, and 2) it will be moving its unhappy ass to the unhappiness capital of the world: Manhattan.

The real juice, though, is on the editorial end. Dig invokes the “world of carnage” that is the magazine’s masthead, which has already lost two executive editors and an editorial director, with a managing editor and two editors-at-large soon to peace. The strategy, a source tells them, “is to make it so ridiculously unhospitable that people quit — they’re never fired.”

Dig‘s coup of coups is a leaked editorial memo outlining ways to bring in more advertising without compromising editorial autonomy. Among those uncompromising ideas:

“Make as many photo shoots as possible fashion shoots. Let subjects know that readers will be very interested in their fashion, jewelry, accessory choices or, preferably, dress them. Whether or not we dress them, clothes should be credited. Next list [of influential Harvardians?-Ed.] should be shot this way.”

“Profiles through the lens of certain products: The last five electronics gadgets Jim Fallows bought to stay in touch from China, whats in Meg Whitmans briefcase as far as electronic devices, what are the last 10 wines Jen Rubell served at dinner parties; what is on Marisa Noel Browns holiday gift list, Darren Aronofskys ten rules for flying on his private jet.”

And then this apocalyptic vision:

“Cover a ridiculous or interesting wedding, first birthday party, retirement party or funeral in every issue. Offer alums incentives to alert us to such events (02138 onesies for new legacy babies)”

Is it our birthday? Feels like it. Thanks, Dig.

BREAKING: Inferior Scientist Picked As Next Harvard Prez

BREAKING: Inferior Scientist Picked As Next Harvard PrezEarly headlines are coming over the wire after the Crimson‘s scoop that history prof and Radcliffe dean Drew Gilpin Faust will soon be named Harvard’s first woman president

DEATH OF ANNA NICOLE SMITH PAVES WAY FOR NEW LEADER OF AMERICAN FEMINISM

SIGNIFICANTLY LESS INTERESTING PERSON THAN LARRY SUMMERS ELEVATED TO HIGHEST POSITION IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

TRUSTEES CONFUSED BY FEMALE ACADEMICS’ CELEBRATION; THOUGHT ‘DREW’ PERSON WAS MAN

SCOOP SAFELY OBTAINED, STUDENT REPORTERS RETURN CRIMSON-ISSUED CYANIDE CAPSULES

More news TK later Friday … 

J-Schooler Sure to Be Put on the Hard-Hitting Investigative Beat Now (UPDATE)

J-Schooler Sure to Be Put on the Hard-Hitting Investigative Beat Now (UPDATE)

J-Schooler Sure to Be Put on the Hard-Hitting Investigative Beat Now (UPDATE)On good days, tips arrive in our inbox and we’re all, “Hey, that’s fun to write about.” Or “Silly Ivy League kids, that’s sure ripe for a tweaking!”

And then there’s the day you learn about SimplySheena.com.

The personal web site of Columbia J-school student Sheena Tahilramani fairly begs to be ridiculed. It almost feels too easy — but we’ve written about the vanity sites of sex bloggers before, and SimplySheena, with completely tame subject matter, manages to take the medium to new depths. It’s actually because she’s a legit journalism student that the enormous photo of herself on the home page is so absurd, demanding that she not be taken seriously.

That’s her, in a low-cut dress, jeweled necklace, and a certain gaze — that piercing, come-hither gaze ‘neath which so many sources have surely melted. (“Do you want to do this on the record … or on the pool table?“) Click through and you’ll find a bio that’s largely relevant (L.A. Times internship, etc.) and impressive. Then there’s this:

Sheena appeared on Wheel of Fortune in September 2004 and won the majority of her winnings in the first toss-up round. The answer was ‘Boulder, Colorado.’ She has been an in [sic] several television shows (ER, The Shield, Cold Case) and feature films (The Holiday and Blades of Glory).

(Emphasis, ’cause it’s funny, ours.) On the “Contact” page you’ll find a photo of Sheena dressed in nothing but newsprint (old Columbia Spectators) — an image that must be really really hot, if you’re Joseph Pulitzer. We remain untitillated, as we 1) recall from the high school newspaper mail room the disgusting amount of ink that can get onto your skin, and 2) are, you know, completely repulsed by the entire site in general.

UPDATE 2:59 p.m.: A friend at the Columbia Daily Spectator passes along this email from Tahilramani, sent unsolicited to the paper’s general mailbox last Halloween. If the jury was somehow out on the charge of self-promotion before, we believe the verdict is now in. Read it after the jump:

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How Not to Apply for a Job in I-Banking

UPDATE: YouTube has removed the video; we’ve replaced it with a Veoh clip below, or you can download the file here.
UPDATE 2: Turns out that serving up the enormous video file blew the roof off our server. We’ll let Veoh host for now, and re-host it if they take it down.
omg, omg omg omgAleksey Vayner is having a bad day. Imagine you’re a recruiting director at an investment bank. Aleksay’s resume come across your desk. The ’07 Yalie’s stuff seems normal enough, until the link to a video at the end. Twenty-four hours later, you’re the laughingstock of New York, the newest viral sensation. We’ve been forwarded his stuff a couple times, and the email suffixes tell the whole story: Greenwich Capital Markets, Credit Suisse, Wachovia Securities, JP Morgan, Lazard, on and on and on.

Subject: FW: one more resume, u must see video
Subject: FW: this is pure gold.
Subject: True story- On line resume of a candidate for our training prog ram
“Too funny not to share” … “This guy must be the pride of Yale” … “You can’t make this sh** up” … “Don’t you guys go trying to recruit him – I’ve added myself to cs’s yale recruiting team. He’s ours” …

Here’s a link to Vayner’s official site (what’s with the weird must-be-over-18 warning?), and his original cover letter and resume. [Ed. note: We rushed this online as soon as we got it, only to notice Dealbreaker.com had it a little while ago. The headline overlap was accidental, seriously.) UPDATE: Read more of IvyGate’s wall-to-wall coverage of Aleksey Vayner!