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‘Rhodes Scholar’ claimed she grew up poor and abused — then her story started to unravel
https://nypost.com ^ | January 11, 2022 4:59pm | By Jerry Oppenheimer and Isabel Vincent

Posted on 01/12/2022 6:02:23 AM PST by Red Badger

In November 2020, when University of Pennsylvania graduate student Mackenzie Fierceton won the prestigious and highly competitive Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford — one of just 32 scholars selected from a pool of 2,300 applicants — she was praised by the Ivy League school’s president in a newsletter.

“Mackenzie is so deserving of this prestigious opportunity,” declared president Amy Gutmann of the 23-year-old from suburban St. Louis. “As a first-generation [to go to college] low-income student and a former foster youth, Mackenzie is passionate about championing young people [and] dedicating herself to a life of public service.”

But a few months later, Fierceton had lost her prestigious scholarship and was fighting against accusations that she had been “blatantly dishonest” about her childhood in her Penn and Rhodes applications.

Now, the investigation into her story is being revealed by the Chronicle of Higher Education — including the Rhodes committee’s findings that Fierceton “created and repeatedly shared false narratives about herself,” using these “misrepresentations” to “serve her interests as an applicant for competitive programs.”

The case also exposes the murky underbelly of elite schools like Penn and their quest to “show that they’re transforming society rather than laundering its inequalities” by accepting “remarkable” applicants with truly tragic backgrounds, according to the Chronicle report.

Multiple college consultants told The Post that the college application process now features more questions about overcoming obstacles. The 2021-2022 essay prompts from Common App, the organization that oversees undergrad applications for more than 900 schools, include “Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure.”

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Education; History; Society
KEYWORDS: didyousearch; duplicate
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To: Vermont Lt
That is true, but this is outright fraud. Right out of Soul Man...................................


21 posted on 01/12/2022 6:24:36 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Red Badger
That is true, but this is outright fraud. Right out of Soul Man.

Poor C. Thomas Howell. He was headed to the A-List and that film torpedoed his career.

22 posted on 01/12/2022 6:26:19 AM PST by Drew68 (Ron DeSantis for President 2024)
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Comment #23 Removed by Moderator

To: IllumiNaughtyByNature
Those investigations revealed that for the first 17 years of her life, Fierceton was raised by her mother, Dr. Carrie Morrison, an accomplished physician. Fierceton grew up in a wealthy community and attended an elite private school in a St. Louis suburb

What school and did she attend and if so who paid for it. What address did she reside, in what kind of community and can we see a picture of the house.

These are pretty simple and straightforward "facts" and fairly easily verified. Instead we have slanging back and forth of claim and denial and counterclaim all barren of any effort to establish for us the reader what was really going on. It is not slander to show someone committed fraud, if they did.

24 posted on 01/12/2022 6:28:44 AM PST by AndyJackson
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To: Red Badger

Well, sweetie, there’s always porn.


25 posted on 01/12/2022 6:28:57 AM PST by KevinB (''...and to the Banana Republic for which it stands ...")
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To: Levy78
the ONLY thing - that’s keep the wheels on this clown car is the fact the dollar hasn’t failed

I wouldn't go betting on that much longer.

26 posted on 01/12/2022 6:29:47 AM PST by AndyJackson
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To: AndyJackson

Click the link in Post 17 I added. This is a tangled web.


27 posted on 01/12/2022 6:29:58 AM PST by IllumiNaughtyByNature (The kernel of our firm's job is to go with lots. - tnlibertarian job offer letter)
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To: Red Badger

You’re a rich girl, and you’ve gone too far
‘Cause you know it don’t matter anyway
You can rely on the old man’s money
You can rely on the old man’s money
It’s a bitch girl but it’s gone too far
‘Cause you know it don’t matter anyway
Say money but it won’t get you too far
Get you too far


28 posted on 01/12/2022 6:31:03 AM PST by moovova
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To: IllumiNaughtyByNature

This girl sounds like a sociopath............


29 posted on 01/12/2022 6:31:19 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Leaning Right

LOL!...........................


30 posted on 01/12/2022 6:33:02 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Drew68

What it really does is show how easily liberals are fooled...............


31 posted on 01/12/2022 6:34:32 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Red Badger
Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure.”

Being obsessed with suffering, loss, or failure is a malevolent view of the universe and a tragic sense of life. This leads to the idea that masochistic altruism is a virtue, and one must sacrifce one's values to help relieve suffering, rather than pursuing one's own happiness.

32 posted on 01/12/2022 6:38:12 AM PST by mjp (pro-freedom & pro-wealth $)
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To: Red Badger

Who can tell the greatest sob story is who gets into college these days.

Grades, test scores and character mean nothing.


33 posted on 01/12/2022 6:38:13 AM PST by Bon of Babble (Rigged Elections have Consequences)
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To: Red Badger

Tough to win The Voice, or AGT, unless you have a really good victim story…


34 posted on 01/12/2022 6:39:40 AM PST by aMorePerfectUnion (Fraud vitiates everything ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘𐡏⁻ )
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To: Bon of Babble

My daughter taught at Whitfield High School where this girl graduated. Tuition is $30K per year.


35 posted on 01/12/2022 6:41:17 AM PST by Stevenfo
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Left are pathological liars and the woke left are all to happy to believe them and assuage their own inappropriate guilt…


36 posted on 01/12/2022 6:42:02 AM PST by TnTnTn
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To: Red Badger

BA in Political Science. MA in Social Work.

I thought the Left considered truth to be malleable and that narrative creation was the greatest skill of all. She’s being singled out for punishment for using what she’d been taught. What is shocking is that administrators of either Oxford or the Rhodes Scholarship have some standards (though once someone outed her, they were probably embarrassed and pissed to have been duped).


37 posted on 01/12/2022 6:46:21 AM PST by Chewbarkah
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To: Red Badger

If it’s ok to pretend a boy is a girl, why isn’t it ok to pretend a rich person is poor?

I don’t get it...

What’s the harm? You know, they, them, whatever?


38 posted on 01/12/2022 6:46:40 AM PST by Sir Bangaz Cracka (Slamming dat white cracka'a head into dat sidewalk causin he be scared)
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To: Red Badger

Getting a jump start on a career in politics...


39 posted on 01/12/2022 6:49:28 AM PST by Thank You Rush
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To: Red Badger

Cecil Rhodes was an outstanding White Supremacist!


40 posted on 01/12/2022 6:51:25 AM PST by Don Corleone (leave the gun, take the canolis)
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