Скачать или смотреть ‘Rhodes Scholar’ claimed she grew up poor and abused — then her story started to unravel

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‘Rhodes Scholar’ claimed she grew up poor and abused — then her story started to unravel #UsNews
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.