The girl who conned the Ivy League

"The girl who conned the Ivy League...

...gained admission to three universities — including continuing-ed programs at Harvard and Columbia."

I assume by "continuing ed" they mean the Harvard Extension School and its Columbia analogue. From extension.harvard.edu:

  To take courses at Harvard Extension School, you simply register.
  No application is required.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good headline.

An interesting comment from the article: "From the genius, to the anxiety, through the social awkwardness, Esther Reed is a classic case of Asperger's Syndrome! Anyone who has lived with family members who have this condition, as I have, should be able to instantly recognize it. The clues are all there. Her father was a "shy and reclusive man" who had his family living out in the woods isolated from society. There is the source of her autistic spectrum disorder; she probably inherited it from him. She is not amoral as one person previously commented, but rather, as Esther admitted, she didn't realize her actions would hurt others. Again, this is classic Asperger's -- the inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, the lack of empathy, the self-centered egotism resulting from an inability to generate a theory of mind, i.e. see things from someone else's point of view or understand how what you might do or say would affect the other person. Esther had personal problems a normal person would have been able to handle by confronting and facing her family and expressing her feelings to them and if necessary, just openly leaving to start over, i.e. without running away in the way that she did -- making her paper existence vanish -- and without snapping and acting as she did. People with Asperger's try to hold it together but often snap and act out. In children, it is tantrums. As an adult, Reed snapped and impulsively grabbed a co-worker's purse -- not the act of a genius criminal, since obviously the suspicion would fall on co-workers. She could not handle pressure and personal problems a normal person would have been able to handle without Esther's extreme behavior. Even as a child, she had a hyperresponsivity to stress as described by her teacher which was echoed in her adult life when she became completely dysfunctional when stressed at Columbia and on the run. Ironically, her defense attorney was right, but apparently he didn't have a clue as to the correct diagnosis."

The original link goes to the last page.

First page: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who...

I'm surprised she didn't just go to another country and go from there - I'm not sure how easily other countries would be able to trace her back to the missing people in the US.

Worst case she could have started off as an illegal immigrant - it seems with her resourcefulness and intelligence she could have done well.

It seems to me the fascination with this type of story (and it's not the first I've seen here) is the element of remaking ourselves. A lot of famous people got famous under a stage name: John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison; John Mellencamp became famous as John Cougar; Julie Newmar was born Julia Chalene Newmeyer. On this site, the man behind Mixergy took the name Andrew Warner because his ethnic name was an obstacle to business success. Many people also go by "handles" on various online forums rather than their real name and plenty of people have nicknames that their close friends use for them.

I suppose one lesson to learn here is that there is a right way and a wrong way to remake yourself. And that assuming a new identity does not automatically prevent problems from following you.

>To survive these daily onslaughts, Esther put on her familiar mask of haughty confidence and switched on her emotional autopilot, mimicking social interactions while feeling nothing

Hmm, that summarises about 50% of social interactions generally.

Not surprising that she was discovered and arrested. The whole point of a missing person's list is to work as an alert system.

The most striking thing about this story to me is how this girl ended up being suspected of being Public Enemy Number One.

That truly says something about the world we live in these days. Sad.

This reminds me of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Burdell

also see:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/29787673/the_boy_who_...

and

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/4446/

Wow, what a terrible layout!

If anyone here isn't using Readability, this would be a good time to start: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1054299