Conning Harvard: Adam Wheeler, the Con Artist Who Faked His Way into the Ivy League

On paper, Adam Wheeler was the ideal student: flawless test scores, glowing recommendations, and pitch-perfect admissions essays. One problem: they were all lies. In this straightforward account, Harvard Crimson managing editor Zauzmer unravels Wheeler’s long con, in which admission to Harvard was just the beginning. A bright but not exceptional Delaware high school student, Wheeler first attended Bowdoin, Maine’s small liberal arts college, and it was on this application that he honed his plagiarism skills, using the work of fellow students. He spent two years there before beginning the transfer process to Harvard in 2007, again forging his admission materials (this time using excerpts from published essays by five Harvard professors), claiming to have graduated from Andover—having taken an unheard-of 16 AP tests—and spent a year at MIT. Just as his Harvard acceptance was confirmed, Bowdoin uncovered Wheeler’s penchant for plagiarism. The lies did not cease once he arrived in Cambridge; his professors praised him as a brilliant writer, not realizing that the papers he turned in were graduate dissertations he found online. Only when Wheeler applied for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships was his trail of deceit discovered, leading to expulsion and criminal charges. Though Zauzmer offers little analysis or perspective on Wheeler’s actions, the bizarre nature of the case is hook enough. Agent: Jeff Herman, Jeff Herman Agency. (Sept.)