A fraudulent student who been studying at Harvard for two years based on false credentials was discovered when he faked an applications for the Fulbright award and the Rhodes scholarship, an international postgraduate award for study at Oxford.

Adam Wheeler, aged 23, had been accepted as a transfer student to Harvard in 2007 on account of numerous A-grade transcripts which he presented from Phillips Academy Andover, an elite American boarding high school, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Wheeler studied at Harvard for two years before his fraudulent claims were discovered.

Following Wheeler’s dubious application for the Rhodes Scholarship, it was found that he had forged the transcripts from MIT which had won him a place at Harvard. It was revealed that he had not attended the high school, nor MIT as he had previously claimed. Rather, he had graduated from Caesar Rodney High School in Delaware, an average state secondary school. He then spent two years at Bowdoin College in Maine, before being suspended for academic dishonesty.

Wheeler also claimed to speak five languages, including Old English, Classical Armenian, and Old Persian. He said he had given lectures at other elite American universities, and pretended to have a perfect score of 1600 on the SAT exam. In fact, he had sat the test twice and scored 1160 and 1220.

The student’s fraud was discovered by an English professor who was reviewing Wheeler’s Rhodes scholarship application. The professor suspected Wheeler of plagiarising part of the application, and although Wheeler claimed it was an error, the professor’s suspicion led to a review of Wheeler’s entire transfer application to Harvard. It was after this that Wheeler’s false claims about his school and MIT became clear. In particular, it was noticed that Wheeler had submitted a A-grade transcript from MIT, despite the fact that MIT does not give letter grades to students during the autumn term of their first year.

When he realised the possibility of being discovered, Wheeler attempted to escape by completing new transfer applications to Yale and Brown, two other Ivy League universities. To do this, he forged yet more documents to attain admission, including a letter of recommendation from David Smith, the Academic Dean at Harvard who had first informed him of the plagiarism accusations concerning his Rhodes scholarship application.

Yale contacted his parents, who insisted that their son confessed his false academic record to Yale. It was due to their interference that he confessed. Wheeler chose to leave Harvard rather than face an academic hearing.

Meg Hauser, a student at Brown University, said, “This type of forgery in the course of college admissions, though usually not so extensive, is all too common. Admissions officers cannot physically check every component of an application; it is likely all too ordinary for graduating students to pad their resumes with false information.” 

Wheeler has subsequently been charged with 20 criminal counts at an arraignment at the Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, Massachusetts. The counts included larceny, because he was awarded scholarships totalling nearly $50,000 from Harvard, and also identity fraud and pretending to hold a false degree. Wheeler pleaded not guilty.

The Rhodes Scholarship is one of the oldest and most prestigious international fellowships, which brings outstanding students from around the world to study at Oxford. The scholarship was initiated after the death of Cecil Rhodes in 1902, and the first American Scholars came to Oxford in 1904.

Students applying for Rhodes Scholarships apply through the Rhodes Trust’s system, which has its own checks and procedures in place which are separate from those carried out by Oxford’s graduate admissions office.

A spokesperson from the University Press Office said, “Those who make fraudulent applications would face severe action, up to and including expulsion. Oxford’s Graduate Admissions and Funding Office (GAO) takes fraud very seriously, and has issued guidelines on detecting fraud in graduate applications to all departmental admissions bodies. There are procedures in place to deal with suspected cases of fraud.”

The revelations about Wheeler’s attempts to win a place at Oxford through faked documents come after a fresher at LMH was discovered as a fraud at the end of Michaelmas term of last year. The student, who won place at Oxford in 2009 to read Economics and Management, claimed to have graduated from school with at least 10 A grades at A level, and had also forged references from a teacher.

After this went unnoticed, the undergraduate admissions procedures at Oxford has had a shake up. Starting with applications for entry 2011, students who apply outside the UCAS system, as the LMH student did, will be required to produce their exam results as a condition of them getting an offer from Oxford.

The University stated, “Whilst it is impossible to eliminate the risk of fraudulent behaviour altogether, one of the aspects of Oxford which helps to minimise the risks of fraudulent behaviour going undetected is its intensive selection and teaching system. The selection system for undergraduates includes interviews and, for many subjects, aptitude tests, while the tutorial teaching system gives close supervision to demanding academic work.”

A review of Oxford’s teaching model has found that many students feel their work favours “style over substance”, that blagging is one of the key skills taught by an Oxford degree and that the tutorial system has damaged many students’ self-confidence.

Published this week, the document highlights key problems felt by students throughout their degree and calls for a reassessment of long-term teaching objectives.

The review also brings revelations about the discrepancies in treatment students felt they were receiving across the four subject groups of Humanities, Social Sciences, Maths, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) and Medicinal Sciences.

Comments such as “it’s hard to stay motivated when your tutor tells you that ‘teaching you is soul-destroying'” indicate that students, especially those in MPLS subjects, feel that their confidence had been damaged by the teaching which they had received.

Students from Humanities and Social Sciences felt that “blagging” is an inevitable skill to be picked up. Some students felt they have “no choice but to work” and that work is “mainly style over substance”.

Undergraduates studying Medical Sciences courses expressed concern at the difference in teaching between colleges. The number of tutorials which students were having appeared to range from 2 per fortnight to 8 per fortnight depending on what college they attended.  

The review, which “reflects the experiences of hundreds of Oxford’s undergraduates”, is a result of focus groups that were instigated by OUSU, and conducted across nine colleges.

Despite the lack of consistency between tutorials in different Colleges, students in MPLS are more satisfied than their peers in other disciplines with the manner in which they were examined.

Students in MPLS are more satisfied with lectures, but they wished for them to be more effectively timetabled. MPLS students also feel that postgraduate students would be better at delivering classes or leading lab work than academics.

Some of the problems raised with lab work within MPLS and Medicinal Sciences is attributed to an “inclarity over the objectives” and an “outdated” form of teaching.
The issue generating the most dissatisfaction is the mismatch of the teaching model with the examination system, felt most greatly by Social Sciences and Humanities students.

Students frequently reported that they feel the work they were asked to produce for tutorials was very different from what was expected in examinations. 

The report says it was “very apparent that students were deeply concerned that they were unclear about the criteria against which they would be assessed”.

There is a strong sense that students do not know “what a first class essay would look like” in an examination setting or how they would produce one in under an hour.

Commonly students believe that “confidence and the ability to write aggressively” is what got them the highest marks but feel that large amounts of revision would not necessarily provide them with this ability.

Among the report’s suggestions about ways in which the style of teaching could be altered is the introduction of a common framework for teaching. This comes after students expressed that tutors’ teaching did not match expectations.  

The lack of summative assessment was noted by students in all four subject divisions, but was particularly focused on in Humanities and Social Sciences. Students felt that work was assessed against published marking criteria too infrequently given the importance of public examinations. 

Collections were not considered by students to be a sufficient method of providing summative feedback, “because of the lack of seriousness with which it was felt that they were sometimes taken.”  

Humanities and Social Sciences students in particular “did not feel there was any clear link between the manner in which they were taught and the manner in which they were assessed”.

The review showed there is a perceived contrast among students between tutorial work and what was expected in examination settings. It was also felt that summative assessment was largely dependent on the whims of individual tutors owing to unclear assessment criteria.

Students felt that mechanisms such as the release of ‘model answers’ by degree classification, greater access to examination scripts and more opportunities to practice exam-style writing would help with uncertainty over examinations,
Some of the expectations students had about teaching at Oxford had not been met, especially in Social Sciences, where students were likely to perceive tutors “as being comparatively uninterested in undergraduate teaching.”

Social Sciences and Humanities students, in particular Modern Linguists, expressed dissatisfaction with course organization and the unclear administration of joint courses. They were also mostlikely to view lectures as “ineffectual”.

Students across all divisions frequently indicated speed of work, resilience, willingness to defend they point of view as some of the skills they had acquired at Oxford.
The review indicated that even “in light of the [University’s] worsening financial situation” it is possible to implement changes which would improve student satisfaction.

Last Saturday saw Oxford’s RAG-Raid team take to the streets of Bath in aid of Link Ethiopia, an educational charity.

The team of 42 managed to raise just over their target of £2,000, which will go towards funding clean water facilities for school children.

Habiba Islam of Somerville College, who organised the day, commented that the beautiful weather highlighted the importance of Link Ethiopia’s work. “On that hot day, we were especially grateful for water. It made it clear how important clean water availability really is.

“Everyone had loads of fun… it was a lovely day and couldn’t have gone better.”
RAG Press Officer Rob Day wore a Robin Hood outfit for the day. He said that it felt “a bit like being a Big Issue seller,” but overall the public had given generously.

Star RAG-Raiders were Abigail Brehcist and Isabella Mighetto, who raised £233.91 between them. They said, “We found the best way to raise money for a cause is to attract as much attention as possible: for us this meant being bright green, granting wishes and grinning manically! It led to a day full of fun and a bucketful of money!”

Most previous raids have taken place in and around Oxford, but the trip to Bath allowed students to target their fundraising at a predominantly non-student community. The move paid off, as the Raiders raised more money in Bath than they would expect to raise after a day’s bucket-rattling on Cornmarket Street.

James Love of Link Ethiopia said,  “A huge congratulations to Oxford RAG for raising the largest donation we have ever received from a UK RAG. The [money] will be used where it is needed most.  On behalf of the communities Link Ethiopia works with, thank you!”
Oxford RAG has already passed its £50,000 target for this year and their next major fundraiser is Oxford Jailbreak in 9th week.  For more information visit oxfordjailbreak.com.