May 25, 2007
That Fake Stanford Student
The Stanford Daily swings into Day 2 of its wall-to-wall coverage coverage about Azia Kim, the fake Stanford student. This story is AWESOME.
Today's article reveals that Azia Kim's friends from high school all thought she was going to one of those community colleges that feeds into Berkeley, but when she came back at Christmas break and said she'd gotten into Stanford, everyone believed her. While Kim's grades and extracurriculars weren't great, everyone figured she must have been on the cusp or something.
So guess how Azia Kim got busted? Just guess. YES! The loving RAs of the Okada dorm thought it'd be fun to put together a yearbook of the group for memories in the years to come. They were putting together the pictures, and someone was like, "hey, who's she?"
Kim is described as deeply religious and very sweet -- and her family apparently had no idea she wasn't at Stanford, with her parents paying the $50K in tuition and her sister posting on her (now disappeared) Facebook site just last week, "good luck with finals."
And this is the best part of the whole story! There's another fake student at Stanford! Apparently a woman's been squatting in one of the theoretical physics labs. For four years. And -- get this -- none of the physics people can figure out what to do about it. Don't some of these folks have Nobel prizes?
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Wait -- parents were paying $50k tuition to whom? Was the school just taking the payments from these total strangers?
As I mentioned in the previous post, there have always been individuals with obvious psychological problems living in various buildings around campus, attempting to blend into student life, sometimes with a remarkable degree of success. One man lived in the one of the main quad buildings for months almost completely undetected. I say almost, because someone was printing out copious amounts of gay erotica in the middle of the night.
I’m sure the Daily Californian is a bit jealous about not having any stories like these. This is some incredible investigative reporting for a college paper.
Hey that girl faked out Facebook too. Nice! I think the parents gave the money to her to pay for the tuition. She must have lived a sweet life in the dorms. No tuition, free room & board, etc.
This reminds me of Milton and that movie "Office Space." Maybe she just wanted a red Swingline stapler.
What I can't figure out is how to pronounce her name. Is it pronounced like Asia or ah-zee-ah
What I can't figure out is how to pronounce her name. Is it pronounced like Asia or ah-zee-ah
This is almost as good as the story of the woman who conned her way into becoming Provost of Stanford, despite the fact she was a fifth-rate academic hack and a front for Chevron. I think that woman was hospitalized for a chemical weapons imbalance.
Actually, the better example would be the guy who conned his way into being an airplane pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. This was the storyline for the "Catch Me if You Can" movie with Dicaprio & Hanks
for the record, Kim had a myspace account, but there was no mention of facebook, which specifically requires users to register with an email address from an educational domain (e.g., stanford.edu). but you're right, this is an awesome story. Kim needs to get a lawyer and nab the rights to her own story.