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That's the pressure that drove one high school senior in Virginia to do something totally crazy. Jung Yoon Kim, whose classmates call her Sara, faked several letters from top schools like Harvard and Stanford to make it seem like she had been accepted to one of the schools for the first two years of college and the other for the next (with a huge scholarship). She even said she got a call from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg encouraging her to go to Harvard! Crazy, right?

As a result, Sara, who goes to top high school Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, became major news as her story spread, both in the USA and in her fam’s native Korea. News outlets called her “Genius Girl.”

But now, Harvard and Stanford have reviewed her several “admission” emails and letters, and confirmed that they’re all FAKE. And it turns out, there is no program that actually allows students to split their time between the two schools.

In the end, Sara's dad took on full responsibility for the incident, now recognizing the crazy pressured environment he created for his daughter (yikes!).

Lesson here? The next time the ‘rents are driving you nuts with academic pressure, share this story with them and express how YOU feel. You should never feel so pressured that you have to lie about something major like getting accepted into an Ivy League school.

What do you think about what Sara did? What kind of academic pressure do you face? Let us know in the comments!

Photo credit: harvard.edu

by Katy Herman | 2/1/2016