Thursday, June 10, 2010

School for Scoundrels?

Every Golden Bear had a chuckle yesterday (I laughed out loud, and Mr. Hunting Creek said, "What are you laughing at?" and I told him and he laughed too.) when we read the news that the famous student-poseur who had lied and was admitted to Harvard was also admitted to Stanford!
We always teased Stanford students about their lax admission standards across the bay, but as my kids say, seriously? (Just say that you cured cancer, found the Holy Grail and discovered a Lost City in the Andes! It seems like they'll believe anything.)

A few years ago I was working on a project with a famous Private University that will remain nameless, and I was the person in charge of creating log-ins for the users. I sent emails to all the expected users, with explicit instructions on how to access their site. I was too sanguine, of course; my instructions would have been explicit to a Cal grad, but not to the prestigious Private University users.
The access instructions read in part:
Your user name is your first initial, last name, with the last four digits of your Social security number. The first password is the name of the University. The system will prompt you to change it once you are signed in.
For example, JSmith1234 Password: Private University Name
You would not believe how many users called me to say that their user names weren't working. Yes, you guessed it! They were all using JSmith1234
Or if they figured out what the name part was, had trouble with the name of their prestigious Private University as their password.

Go Bears!

2 comments:

AuntieAllyn said...

Sigh . . . stupidity like this is rampant everywhere, it seems! I'm so glad I'm leaving the workforce at the end of next year so I won't have to deal with idiots anymore! (What am I saying? There are idiots everywhere!!!! You can't escape them!)

Nancy Winningham said...

OMG - I think even my fifth grade students would have got that right (well, some are questionable) but, you would expect any college student to be familiar enough with tech to get that.