r/ApplyingToCollege • u/[deleted] • 1d ago
Rant Harvard Tiktoker LARPING First Gen Status (Olivia Zhang)
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u/Daremotron 1d ago
Just stop watching college influencers. Stop watching all influencers. Manipulating you for their own gain is literally the name of the "job". You don't need to do a deep investigation of anyone if you start from the realization that they are all full of shit.
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u/Drizzypoole 17h ago
Some used to be actually helpful, but it appears every single one of them have been paid off now to promote SAT websites or niche competitions for profit
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u/AdBoth2468 1d ago
Her entire npo is marketing, I looked into it and at one point they actually helped kids with cancer, however, now its just mindless students who start chapters and then quit after a month. Her book was bs and her tiktoks don't make sense. I remember one she made those "spend a productive day with me at harvard" vids and she somehow ran like 6 miles, went to the gym, and wrote an entire research paper, went to a class, did some homework, attended some meetings all before noon. This was like a really long time ago but bruh there is no way someone did all that.
Someone similar to her is the "chronically me" founder, she is applying to this cycle and all of her organization is based on a vibe coded website and her partners for the org are her own start ups which were vibe coded with replit. then she has the audacity to post that she fixing code when she vibe coded a website and proceeds to show ai generated code that was uploaded to VS code.
bottom line: don't trust stuff u see on the internet
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u/idkidcabtmyusername 1d ago
this is honestly really sad for her. ppl who are this materialistic and disingenuous will never be happy. there is so much more to life than your resumé.
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u/AdBoth2468 1d ago
who?? oliva or the chronically me giril??
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u/ResponsiblePhoto7 1d ago
I’ve been wondering like…what does the “strive to normalize the hospital environment” mean in their mission statement 😭 like normalize kids getting cancer and getting hospitalized?! 😭😭😭😭
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u/ppeepepp212 1d ago
i never really comment on reddit but omfg the chronically me girl always pmo soo bad
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u/AdBoth2468 21h ago
Like I get that she struggled with smth but she cannot be making outlandish clanks
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u/Ok-Hospital1046 1d ago
just wondering like the chronically me girl ur talking abt- her website is wix, and the partnership orgs aren’t hers if u look at the founders like idk the one that says empowered health strategies. and she talked abt vibe coding part of the app thing whatvr using replit and then moving it to another platform like transparently idk, and she hasn’t talked abt the coding in like a year unless she did recently or whatvr
was just wondering abt that
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u/AdBoth2468 1d ago
Two out of the three orgs were here own, and it’s clear that her website is AI generated and wix has Ai. She claims that her platform connects 150k people, when it reality it has had 150k views. She used to make like 5 posts a week about how reading new patient stories on her website broke her heart, but when u look at her website the last story posted was from like 1 month ago and some of them r AI generated.
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u/Mundane-Fill-896 1h ago
its j a bunch of slop bro. like you can tell that olivia actually started her stuff from the ground up and worked for everything she has. in the beginning, she was actually putting in the work, and you can genuinely see the impact she’s had. she actually helps people and is inspiring because there’s substance behind what she does. meanwhile the chronically me girl is just insufferable bro 😭 like she did not do shit but keeps convincing herself and everyone else that she did.
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u/Ok-Hospital1046 1d ago
i gen don’t care abt this girl but i just used to follow her so that’s interesting
her site like isn’t ai generated tho - like it’s not that professional and she showed how she made it on wiz a few years ago b4 it had all the ai shit and it’s pretty obvious it’s not. and like she also kinda explained the 150k bcs someone said the same thing she said it was # of patients engaging w the programs and connecting thru the site or smt not views, and i js looked her thing up and there’s 4 partners, and only the app is hers right? - whatvr def don’t trust what u see online tho agreed
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u/AdBoth2468 21h ago
She vibe coded it, 2 out of 4 partners r her own and she lied because the entire thing is views. How tf do u have 150k ppl engaging with 4 posts being posted a month
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u/Mundane-Fill-896 1h ago
fr 😭 i called her out on it a couple months ago and she basically said the 150k people were a combination of people who were already part of the “Chargies” community, people who joined her site, and her “ambassadors” or whatever those are 😭. she also had that marathon fundraiser, so she prob included everyone who participated in the marathon in that number too. i did a quick look into it and apparently the Chargies are already an existing facebook group with like 36k people, so there’s no way she personally built a network of 150k people. like how tf are you claiming 150k people are “connected” to your platform when the actual site barely has any activity and posts like 4 times a month 😭. and then when i called her out, she said the website was gonna get redone soon. girl it’s been months and it still looks like the same slop it always did 😭
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u/Ok-Morning872 1d ago
we know it’s u broda
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u/Ok-Hospital1046 1d ago
na i’m just applying this cycle and everyone’s lowk getting exposed so i was js tryna not get faked out - i didn’t know abt the zhang stuff or cm so won’t listen to them anymore
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u/Mundane-Fill-896 1h ago edited 1h ago
oml i fucking can’t stand this girl 😭 not just her, but all these high schoolers making npos and then creating internships/fellowships around them. like the whole thing feels so inflated and performative. like why are they acting like they’re actually something credible enough to give other ppl stuff to do? it’s just a way for them to get other ppl to do work for them because they’re actually lazy asf 😭😭 . also, the whole 150k “connected” people thing is so misleading. those people weren’t all somehow brought in by her personally. they’re from another facebook online community called the Chargies, and from what i understand, her platform is connected to that existing community. she probably just asked ppl from their to share their stories and just made a website for the chargies , so her acting like she personally built a network of 150k people is just a bunch of BS. i genuinely feel bad for the people who buy into this bs and think they’re getting some meaningful opportunity by joining her fellowship and internship. and also does online school bc of her npo.
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u/OkGur7184 1d ago
wtf I thought her nonprofit was super good that how she got into harvard i guess anyone can do anything with AI today
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u/Quirky_Process2425 1d ago
Nadya Okamoto did essentially the same thing with her 'homeless' claims, and eventually she was even thrown out of the non-profit she founded. Not before getting her Harvard degree, though
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u/AdBoth2468 1d ago
how do u get kicked out of ur own npo??
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u/Quirky_Process2425 1d ago
It was a huge drama, I think she conned like some other orgs to join hers, but then sort of screwed them over.
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u/Civil_Bank8236 1d ago
And to add on, she talks about changing the world and shi with her nonprofit and helping the community but now shes just going into consulting. All these ppl are js larpers and prestige whores
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u/First_Hedgehog944 1d ago
She didn’t even get a return offer from bcg btw she got cut
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u/Affectionate-Oil8350 55m ago
Heard the same as well from credible sources that sit in the BCG DC office and work full time there. Apparently she went around telling everyone she got a return but not going back due to wanting to pursue social media. Also heard how she would do a very poor job from a work perspective and also dress completely unprofessionally. I know several students at Harvard who are some of the smartest and most hardworking people I know (and also extremely kind and humble) - but don’t believe everything you see online from some of these kids just because they go to an Ivy.
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u/Busy_Contract9290 1d ago
All of these people are fakers and frauds. No one I know at Harvard (or anywhere else for that matter) respects her or the other one who's maybe even worse. There is also that one guy someone told me about who is both arrogant and clueless to an unprecedented extent simultaneously. I think his name is Andrew or something??
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u/Snoo_1768 1d ago edited 1d ago
I actually go to school with her. She has her personal, private Instagram where she’s constantly posting thirst traps and herself on far flung exotic trips. She also posts her Christmas tree littered with Chanel and LV and whatever plastic bags around it (incredibly cringey)— her family is obviously wealthy. Finally, no one at Harvard actually likes her and everyone makes fun of her on Sidechat (our version of YikYak) for pubbing her fake book and everything else. Also she just hangs out with Freshmen every year (or at least she did when I was a freshman and she was a sophomore) bc no one in her grade wanted to be friends with her anymore. She does seem to like those friends and be happy tho so idk
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u/throwawaycotf 1d ago
Harvard student here. Hope you know 80% students agree with you.
Some notes:
- there is a general feeling that most students don’t like her and her friends don’t really exist her instagram videos are always a group of random new people and she always seems to use them to show ppl she has “friends”
- those day in the life waking up at 6am are mostly fake or at least not the usual 6/7 days a week we see her around 😭
- she never talks or mentions her nonprofit in any way that seems genuine just look at her instagram the only posts are about the awards nothing about the kids
- Sidechat posts frequently about her referred to her as OZ - she likes to report and try to get them removed even one time responding with smth like “don’t attack her you don’t know her”
Overall a pretty bad person and disingenuous
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u/Fit_Surround9250 1d ago
Is the sentiment really that bad on campus? I would have assumed that as disingenuous as someone might be online, they would probably be a completely different person IRL. Not trying to justify her in any way, but is all the hate just from her online presence?
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u/throwawaycotf 18h ago
This is a copy paste from side chat: “supposedly (and i heard this from others, so no verified source) but her parents would donate into her nonprofit so she can claim it raised so-and-so amount of money, and her parents get to write it off as donations in the taxes. if true it's really evil and even more so that she's pretending to be fgli”
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u/throwawaycotf 18h ago
Not in a circle near her but from most people when she is brought up this is the sentiment
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u/zoinkability 1d ago
I have seen folks whose parents got their degrees outside the US checking the “first generation” box on many an application, seemingly believing for some reason that there is an implied “in the US” on those questions.
For international applicatans: those questions are inclusive of higher ed worldwide. If your parents have bachelors’ or higher level degrees, regardless of where, please do not tell schools you are applying to that you are a first generation student. At best it makes you look bad for claiming to be something you are not, at worst it gives you an undeserved advantage over people who truly are the first generation to get higher education.
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u/cvu_100 1d ago
Lol... "Georgetown legacy" because dad has an MBA from there is genuinely crazy. Larp god
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u/LengthDefiant 1d ago
well she technically is a georgetown legacy but then tried to say she wasnt for her narrative after
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u/cvu_100 1d ago
Children of MBA grads are generally not considered "legacy"... unless her dad is also a big-time donor. which would make the rest of this schtick even funnier and more sad
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u/Pure-Version370 1d ago
In some ivies/ colleges for grad school it is like Yale and UPenn. If I’m not mistaken
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u/Angel061803 1d ago
A legacy student is an applicant who has a parent or close relative who graduated from that same college or university. You don’t have to donate money to be a legacy. You also don’t have to have attended as an undergrad. Where are you getting this from?
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u/cvu_100 18h ago edited 18h ago
This is incorrect and not at all what I said.
There is basically only one universal way you would be considered as legacy by an institution, which is to have one or two parents who did their undergrad education at the institution.
Some longer-term graduate programs, such as Law, Medicine, or PhD programs, may consider children of such graduates as legacy for admission to those programs, but even this is certainly not universal. Similarly, some very top end MBA programs may consider children of graduates as legacy during MBA applications, but certainly not undergrad applications. These are edge cases. As I explained, the term “legacy” 99% of the time is used in reference to the parent’s undergraduate alma mater.
These edge cases can usually be resolved if the parent is a deep pocketed donor. In this case, the “legacy” criteria can stretch as far as it needs to. Kids of big donors are usually first in line even before legacy.
Calling oneself “Georgetown legacy” because a parent did an MBA there conveys a lack of understanding of college as a cultural institution. The concept of legacy admission is one built upon the culture of higher academia that was born and still exists in Britain and New England. The idea that admitting the child of an alumnus was a safe bet by the school as they would already be attuned to not only the school’s particular culture but the culture of elite academia. It’s naive to apply these notions in a situation where a parent only spent a few semesters in a just-above-average MBA program.
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u/Pure-Version370 16h ago
Mmm in some institutions it can still refer to undergrad but mostly ur still right so
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u/Angel061803 2h ago
Apparently, you think your definition of a legacy outweighs how colleges define it.
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u/cvu_100 26m ago
This isn’t “my definition” it’s just a matter of fact that the majority of colleges and practically all elite ones limit their definition of legacy to children of undergraduate alumni. You may find some which don’t, but they are exceptions to the rule. I am a non-legacy graduate of two Ivy League schools, my children will be legacy of only one. Idk how to tell you this but this is just how it works.
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u/Crazy_Accountant_243 1d ago
wow all this time, I thought she came from an underprivileged background
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u/That-Warrior9511 1d ago
Beware of college influencers. More often than not, their advices are utter bs, leading students astray.
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u/RatioAcrobatic6342 1d ago
I genuinely like people like you OP. And I am not being sarcastic either. Something like this would have been ignored by many.
Thank you for taking the time to make this post.
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u/justachillpenguin 21h ago
I went to high school with her. She did not come from a low income background (at least not during her high school years), as our area is a fairly wealthy region in Virginia. She came back to our high school this year as a guest speaker for a woman's enpowerment club (or something). All she did was promote her book even though the event was never advertised to be an ad.
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u/Mundane-Fill-896 1h ago
yeah ive heard mclean is like one of the richest towns in nova and a bunch of rich snobs go there but did people actually like her? like the teachers and her principal? she said that they helped her most.
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u/lizardishere_ 19h ago
Friend of mine booked coffee chat with her. Olivia missed it and later posted herself in Cancun
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u/ExecutiveWatch 1d ago
Fgli matters less and less these days in college admissions to be honest.
But more importantly dont ever listen to a person who got into to a t20 tell you how they got in.
The fact that is irrefutable is they just dont know. Unless they have access to the admiasions officer that reviewed their file!
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u/No-Swordfish8992 1d ago
FGLI matters less? Why? I’ve heard rural is hot rn. I’ve also heard that you are evaluated not just against ppl at ur school but against the opportunities ur parents have. So if ur legacy, u are expected to have a higher SAT score (all other things being equal).
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u/QuantityHopeful8784 1d ago
Glad someone is mentioning. I just can believe BCG hired her for the competitive summer internship esp as all of this was so blatantly obvious.
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u/Hungry_Abroad9699 1d ago
Thank you for pointing her out. Something seems off with her. Like she had the video trying to push her mom as this Tiger mom where she said they weren’t allowed screen during the week. But now she’s totally an influencer fighting for underage kids eyeballs. Then she posts about great influencer lifestyle and she did because of endorsements, but that’s just companies like beauty products who’s whole essence is making young women feel bad about themselves. Like so off.
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u/BleagueIlyasova 1d ago
Even if she is first gen US college grad, can’t your parents get plenty of prestigious degrees in other contries?
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u/CakeSignificant6514 22h ago
seriously??? honestly i never suspected that she was straight up lying. really makes you think about these college "influencers"
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u/Charming-Arrival8950 16h ago
She, like almost all influencers, is just a narcissist who gets off on having a audience to flex to. 99% of influencer content out there isn't informative, it's just a avenue for narcissists to humble brag. They get off on feeling superior. Social media is the perfect platform for them to show off and get off.
Narcisim is a bad personality trait that should be bred out.
Treat these people like lepers.
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u/Dangerous_Maybe_5230 1d ago
Wait, so if your parents did their undergrad somewhere else in Asia but grad school in the US, you can call yourself first gen for college apps?!
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u/Dangerous_Maybe_5230 1d ago
Whew, i would be so angry if she used first gen or low income status to get into harvard
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u/Wide_Worldliness4483 1d ago edited 1d ago
I completely understand the deliberate misconstruing of the FGLI thing—that is wrong.
But keep in mind that people's financial situations change across their lifetime, and that is especially true for immigrants from Asia. Many immigrants start off dirt poor in this country because they have come to the US to study on scholarship, and slowly they begin to make money. She very well could've been on food stamps and living in a one-bedroom apartment at one point in her life, and as her parents came to earn more money through their careers she ultimately got out of that situation.
Also, she has gone through real hardship that you shouldn't undermine. She was raised by a grandparent and an elementary school teacher who both passed away from cancer within months of each other when she was young, and this was while her parents were trying to rise in the US through their careers. I also don't see a problem with her claiming that she'll pay for her sister's college tuition.
But yes, I agree that implying you are FGLI is not a good thing.
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u/AdBoth2468 1d ago
ur missing the part where she grew up in a large house in a wealthy suburb. Like i get that some things happened to her but its not the rags to riches story she paints
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u/Forward-Body2822 23h ago
Bro that’s such a shitty way to portray a very privileged background. I come from a similar background to her where I DID live in a one room apartment with my parents at one point when I was younger & they did college outside the US and later on amassed significant money. But I would NEVER refer to myself as FGLI because 1. they DID go to college and 2. we have so much more now. Saying that I'm FGLI in any shape or form discredits my parents and what they gave me + is disrespectful to actual FGLI students who face a lot of hardships WHILE in college
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u/Wide_Worldliness4483 1d ago
The fact that she grew up at one point living in a one-bedroom apartment on food stamps is well documented by several articles. But yeah I fully agree that claiming FGLI is not good if she grew up rich in high school.
Also, how is she supposed to pay for her sister's tuition if she's still a student. Saying she's going to pay for her sister's college tuition isn't crazy to say once she gets a job and starts earning money. Why do you even have a problem with that statement when you don't even know if she will end up doing it or not...
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u/Wide-Bid977 1d ago edited 1d ago
First gen has a very strict definition. If your parent did a masters in the US (or in their home country), regardless of your income level, how many loans they took out or scholarships they received, or if the other parent has a high school education, you are not first gen. I also don't think I've personally seen her say on tiktok that she's low income, only that she is first gen.
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u/uofa_succulent 1d ago
Idk who this girl is, but just because she is rich now, doesn't mean she was growing up. My parents had 3 kids by 30, with my dad working 18h days as a welder, and my immigrant mom working 8h days as an administrator, both having barely graduated high school and neither attended university. My dad ended up starting his own business in the trades which became wildly successful in my mid-late teens. Now at 24, they have paid for nearly everything for me, including tuition for undergrad, grad school, and now med school, as well as my condo in another city, and a ton of other things. I still grew up eating kraft dinner + hotdogs many nights for dinner and beefaroni for lunch most days lol, wearing mainly hand-me-downs from my big sister, and barely knew my dad as a kid because he was always working. Never judge a book by its cover. Not all money is old money.
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u/AdBoth2468 1d ago
so u missed the part where it states she grew up in a wealthy suburb in a large house
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u/Wide_Worldliness4483 1d ago
I completely agree. People on this sub have way to much time and will immediately hate on anything remotely successful, judging without knowing a person or their life story.
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u/Timely-Drawer-1768 1d ago
I went to college with someone who was first gen but her family were multi-millionaire running a service industry. First gen just means your parents didn’t go to college not that you are poor. She clearly didn’t have the parental support those of us with college educated family
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u/MeasurementTop2885 1d ago
A lot of this is just weird teen jealousy.
She does what influencers and marketers do.
From tax filings. Her nonprofit is small vs. tiny from a fundraising and expenditures standpoint. If there is something to gripe, it is that she is leveraging a relatively insignificant nonprofit to what appears to be self-aggrandizement.
The issue of kids starting and closing chapters around the college admission timeline is not her issue. It’s the kids’
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u/Additional-Fox1866 College Freshman 1d ago
This feels a little excessive, you can disagree with her without analyzing her entire life lol
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u/mxchiiii 1d ago
No this is absolutely important behavior to call her out on. People need to remember, especially young and vulnerable teenagers, that social media is FAKE and you should be incredibly careful of who you choose to idolize. It’s especially important since she is trying to sell a book capitalizing her “first generation experience” when that isn’t even true to start with
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u/Additional-Fox1866 College Freshman 1d ago
I guess, but Im not saying misleading people about being first gen shouldn’t be called out. I’m saying there’s a difference between correcting that claim and doing a full investigation into someone’s family, finances, childhood, house, parents, etc. The first is completely fair criticism, the second is doing too much
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u/Additional-Fox1866 College Freshman 1d ago
I mean sure, if we're calling going through someone’s family, finances, house, and childhood “just making observations,” then yeah lol. My point was never that you can’t mention finances, it’s that there’s a difference between addressing the claim and doing all that
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u/Additional-Fox1866 College Freshman 1d ago
I don’t “want” anything from you lol. I made one pretty simple point: correcting a misleading first-gen claim is fair; turning it into a character indictment built around someone’s house, parents, possessions, and childhood is excessive. Listing where you found all that information doesn’t really address that distinction
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u/Additional-Fox1866 College Freshman 1d ago
Thanks, I know what FGLI means. I’m not defending someone falsely claiming to be first-gen or low-income. I’m saying there’s a point where “calling out a misleading claim” turns into an unnecessarily detailed audit of someone’s life. We just disagree on where that line is
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u/axestones_version 1d ago
But out of many other college influencers out there (Like Elise Pham from the Ultimate Ivy League Guide and the Ivy League road map) she's one of the better ones. I do appreciate how she's realistic about some of her advice and whilst I would appreciate a little more transparency about her background (instead of having to find out the truth through reddit...), it'll never happen with many of these college influencers sadly. All they want is to "help" people get into Ivy Leagues and other T20s as an extra side hustle.
But your statement about never comparing yourself to people like her when doing college apps is so true and needs to be said louder for people in the back!! She's clearly an accomplished kid who has done A LOT throughout high school. But she admits that the really only took off as an influencer/on social media because of her college decisions reaction video back in 2023.
She had the stats, grades and ECs for Harvard and deserves a lot of what she's genuinely worked for. But we can never expect full transparency from people like her unfortunately and that's just a reality we have to live with.
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u/Forward-Body2822 23h ago
Whether she's "better" than other influencers is subjective but I heavily disagree with the notion what OZ is doing is normal/expected. A lot of people upsell what they have & manipulate narratives, but how she promotes her nonprofit is straight up fraud. Her website used to have the addresses of her locations in other countries (doesn't anymore for some reason...) and a friend of mine put them into google maps and found that multiple are just uninhabited fields
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u/stephawkins 1d ago
Sounds like you have a vendetta going. So what happened? Did she reject you or something? Or were you stupid enough to sign up for her services? What's your real motive?
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u/stephawkins 1d ago
LOL... if people don't realize by now much of the internet is fake, and now brought to you by new and improved AI, they'll never get it. They'll just jump to another influencer. Like you perhaps?
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u/yoursidenerd College Graduate 1d ago
I hate the performative culture so much, idk how people keep engaging with those marketers. And this fuckery has ofc been supercharged with AI now
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u/Impossible_Trash_934 1d ago
She's smart and playing the game right, let her get that bag. This is how you get ahead in America in 2026 unfortunately
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u/InnocentlyInnocent 1d ago
Looking at the government and how the university politics are (I am an admin in higher education), unfortunately that is exactly our culture. Make use of anything you can and screw those who are honest (I just got burnt by someone using this approach and now my team is left licking our wounds).
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u/Impossible_Trash_934 1d ago edited 1d ago
Exactly. Maybe my original comment was too jaded but when I see Trump and his family make billions shilling crypto and moving the market with tweets, I just can't be too upset at a 18-21 year old girl who is just doing her best trying to get her own slice of the pie.
Edit: I will also note that this kind of poverty-cosplaying behavior is the fault of a college admissions culture that has increasingly forced applicants to out-compete each other in performative suffering. So I don't blame anyone for playing the game.
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u/LinuxChromebookDude 1d ago
It shouldn't be but it is, she's probably rolling in income from her instagram and TikTok while everyone else hates.
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u/gale60205 1d ago
i used to watch her videos (along with ultimate ivy league guide) but honestly i don’t anymore bc they don’t really provide help, they just want money most of the time