What I would have included on my application to Osgoode, had I known you were permitted to make things up

By: Will McNair · December 16, 2008 · Filed Under Ethics, Humour, Law School · 5 Comments

This site’s readership will be all too familiar with the rigorous process of applying to Canadian law schools, starting with the LSAT and ending (it is to be presumed) with a vetting of one’s academic and professional credentials against those of one’s fellow candidates. The most deserving students receive early confirmation of acceptance to their first-choice schools. For the rest of us, months may pass before a position is secured; unease turns to anxiety turns to panic, until we would accept an invitation to the Novgorod School of Law just to return some certainty to our lives.

But fear not, would-be law school freshmen, for there is an easier way! Third year (former) LLB candidate Quami Frederick has the secret to a stress-free application process: fabricating a significant element of your application. As previously reported here, Frederick’s artificial B.Sc. in Business Administration opened the door to Osgoode Hall and might have launched a stellar legal career, but for the investigative journalism of the Toronto Star.

I, for one, would have welcomed this alternative in late July 2007, when I was losing hope of being accepted anywhere, and was considering making a career of my summer job at the Maple Leaf Foods chicken slaughterhouse. Had I known then what I know now, my application might have looked very different:

graduated magna cum laude from the Bill Clinton President School (TM)
holds two simultaneous parliamentary seats, for Calgary Southwest and Laurier Sainte-Marie
in 2005, Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C. called me “the son [she] never had”
has two thousand Facebook friends
prepared to bequeath a substantial personal fortune to the first law school to accept
Nobel Prize nominee, 2007, for brokering landmark peace agreement between scissors and rock
autobiography The Audacity of Hope was on the New York Times Bestseller list for thirty weeks
middle name is “Osgoode Hall Law School”
can read minds

Post tags: diploma mill, Humour, Quami Frederick

Comments

5 Responses to “What I would have included on my application to Osgoode, had I known you were permitted to make things up”

Omar Ha-Redeye on December 16th, 2008 4:08 pm

As previously reported here, Frederick’s artificial B.Sc. in Business Administration opened the door to Osgoode Hall and might have launched a stellar legal career, but for the investigative journalism of the Toronto Star.

By citing the but-for test, it almost sounds like you’re making out the case for negligence.

But how the Star owed a duty of care to Fredrick and then breached it escapes me.
David Stevenson on December 16th, 2008 5:29 pm

Thankfully ‘but for’ can be freely used in other contexts.
Reader on December 16th, 2008 6:06 pm

…only magna cum laude? If you want to make it in the big leagues (and you’re faking it anyways) then at least go for summa cum laude. Personally, I would have went for egregia cum laude honours. But that’s just me.
Bronson Baxter on December 17th, 2008 6:27 pm

Doesn’t say much for Osgood’s ability to screen applicants.
Omar Ha-Redeye on December 20th, 2008 1:09 am

Thankfully ‘but for’ can be freely used in other contexts.

David, do you mean the whole world doesn’t revolve around the law?

Will, I happen to know for a fact that you do not actually have 2,000 friends on Facebook. But then you knew that I already knew that, hence the telepathy.