Rhodes Scholar who claimed she grew up poor and in foster care loses her scholarship after officials learned she grew up in a middle-class family

A Rhodes Scholar who won a coveted scholarship at Oxford after claiming she overcame childhood abuse and grew up in foster care has been accused of lying to officials and is in fact the daughter of a radiologist who went to private school.

Mackenzie Fierceton, 24, describes herself as a ‘queer, first generation, low income’ student at The University of Pennsylvania. In 2020, she was given a scholarship to go to Oxford after dazzling the Rhodes Trust with her story of how she overcame welfare, an abusive mother and the foster care system.