American student who lied to get into Cambridge says she did it because she ‘f***king likes chic’

An American influencer who made her way to Cambridge University said she did it because she loves the idea of ​​”fancy.”

Virginia native Caroline Calloway, now 31, has been dubbed the ‘Gatsby of Cambridge’ after it was revealed that she tricked the prestigious university into giving her a diploma place in 2013 after lying about her qualifications on her application form.

In a new interview with the TelegraphCalloway, who regularly documented her life on social media while studying art history at St. Edmund’s College, she said she faked her application because she “f***ing likes chic” and wanted to experience the eccentricities of upper-class English life.

In 2015, thanks to her ever-expanding Instagram followers accumulating posts about her life in Cambridge, she received a book advance in a $500,000 deal to tell her life story — but failed to deliver it, putting fans off . that the premise of the book was ‘sexist’.

In 2019, a former girlfriend, Natalie Beach, published an op-ed in The Cut claiming she was responsible for the Calloway’s success and had been the person behind her famous Instagram captions — and the influencer’s life quickly unraveled.

Speaking to journalist Celia Walden from her inherited apartment in Tampa, Florida, she said she has now repaid the original advance in full and eventually wrote a self-published memoir — called Scammer — about her time at the British university, in which she said she’s ‘f***ing batshit insane’ not ’embracing’ her story.

She told Walden that she had found it impossible to resist the temptation of high society in England, saying, “I just love everything about Oxbridge and posh country houses.” I wish I was attracted to something more chic and socially acceptable, but the fact is, I fucking love chic!’

Her picturesque photos of life in Cambridge, which were part of a blog she started in 2012 about the experiences of an American university student, attracted thousands of fans.
She told MailOnline when she was a student at St Edmund’s College, “I feel like I’m in Harry Potter, turning up in my robes for dinner in the Great Hall and having wonderful three-course meals.”
She studied at Cambridge from 2013 to 2016 and says she was in the grips of a prescription drug addiction at the time, taking the amphetamine Adderall.
Cambridge University has not commented on Calloway’s admissions about how she achieved her university place, telling MailOnline earlier this year: ‘We cannot comment on individual students, but we take statements like this very seriously.’ In 2019, she hosted a series of “creative workshops” costing $165 per session, but Calloway’s reputation began to falter when she was compared to notorious Fyre Festival scam artist Billy McFarland after the expensive workshops she hosted failed to live up to expectations. complied.
The following year, The Guardian reported that Miss Calloway had refunded disappointed clients.
The influencer, who says she now takes eight anti-depressants and anti-anxiety tablets a day, saw her lies exposed by Beach around the same time her father committed suicide.

Although Miss Calloway defended herself in TV interviews and through her Instagram account, the controversy eventually caused her to withdraw from social media and delete her Instagram posts.

However, before wiping her account clean, she revealed in a lengthy post that she earned most of the money she owed her publisher through an OnlyFans account.

After being black on Instagram for several years, she revived her account four weeks ago to reveal the cover of her new book, Scammer.

She captioned the book’s photo: “Babe wake up, the new manic pixie dream book is coming out in mid-May.”