Despite the rumors, Penn State's house won't be quite as full next fall.
A bogus link circulating on the Internet has raised the hopes of some Penn State students by claiming that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen will be attending the university this fall.
The Web site (http://66.111.43.11/reports/2003/WORLD/0194/3838213.html) included a link to a fake CNN.com page. The prank CNN story briefly outlines the twins' reasons for choosing Penn State, such as their desire to get away from Hollywood and the business program offered on campus. The Web site also makes a reference to Beaver Stadium and contains other links to actual CNN.com pages.
Matt Sieloff (freshman-secondary education) got a lot of comments about it after putting the link in his AOL Instant Messenger away message.
"Someone obviously put a lot of time into it," Sieloff said. "I thought it was pretty funny and whoever did the Web site did a really good job."
Other students such as Brian Lorenc (junior-information sciences and technology) noticed the link posted on The Daily Jolt Web site.
"At first it looked believable, but the IP address gave it away," Lorenc said.
Since being posted on The Daily Jolt, the story has sparked wide discussion among students on the site's forum.
When Courtney McDonough (junior-hotel, restaurant and institutional management) saw the link Tuesday night, she also noted the given Web addresses didn't look like the official CNN one, but instead was a string of numbers.
"I thought they were too young to be in college, but when I first heard about it I told people," McDonough said.
Penn State students are not the only ones who were fooled by the site. Students at other schools, such as the University of Maryland, University of Scranton, Syracuse University, University of Florida, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Towson University, University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Rochester Institute Technology, also received links to the Web site, tailored to their school.
A recent article in People Magazine dubbed the Olsen twins as the "World's Richest Kids." Collectively, Mary-Kate and Ashley are worth $76 million dollars.
Born on June 13, 1986, the 16-year-old twins are juniors in high school. Since making their television debut in 1987 on the long-running sitcom Full House, the Olsens have marketed numerous videos, television sitcoms, books, music albums, cosmetics and clothes lines.
Dualstar Entertainment, the company owned by the twins, manages their retail sales. In 2001, according to Fortune Magazine, the company's sales totaled $500 million dollars. In two years, when the twins are 18, they will become co-presidents of the company.
