One ofOlivia Jade‘s former classmates, YouTube lifestyle and beauty bloggerHarlow Brooks, got candid about their high school environment days after news ofthe college admissions scandal broke.
Once Brooks learned that Olivia’s mom, actressLori Loughlin, and her husband, designer Mossimo Giannulli, allegedly paid $500,000 to make itappear that their daughters had been rowersso they could get into USC on an athletic scholarship, the blogger decided to describe her experience and offer insight onwhat high school life was like for Oliviaand her older sister, Isabella Rose Giannulli.
“When this whole cheating scandal came out, I’m not going to say I was surprised because we are in that world,” Brooks began, adding that she was going to “share a little bit of my tea.”
UPDATE: In asecond video, Brooks revealed she only attended Olivia’s school for a week, and left because it wasn’t “a good fit” for her.
“Then I remember hearing later that Olivia had also gotten into USC and I was like, Whoa, that’s kind of crazy because USC is very extremely hard to get into. So not only one sister, but both of them,” Brooks added.
Brooks went on to open up about the high-pressure environment students faced at the high school to get into the best colleges in the country.
“There’s a network of five to seven or so private schools in Los Angeles that are $30,000 to $45,000 in tuition every year. The work is literally harder than college. It is insane what these students go through to go to these schools because their parents think that they need to. They want them to go to Yale and Harvard and USC,” Brooks said.
From left: Olivia Jade Giannulli, Lori Loughlin and Isabella Rose Giannulli.Gabriel Olsen/Getty
While she still attended the high school, Brooks said she found the curriculum intense, so she wondered how Olivia had the bandwidth to run a popular YouTube channel on top of all the classwork.
“I would have to get up at 6 a.m. every morning and I would leave school at 4 p.m. and then I would have six hours of homework,” Brooks, who had a class with Olivia and often saw her in the hallways, said. “It made me think, ‘How is she doing this?'”
“How does she travel for YouTube? How does she have time to make YouTube videos? An arrangement with the school or something?” she wondered. “It just didn’t make sense to me. These schools, your life is literally, 100 percent school.”
Isabella Giannulli/Instagram
Olivia herselfjoked that she was “never at school” in a videoshe posted on her YouTube channel nearly a year before her parents were charged in thealleged college admissions cheating scam.
In the9-minute clip from May 2018, the social influencer documented her last day of high school and her class’ senior prank. Ahead of her day, Olivia got ready in the bathroom where she revealed that attending class hadn’t been a top priority for her. “I’m, like, excited to go… do the school prank,” she said. “But I’m also literally never at school that I think my class doesn’t even — and maybe they forget I go there!”
She then let out a laugh and clarified, “I’m just kidding!”
The teen also faced backlash last year when she posted a video in which she said she wasonly interested in attending college for the parties. While answering fan questions, Olivia said she wasn’t sure how she planned to balance her social media career while taking classes as a freshman at the University of Southern California.
Ollvia Jade, Lori Loughlin.Steve Granitz/WireImage
“I don’t know how much of school I’m gonna attend but I’m gonna go in and talk to my deans and everyone, and hope that I can try and balance it all,” she said. “But I do want the experience of like game days, partying…I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.”
“I said something super ignorant and stupid, basically. And it totally came across that I’m ungrateful for college — I’m going to a really nice school. And it just kind of made it seem like I don’t care, I just want to brush it off. I’m just gonna be successful at YouTube and not have to worry about school,” she said in the video. “I’m really disappointed in myself.”
Her mother Loughlin and father Giannulli are among dozens charged in an alleged college admissions scam involving elite colleges and universities including Yale, Georgetown, the University of Southern California and Stanford.
Both Loughlin and Giannulli were arrested this week on a felony charge of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. Giannulli appeared in federal court on Tuesday and was released after posting a $1 million bond. Loughlin made her first appearance in federal court on Wednesday in Los Angeles where ajudge set her bond at $1 million, according to theAssociated Press.
It’s unclear if Olivia was aware of the alleged scheme, and she was not charged. Her older sister, Isabella Rose, 20, is also enrolled at USC and was not charged.
source: people.com
