In New Jersey, a 29-year-old woman has been detained on suspicion of pretending to be a high school student.
Police have charged the woman, Hyejeong Shin, with enrolling in New Brunswick High School using a false identification.
Before teachers learned her age, Ms. Shin had been a student at the school for four days.
Police are looking into the situation, according to school officials, and the district’s enrollment procedure will be examined.
The matter was brought up at a local education board meeting on Tuesday, when Superintendent of the New Brunswick Public School District Aubrey Johnson informed the audience that Ms. Shin had been discovered at the institution.
The matter was brought up at a local education board meeting on Tuesday, when Superintendent of the New Brunswick Public School District Aubrey Johnson informed the audience that Ms. Shin had been discovered at the institution.
“Last week, by filing some false documents, an adult female posing as a student was able to be enrolled in our high school,” Mr Johnson said.
He added that she had been in a few classes and spent some time with guidance counselors, who tried to find out more information about her.
Ms Shin’s false age was then uncovered, Mr Johnson said, and the school immediately notified police.
She has since been arrested for providing a false birth certificate “with the intent to enroll as a juvenile high-school student,” the New Brunswick Police Department has said.
Students said the woman had texted some of them, asking them to hang out.
One told CBS New York that the girls “never showed up, and she [Ms Shin] started acting weird with them”.
New Jersey state law allows students to be enrolled in school even without a guardian or without all the required paperwork, police said.
This is not the first time an adult has been caught posing as a high school student.
A man named Brian MacKinnon posed as a fifth-year student in a high school near Glasgow in 1993 when he was 30 years old. He claimed to be a 17-year-old from Canada.
MacKinnon remained enrolled at the school for a whole year. He was exposed a year later when he was a student at Dundee University’s medical school, after a newspaper reported on his real identity.
His story drew worldwide attention and was the subject of a 2022 documentary film.