<p>On my SAT Essay, I was rather desperate for a thing to write about in my 3rd paragraph, so I panicked and made something up.
Unlike the "they won't know" lies I always hear about, I pretended to be a second generation hispanic immigrant that had forgotten his native Spanish and was despaired at the loss of his culture from his life. In reality, a college will easily see that I am a Costa Rican resident (though I am a citizen), speak perfect Spanish, and come from a family that has never emigrated from Central America.
I am terrified that colleges will think this lie dishonest if they bother reading my essay. How bad would it be if they caught my essay lies? In particular, would pretending to be an immigrant (persecuted group and yadayada, though I actually am hispanic) be considered insensitive and outrage colleges? Or will it simply be "yeah he couldn't think of anything for that paragraph that topic was hard to address anyways"?</p>
<p>For clarification, yes I am worried about top institutions and not low-level colleges, so they are likelier to bother reading my essay. </p>
<p>By the way, I have a couple of days to cancel my scores. If this is really bad I would appreciate advice telling me do or don’t, especially from someone who has screened applicants before. I plan to take the test again either way, too.</p>
<p>I’m almost certain that the only purpose of the SAT essay is to show that you know how to write. I took an SAT class and the instructor said that you could make anything up as long as you somehow tie it in to the prompt.</p>
<p>Hi @Costanza7373, When it comes to the SAT Essay, college admissions officers don’t have to time or energy to call CollegeBoard for back copies of your essay. When I took the SAT way back in 2010 I forgot the name of an abolitionist I was using as a historical example for an analytic question. Completely froze up, it was early Saturday morning, there was a family emergency that entire week and I was sick, so I just plugged in the name of an obscure character from a Hitchcock film (which probably tells a lot about me haha). I remember feeling uneasy about it. @teenbodybuilder is right about this one, the test scorers are just reading to gauge your writing ability, which is an important skill for college readiness.</p>
<p>That said, when it comes to the Common App essay you will eventually write and for all other application responses, it’s probably an obvious duh, please be 100% honest. At most for the app, omit things that will hurt your chances. But integrity pretty much applies in all facets of life and as a bonus you don’t get tired remembering the order of all the dangled webs. But in this situation you’ll be fine @Costanza7373! Good luck in your college process, keep that GPA up, watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” at least once a year and don’t stress :-D</p>
<p>Colleges have access to the essay but I doubt it is read often. However, it could be read, and in that case it would look very strange and your integrity would be in question. This to me is quite different than just making up a random fact to support an argument. I find it bizarre that it even occurred to you to go in this direction. (It also seems odd that it would be on topic to put in this sort of personal story in the SAT essay.).So just take a lesson from it. You would not want your personal essay for your application to be in question.</p>
<p>Also you are not likely to get advice from ‘people who have screen applications before’ here. Some admissions officers do post in individual college forums but they stick to answering questions about their colleges.</p>
According to this recent article in Slate, the average essay is read in 3 minutes but bonus money is given to readers who can do it in 2 minutes…and there is zero fact check. <a href=“