<p>So I was planning on writing my college essay about my experience with rowing in high school.
Basically I described how nonathletic I was going into rowing, and the essay builds up to how I
had a chance to seat race for the lightweight varsity boat my junior year but I lost and what I learned
from that and so on. </p>
<p>What I left out of my essay was that I was actually in pretty good shape going into high school, having
been on a competitive swim team for many years. Also, I awkwardly made the lightweight varsity boat
my sophomore year, although it is true that there was far less competition. </p>
<p>What do you guys think? Is it ethical that I exaggerated my unathleticism and casually left out the fact
that I had made lightweight varsity before?</p>
<p>You can straight up lie in your essay. They don’t check. An essay is meant to highlight your writing style and ability to make an argument, not to brag about your accomplishments.</p>
<p>@asukumar You cannot lie in your essay. Please don’t say that! If you lie, and they find out, they can rescind your admissions. However, omission is not a lie on the essay, at least not IMHO. Lying on an essay would be talking about being talking about how you did make varsity junior year, when you didn’t.</p>
<p>Yeah, I disagree with @asukumar. While highlighting your abilities and style in writing is important, making an argument has nothing to do with it. What I’ve heard time and time again from admissions officers at all kinds of colleges is that your essay is used primarily as a place to hear what you value and ho you see the world.</p>
<p>While lying on a college app is completely unethical, I don’t think you’re lying either. I’d be a bit more hesitant if you were saying that you were MORE athletic than you actually are, but since you’re portraying you abilities as being lesser for the purpose of this essay, I think you’re fine. :)</p>
<p>Obviously you SHOULD not lie if you have any self respect, but I’m saying you CAN. I have never heard of a college rescind an offer of admission based on inaccuracies in the essay. These officers receive thousands of essays, do you think they will check each and every essay? Of course not.</p>
<p>Leaving out the sophomore thing is the kind of move a lot of writers will make. As to the truth about your physical condition, that’s a bit subjective. So again, not worth worrying about.</p>
<p>It would cross the line if you never went out for rowing at all.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Leaving out some details (irrelevant or even potentially relevant but outside the scope of what you are trying to say).</p></li>
<li><p>Combining characters. Say two people had an enormous influence on you It’s perfectly OK to combine their characteristics in one character in your story.</p></li>
<li><p>Rearranging the time line a bit. You don’t have to report real incidents in the exact order in which they occur. Assuming all is truthful, but it makes your narrative better/clearer to describe one before describing the other, that’s OK. For example, let’s say you took two trips to Haiti and learned something different on each trip. It’s fine to describe a single trip where you learned both things.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I could come up with other examples, but the point is that you are telling the TRUTH, but telling it in a way that make an interesting essay.</p>
<p>One essay talked about a school Earth Sciences field trip into a cave, and how the author - right into a very tight passage - had her light go out, plunging her into total darkness. That actually happened to the student at that very spot in that cave, but it wasn’t on that particular trip she was describing; it was another trip to that cave. But other things that happened on the first school trip were the subject of the essay, so she combined the two trips into one story. Cheating? I think not. It was all true, but so much easier to write about as one trip.</p>