Don’t worry about what other people do, or what liars claim “other people do.”
Worry about your own self respect.
Apply as YOU, not as some packaged, artificial version of you. Apply as the YOU that your teachers love, that your guidance counselor is happy to work with, that your parents are so proud of.
And reconsider friends who lie. If she’ll lie to them, wonder how often she’s lied to you, under the guise that “everyone does it.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if the students transcript had all the verified student involvement at the school. I know it would create a lot more work for the guidance counselors but even if they didn’t actually check, the kids would be less apt to embellish for fear of being caught. All the clubs would have to submit a roster which could be uploaded to a program. If it was an annual club, it could be uploaded a few times during the year making participation mandatory to get credit. Just a passing thought…
A lot of time the guidance counselor will mention activities in a letter of recommendation. If there are inconsistencies like only 2 year swimming and not 4, if club participation is mentioned but no pres or VP the school can notice. They can reject for that. They might get applications from 2 candidates at that school who both claim VP of that club. They can pick up the phone and clarify about that and they do call when they find someone they are interested in but things don’t add up. When you get caught on something like this they aren’t always going to say something they are just going to reject you.
Thing is, you can be sure the college does not want to accept a student like that. They will have no way to trust anything else they say. They don’t want to risk students who might have problems with academic dishonesty. Your friend might have flown under the radar but don’t risk it. You should be very careful to be accurate and that is indeed what most people do.
I definitely agree with those that say don’t exaggerate because it is wrong and also because it can come back to bite you. But I also think that people think some of this EC stuff matters more than it really does. In the OP’s example, the friend apparently exaggerated how many years she did swimming. Well, she’s either good enough to be a recruited athlete or she isn’t. If she isn’t, then I don’t think the difference between 2 and 4 years of swimming is going to make a significant difference to most colleges. The other example was saying you’re vice president of a club when you aren’t really. Again that’s definitely wrong. But I think adcoms have seen it all and probably look at applications with a bit of a skeptical eye. I’ll bet they attach more weight to something that’s verifiable and substantiated like something that is mentioned in your teacher or GC recommendation letter or perhaps by an achievement award. On the other hand, if you claim to have 500 communitiy service hours but your GC and teachers never mention it and there’s nothing else in your application to substantiate it, then I think that it won’t carry that much weight. Now if she lied to obtain some sort of leadership or community service award, and then used the award to substantiate her EC claims, I would think that was even worse. And claiming to be vice president of a club with nothing else isn’t that impressive either. True leadership would involve actually accomplishing something as vice president.
Plagiarism, cheating, having someone write your college essay for you, lying on college applications, job applications etc. It’s maddening. How about (in my area of the country a number of years ago) the HS Principal who plagiarized word for word, a former student’s graduation speech and passed it off as his own for his graduation address to the graduating class.
Why can’t we all just be ourselves? Do we really feel that we are that inadequate?!
The truth will set you free.
Wisdom to live by.