<p>A very close friend of mine made up a lot of things on their resume.
They said they had leadership positions in several clubs, working many hours a week when that simply is not true.
They even put down that they were involved in clubs at school that don't even exist anymore.
I would say about 50% of the resume was false.
I don't know how to approach them about this because I think I'm afraid of embarrassing them.
But they're applying to many big name schools (Ivy and Ivy competing) and it's just downright dishonest, however I can't control their actions.
Advice?</p>
<p>Don’t accuse them of anything, just casually mention how you just heard that if schools ever find out your applications contains falsehoods, they can rescind your admission, force you to withdraw from school even after you’re there, or even revoke your degree, even years after you graduate.</p>
<p>Choose better friends? </p>
<p>If this is true, this kid won’t fool anyone. Really. The admissions people know what they’re doing. You can be sure they will know when the clubs are made up, and when a student claims to have worked more hours than he possibly could have. They may not know all the specifics, but will have enough of a general picture to be able to tell when someone is untruthful. A very rare few get away with this sort of thing. Don’t worry about competing with this kid. Just write your applications truthfully.</p>
<p>Tell your counselor because thats unfair</p>
<p>@Massmomm Well, some of the clubs put on the resume were once in existence but have died in the past few years. And you’re right. It’s very obvious that the events are exaggerated. If you saw it you would question it too, the hours per week add up to around 75-80. That’s not including school…</p>
Okay so, this person allegedly works 80+ hours outside of school doing things for school clubs and volunteer work. However, from what I’ve heard, their college essays aren’t centered on extracurrics. Will this be a red flag to admissions? That someone who spends a majority of their life doing a number of activities has nothing to say about it when asked to write open-ended essays?
A bunch of school level clubs probably won’t help gain admission to a super-selective college anyway. The bigger achievements that are more likely to be noticed (e.g. state or national championship in something) also tend to be the more verifiable achievements.
I appreciate the OP’s concern – and I actually think that MrMom’s reply was fairly good, and fromtexas’ is also appropriate. However, these contradictions (resume vs. real life) are often a sign that the student will not do well either on college essays or in interviews. I have a student right now who can ONLY talk (only wants to talk) about his so-called accomplishments. They include “staring companies” (translation, a website that sells one product, and business is slow), and they include mere student projects completed at a couple of pre-college programs (at big-name private colleges). In addition, for one of his leadership positions, he listed himself as the “founder” of something, when in fact I personally know the founder, and since she founded the activity, many student successors have claimed the title for themselves. (She is now in college.) I challenged him on the claim, so he changed it. That would be similar to what a school’s college counselor would also be in a position to do.
But back to the more important point, I think: This is often a desperation response to hyper-awareness of the competition for colleges already far too reachy for the student. The desperation is magnified by any parental pressure to be admitted to one or more “highly-ranked” private colleges, when the student knows deep-down he doesn’t really have what it takes, academically, for acceptance. (I don’t mean that the student has poor or failing grades, merely that he or she is an excellent student but hardly what the Elites consider outstanding or exceptional on a number of measures of intellect and potential.) To a person, every student I’ve had who pads his or her resume is truly obsessed and equally anxious about admission to a college above his or her readiness. It’s called compensation.
Equally or more importantly, every student of mine who has done this struggles with (a) understanding the college essay prompts, including the supplementals, (b) responding only to the prompt, which never is, “Tell us once again, for the umpteenth time, why you’re such a fantastic person and how much the world should be impressed by your ACTIVITIES.” Same for the interview. When I asked one such student some mock interview questions, he launched into another list of his own activities instead of answering the question. I had to caution him to exercise self-control about this, but I’m not entirely sure he did so during his actual interview.
Also, some interviewers (those from Harvard and Yale have been known to do this, but other colleges have as well) will spend the entire interview only on e.c.'s, partly with the apparent intent to verify just how “grand” these activities really are and what was really accomplished, or not. That will help make transparent the scope, level, and positions involved.
(Yes, many of the privates are now including in their prompts the extracurricular prompt of previous years which the Common App has since deleted: “Discuss one e.c. and its significance.” But that prompt is not a request for a list, either.)