<p>I don’t know any admissions office that goes through and checks each matriculant, there simply isn’t enough time! But if you do get caught there are consequences. Do you want to be in your junior or senior year of school, have another student who was in one of your clubs mention you and say “OP was a GREAT president. He didn’t join until senior year, but boy did he do a lot there!” Chances of even then, them catching it? Probably low, but if so, do you want to be 100 credit hours in to have your student status rescinded?</p>
<p>As someone has mentioned, you won’t be able to make up anything that both impresses the adcoms AND easily fools them. They are looking for outstanding achievements more than quantity of achievements. And you can’t exactly lie about winning a Nobel Prize now can you?</p>
<p>In case you’re not convinced already…Don’t do it!</p>
<p>Just from a pure risk/reward perspective it isn’t worth doing. The chance that doctoring your list of ECs is going to help your college application enough to turn a rejection into an acceptance is almost zero. The chance that you will get caught is a lot higher.</p>
<p>With good grades, good test scores and a good essay you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Clubs and organizations are not the only activities that count as ECs. What do you do outside the classroom? Maybe you write independently, or volunteer somewhere in your area, or play a musical instrument at home. The bottom line is that an EC does not have to be related to your school. If you’ve done anything productive outside homework, it probably counts as an EC. And having three or four ECs done independently of school, while explaining your situation as you did here, is far, far more favorable than leaving the list empty or fabricating.</p>
<p>That being said, we don’t know where you’re applying. If your schools of choice are ones like Ball State, SUNY - Albany, or LSU, your extracurriculars will take a backseat and be of little to no importance as long as your academics are up to par, as Northstarmom stated. On the other hand, if your list of colleges includes schools such as Harvard and Princeton or the like, your lack of ECs may significantly hurt you. But like I said, an EC doesn’t have to be school related. It can be anything done independently of school.</p>
<p>Jesus Christ guys, whats up with all the hostility?
For God’s sake, I’m not trying to fabricate an outstanding EC record. No president, no honors, no any of that crap. Just a typical member of 2-3 random clubs so I can at least put SOMETHING in the EC section.
I am hardly “cheating”. Like I said before, I’m not pretending to be the president/founder/committed member of Beta Club or whatever. It’s not like just putting “member of Environmental Club for 2 yrs” is going to cheat some poor kid out of acceptance.
I know EC’s aren’t a big deal, but I don’t want my EC section to be absolutely empty. It’s not like I’m expecting for this to make or break an admissions decision.
What was I doing in my spare time? Getting home. It took me close to an hour to get home every day on the bus - time I can promise you I’d rather have spent participating in a club or activity.
I realize that yes, technically it was possible for me to get to and from school in order to participate in EC’s. However, it was wholly unrealistic and wouldn’t have worked out in the long run.
***, I am not trying to get into HYPSM or other extremely competitive schools. Nor am I trying to in any way stand out when it comes to EC’s, just look like I was part of something junior year.
“You’d have to live with it the rest of your life.” ~ I can honestly think of much more horrible things to have to live with besides writing on a college app that I was a member of an HS recycling club for a year when I was not.</p>
<p>Now that I have a license, I am now a member or several clubs which I (try) to go to on a regular basis. I say try because I still don’t have a car, and have to rely on whether or not their is a car available for me to use during the day.</p>
<p>If this is true then why does it make a difference for you to put it on your application? You said that you don’t want the section to be absolutely empty (and it won’t be since you have ECs now…) but if you claim it makes no difference in admissions than why bother putting in ECs/lying about yours?</p>
<p>@OP, People like you **** me off. Go **** yourself.
^jk :)</p>
<p>For real though, just explain your situation in the additional info section. </p>
<p>So why even ask this question in the first place, do you think any of us are going to go, “Ya go and cheat because thats alright and thats not much of a lie, blah, blah, a bunch of bs”
Come on dude, don’t do it. I listed some at home, personal EC’s in my app, maybe you could do the same. So what did you do at home, with all that time?</p>
<p>Well i dont mean to demean your situation in any way, but I had one friend who lived an hour away from my school. Her father had been long passed away, and her mom had to work to keep their house. She would have to walk every single day to the bus stop (a good 30,45 minute walk), then take the bus which would take about an hour. Not a fun thing to do.
This didnt stop her though. She was in two sports, president of two clubs on campus, and intradistrict president or something like that. How did she make it happen? She just did. Sometimes, she had to resort to kind of embarassing things, like asking teachers for rides to the meetings and stuff. She had to take the bus home in the dark, when all the creepy people were there. But she made it happen. Not for her college apps either. (she has a 1750 on her SAT and didnt really give a *****, even though her GPA was stellar.)
Point: If you want something, you can make it happen. No excuses. It was your fault ultimately, so own up to it.</p>
<p>Ok, I just want to throw this out there. I take an hour train ride to school and home from school EVERY DAY. This is not an excuse to not participate in clubs. I ran track, was president of 2 clubs, PLUS worked around 20hrs a week. Don’t whine about an hour bus ride. Most of the time, after my train ride, I had to walk 3 miles home - during the winter. Why didn’t you get a job near your home? I knew this is what I wanted to do with my spare time and did it. For 9th,10th, and 11th I got to work any way I could even if it meant walking.</p>
<p>If you have no EC’s don’t put any EC’s. That simple.</p>
<p>You said it yourself. It’s not a deal breaker or a deal maker. So it doesn’t matter. Leave it blank. If there’s a truly compelling reason, then put it in your essay or additional information.</p>
<p>I live relatively close to my school, but it takes 45 minutes to walk home as opposed to 5 minutes by car. Yet, I manage my EC’s.</p>
<p>Well, some schools do check your extracurricular activities. For example, UCs take 10% of their applicants, chosen randomly, and ask them for proof. How it really works- I’m not sure, but basically if you are caught at one UC, your have no chance at any UC.</p>
<p>I don’t want to impose any moral values on you, but is it really worth fabricating information if the consequences are so severe? You want to fake 2-3 activities. I’m sure they know it’s not a typo if they ever check. The bottom line is- you can do it, and you might be denied because you lied.</p>
<p>All the people throwing out examples of how they/their friend managed it, and if they could do it, why couldn’t the OP do the same, et cetera:</p>
<p>You are not the OP. Your friend is not the OP. You don’t know the OP’s circumstances. It’s good that some places have access to public transportation outside of school hours. Some places, however, don’t. Like some suburbs. If my parents - or my friends’ parents, because, yes, I had to rely on them pretty damn often as well - hadn’t been willing to drive me back home during afterschool hours, I would’ve had to walk a good five or six miles with a heavy bookbag, a heavy viola case, and a heavy fencing bag, and, honestly, sometimes that’s just not feasible when you have sporadic knee problems and chronic sinus issues that like to plague you the instant you spend more than ten minutes out in the cold. No, really, it’s just not pleasant.</p>
<p>To the OP: Some schools will check. The higher up you go on the totem pole, the more likely you’ll be caught. If you’re only applying to state schools and/or public universities excluding the UCs, you probably won’t be caught. Actually, the chances that you’ll be caught for fudging up a year are really slim even at Tier I colleges, because many of them simply don’t have the time or the resources to verify ECs for every single student that applies.</p>