<p>First off. No, I am by no means trying to cheat my way into college by listing falsified past experiences. That would be dishonest, also stupid. </p>
<p>Anyway I am curious because I never knew a lot about this. If the college needs proof perhaps I need to begin to gather up certificates, references, or awards for specific things I have done. Plus I had a lot of unaffiliated and unofficial programs. </p>
<p>I haven't looked at Apps in detail, so please enlighten me. Thanks</p>
<p>They can’t. Too many applicants, who have so many ec’s. They assume you are being as honest as possible. Also, this is why school clubs and stuff aren’t really important to them…unless you can write a whole essay on how a club changed your life or something…</p>
<p>Think about it, if Harvard has 30000 applicants who each, say, have 7 clubs/activities/ec’s, that’s 210,000 ec’s…</p>
<p>So if I joined a club it would not be the difference between acceptance or rejection?</p>
<p>Joining a club won’t pull you in the acceptance range. You’d have to do something that shows passion and dedication, and is actually a big part of your life, not just some club. That’s why the essay is there, so you can potentially write about it.</p>
<p>If you falsify information, you can get caught and rescinded, though. If you don’t lie, you won’t need certificates or anything like that to back up your ECs. You will also have to write a short essay explicating one of your ECs, and you could always write a main essay about that as well.</p>
<p>The probability of you getting caught lying and getting rescinded is slightly higher than you getting caught by the authorities for downloading illegal torrents from the internet.</p>
<p>Anyways, it’ll be easy to see how dedicated and passionate you are for a club or an activity, by reading your essays. This is why you have to write really honest, personal essays.</p>
<p>The UCs have an office that varifies ECs of selected students. </p>
<p><a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/18/local/me-ucfraud18[/url]”>http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/18/local/me-ucfraud18</a></p>
<p>Adcom will call guidance/college counselors if they have questions.</p>
<p>^How bout Ivy Leagues? Stanford? MIT?
Even when adcom calls the counselor, though, it won’t guarantee that the student was lying. Maybe he/she just joined a club and didn’t do anything. Maybe he/she told the counselor what was on the college application, and so the counselor would think there was no dishonesty involved. It’s just really really difficult for adcom to know whether or not the student actually lied or not. Lots of people lie about small stuff, like being Secretary of “Ping Pong” club or something. This is why clubs aren’t really a big deal.</p>
<p>Does that mean EC’s dont even matter? If they really don’t check things, why don’t you just say you were on every varsity sports team available and joined at least 10 clubs and held presidential position?</p>
<p>It seems as if only things like winning the Nobel Prize or curing world hunger is mentionable for ECs?</p>
<p>The general consensus around here is that lies small enough to go unnoticed won’t make a difference and lies big enough to change an admissions decision will likely be checked/caught (big awards, etc.).</p>
<p>If they do have questions, they will call your guidance counselor who can confirm for you, you probably wouldn’t need certificates, etc.</p>
<p>Are membership and leadership in clubs really “not a big deal”? I’ve always wondered how that is, because the majority of high schoolers I know have clubs as their only ECs. So being an officer of say, Model UN, is not really a big deal?</p>
<p>^I think (obviously I don’t know for sure, as I’m not on the admissions committees) that what matters more is hours spent, awards/achievements, and passion (in no particular order). Being an officer of Model UN isn’t a big deal if it is the only IR activity on your resume, if you don’t really spend much time in it, or you haven’t won an award (if there are ones for Model UN). It generally becomes clear if you look at other clubs, time spent, and awards won, if it should be a big deal in the app. </p>
<p>What ECs do is add to an overall picture. Just stating an isolated EC gets you practically nowhere.</p>
<p>Simply put, if your EC’s seem fishy, they will likely be checked or immediately regarded as false at your expense. If you’re claiming to be involved with EC’s every waking moment outside of the classroom, then your teacher recommendations and essays better damn well follow suit with respect to consistency and honesty. If your application comes across as skewed or dishonest, you’re going to get nailed.</p>
<p>However, the truth of the matter is that TONS of people exaggerate their EC’s, whether it’s by jacking up the hours spent per activity or by making their positions seem more important than they really are. Most of these exaggerations slide by without punishment, but I’d argue that the exaggerations provide very limited upside and a rather large downside if you get caught.</p>
<p>“Are membership and leadership in clubs really “not a big deal”? I’ve always wondered how that is, because the majority of high schoolers I know have clubs as their only ECs. So being an officer of say, Model UN, is not really a big deal?”</p>
<p>The majority of colleges don’t use ECs in their admission decisions. They make decisions overwhelmingly on stats because their problem is finding students with the academic background that indicate they would be able to pass classes at the college.</p>
<p>The exception to this is the very top colleges – places like HPYS – that are in the enviable position of having an overabundance of high stat applicants. Consequently, such colleges can pick and choose from among those high stat applicants those who would most contribute to maintaining an active, diverse campus. </p>
<p>For such schools, club membership means nothing, and being a club officer means little. What stands out in their pool are students who’ve demonstrated leadership by being national/regional officers of organizations and/or having organized major projects or take other actions that reflect leadership.</p>
<p>most schols don’t validate, they aren’t going to call every single applican’ts school to check on EVERYTHING…they will only do that if its supisous…</p>
<p>A long list of club memberships is fairly useless. If you had only one EC but achieved excellence or accomplished something unusual in it you have something.</p>