<p>Will colleges really try to investigate if the contents of your essay are true or not?</p>
<p>I am writing an essay about my involvement in a school club of mine. I have a leadership position in it. But I haven't actually been as involved in it as I claim in my essay. Will the colleges possibly find out?</p>
<p>FYI, my essay makes it seem very truthful and real. I think that if I was an admissions officer, if just based on reading the essay, I would have little doubt about the plausibility of the contents.</p>
<p>No, they will not try to investigate. They don’t have that kind of time. They have too many applications to get through, to worry about if you were as involved in your leadership position as you claim you are.</p>
<p>if you were on the fence they could call your high school, depends on the college though… also, I have heard of things happening where people do get caught in lies (one, when a student had an alumni interview, the student claimed to have devoted a huge amount of time to a local organization. the interviewer was involved with this organization and never saw the girl there. she was rejected. also, if somebody else applies from your school and the info about a club is not consistent that can raise questions too). but it depends.</p>
<p>also, if they somehow find out after you’ve been accepted/enroll, they can revoke your acceptance/kick you out</p>
<p>“when a student had an alumni interview, the student claimed to have devoted a huge amount of time to a local organization. the interviewer was involved with this organization and never saw the girl there. she was rejected”</p>
<p>I’m an alum interviewer, and interviewed a student who claimed to be deeply involved in a community organization that my son was president of and that I had volunteered with extensively. I’d never seen the girl at the organization. I asked my son about her involvement, and he also had never seen her there. She didn’t get into my alma mater.</p>
<p>I heard of someone who interviewed at an out of town college and falsely claimed that they were president of a school club. When they left the interviewer’s office, the next person waiting to be interviewed was the actual president of their school club.</p>
<p>Why lie when surely there’s something true that you can write your essay about?</p>
<p>Well, no one else of my year is in the school club that I am a leader in, except for the President of the club, who is applying for top-notch ivies and none of the schools that I am applying to. Also, he is a very close friend of mine and would vouch for me if it ever comes down to that.</p>
<p>Collegefever : That is awful. Some students actually put in 15 hours a week volunteering for clubs. Some students actually get voted into president position and fulfill those roles. It’s disgusting that you need to lie to TRY to get into a school.
Just remember… What comes around, goes around.</p>
<p>honestly if you can’t write something true about yourself that impresses a college than you really shouldn’t be going to that college should you?</p>
<p>If you are not completely making things up, like being president of a club, I see little problem with hyperboles. If you go from saying you were the vice president of a club to saying that there was a period where you had to run a meeting and saw a whole new outlook on the way things worked, etc, I don’t see anything wrong. The SAT encourages it, where it is completely legitimate to make up facts. </p>
<p>If you need to for creative effect, like making up a false encounter, go for it if it will help the essay. Don’t flat out lie though.</p>
<p>Thank you SixthDeclension for understanding, unlike some of these other folks who are verging on attacking me here.</p>
<p>At Shay_888: calm down. I actually go to all the club meetings (around an hour a week) and do take part in the activities, as well as go to most of the events that we hold outside of school. But its just that I’m not TOTALLY interested in the club, as I state in my essay.</p>
<p>I see what you are saying as well collegefever… This is a competitive process and displaying yourself in the best possible light is what everyone needs to do. You cannot simply state in your essay “yeah… I do this club and its okay I guess” if thats truly how you feel about it, that would look terrible!!! I am with you 100%</p>
<p>I’ll ask again, as several others have: Isn’t there something you can write about that IS true? </p>
<p>Lying (and let’s call it what it is, ok?) will always come back to bite you, sooner or later. Yes, you may get away with it this time. But that will give you the idea that lying is a good strategy for getting what you want. At some point, you will become known as a liar. That’s just not a good way to go through life.</p>
<p>I’m not attacking you, I’m giving you the benefit of my own experience. And the fact that you’re asking the question tells me that you know the right answer. Integrity is always the best choice. :)</p>
<p>collegefever101, I understand the pressure on you. But it is true that honesty is the best policy. I’m with Northstarmom on this. Your essay will be better if you write about something that you are really passionate about, and this often requires a lot of advance thought.</p>
<p>College may find out because anyone who is going to seriously lie in an essay and thinks “Well, I will go ask everybody on an internet site whether I would be found out,” is likely to be a person who will let the cat out of the bag by telling someone who may actually tell the college.</p>
<p>Well I do have one thing I’m very passionate about, but I am only passionate about it and I’m not too good at it and I dont have any substance to prove my passion. The activity that I’m writing about in my essay I am actually Vice President of, and technically I’m a founder of it too. So I thought… why not just capitalize on this opporunity and kind of twist it so that it sounds like it really changed my life and stuff.</p>
<p>And believe me, it sounds AUTHENTIC.</p>
<p>of course honesty is the best choice. i wish that the activity really did change me, but unfortunately it didn’t, so i think that ‘lying’ is the best option in this case.</p>
<p>We all understand pressure. We all understand temptation. However, the path you’re going down is a destructive one, and not just ethically: you are essentially telling both the college and yourself that you’re not good enough as you really are. As Northstarmom and Compass have pointed out, surely you have some wonderful talents and experiences – true ones – that you can use for your essay without embellishment. I’m certain that you can get into college on your own merits. </p>
<p>You might take a hard look at yourself to determine why you feel it necessary to lie, why you aren’t happy with who you are.</p>
<p>HAHAHAHAHA momwaitingfornew. Sorry, that just made me laugh.</p>
<p>"You might take a hard look at yourself to determine why you feel it necessary to lie, why you aren’t happy with who you are. "
Please, I am very happy with who I am. Thank you, I don’t have a low self-esteem. </p>
<p>The path I’m going down is a destructive one? Please, let me tell you a little something about life. I know you’re older than me, but just… lemme tell u a little something.
In life, you pretty much have to lie. I mean, you can’t get through life without lying. A lot of times, its simply for the best. Everyone does it. Yeah, everyone lies. When I’m faced with a situation in which I wonder whether to lie or not, I weight the risks and the rewards. Essentially, that is what I am doing by asking this question on the forum. I’m trying to find out about the risks.</p>