Hey, so I know a couple of people from my high school who have blatantly lied on their college applications. They’ve fattened up their Activities sections by adding co-curriculars they were never a part of, making the pool much more competitive than it should be. Also, some of them are applying to the same colleges that I am applying to, and I was wondering if there’s any way to report these immoral activities.
Bump
Personally I would mind my own business. I doubt you have first hand knowledge of these applications, i.e., have seen them personally. Also, I would not bump a post after 1 minute.
Thanks, jnkam24, for the reply. The bump was because I posted by mistake and couldn’t delete it, so I edited it to Bump. Also, I’ve had a personal look at these applications and these kids have actually bragged about lying on their apps to a bunch of people in my school. Although I do realise I might be poking my nose where it’s not needed, I just wanted to make this a fair game.
if you are wise you will focus on yourself, and leave what other people do alone. what good will come of it? a fight with people you go to high school with? the college you rat them out to rejects you (do you think they will see you as a young principled hero or a problem?) or perhaps your family will face a slander lawsuit… just leave it alone and focus on you.
p.s. do you think that the college you applied to (and every other one for that matter) does not get tons of padded apps?
welcome to the real world.
I would tell the guidance counselor, only.
suzyQ7 I would not tell anybody ,nothing good can come of that. the guidance counselor depending on their personality will either ignore it or confront the students with the allegation which will draw the person who said something into a bad situation. and they will not remain anonymous. (one way or another)
Go talk your college counselor. Fraudulent applications reflect poorly on your high school, and they can send clarifications to colleges where these students have already submitted.
Colleges have ways of checking applications for fraud.
It’s best to do nothing and let the college take care of it.
I agree with @siliconvalleymom completely.
You could descreetly tell the guidance counselor and hopefully catch it before the student(s) submit their apps.
At the end of the day, if he were to have lied on all of his apps and was rejected from all of his schools, it would be very sad for the kid.
Hope your counselor could catch it before he gets rejected for lying.
I would stay out of it. Better to be truthful and sleep well at night.
There are pros and cons of telling your HS counselor. If you have a good counselor, it may help you. If you have a lousy counselor, there will be no upsides, but downsides.
If you really have to do it, you may want to have your parents do it. It may insulate you from any repercussion, particularly if your parents are sophisticated in this kind of things.
Meh, I disagree with a lot of above. My high school was a hotbed of cheating and dishonestly and nothing ever came from it. If anything, it was rewarded. The environment was, in my opinion, toxic.
I got a girl rescinded from half the US News top 10 after someone sent me her resume online and she claimed to do stuff I had done. I was livid and told the counselors. They didn’t do anything because they didn’t want to make our high school look bad. So I anonymously emailed every school she bragged about getting into.
Vindictive? Sure. Effective? Very. I don’t regret it.
If you do it be very, very careful about how you word your email. It should be about the “possible accepted student”. Be diplomatic. “They may have claimed to have done X. If they claimed this, this is not correct. See Y for proof.” etc. Don’t leave any holes.
Be as secretive as possible. I let some people know I was doing it because I didn’t want to write down their email as a proof of contact for the lies without notifying them and word got out. I got death threats from the family along with the usual threats to reveal my “despicable” character and threats to sue for defamation.
^^^Wow, that’s a made for TV after school special going on there.
There’s this girl in my English class who told me and another group of students that she completely made up the entire story she wrote about for her common app essay, and boosted her ECs just to “make it more interesting”. this entire group of kids (about 5 of us, all AP students) that she decided to confide in all raised their brows, but said nothing. (Keep in mind that this is a very prestigious university that almost all AP kids in my school are applying to). However I pushed her on it, and asked her things like “don’t you think that’s wrong?” And “don’t you think they’ll know you’re lying?” And she just kinda shrugged and said “I have a 3.3, I’m applying just for fun”
I guess there’s no stopping anyone from applying somewhere “Just for fun”, but there’s a difference between making your application a joke vs straight up lying. this prestigious university isn’t the only school in her common app that she’s applying to. It makes me wonder if she’s inadvertently affecting all the rest of our applications, which are all 100% truthful, and whether or not she’s gonna get accepted anywhere else she applies, because it’s true that colleges can tell if you’re lying.
But alas, I don’t think there’s anything you can really do about it; you just have to have faith that fate will do its job and not let the cheaters/liars benefit off their fake applications.
I would anonymously email your counselor. Would be better for them in the long run to be honest and go to the college where they would fit in.
As in what, create a fake email? Will it not be suspicious to the counselor? “Just kids playing mean pranks again…”
So ridiculous on so many levels. Let it go.
Closing thread. We’ve exhausted this conversation. Plus it’s been asked several dozen times already. You can certainly search past threads.