<p>Ok if you want to lie, go ahead. Take the risk. But seriously, i doubt it's gonna help. The ECS that do matter are the ones that will show up in your essays, the ones your guidance counselor will talk about in your recommendation, and the ones that you'll talk about in your interview. If you want to lie that you're on the varsity football team when you can't throw or run, and you have an interview with someone and he or she asks you about football and stuff... well good luck. Plus your guidance counselor will read over ur app, so if he knows you're not a football player or whatever... he'll probably not put in a good word for you.</p>
<p>There's difference b/t lying and letting your accomplishments shine through.</p>
<p>The way I think it is.. if you lie about stuff and really get into a good place, it won't be a very happy time for you. While others burble on about what they do, you'll be thinking, I got here because of a lie. If for instance, you go on to get a good job because of your college, and progress well, you know what? Your entire career and more than half your life is based on a lie. Not the way I want to live... =)</p>
<p>When i was applying to colleges I was real stupid and didn't list any ECs. None at all. My family arrived from another country recently where the application process is totally different. I wasn't in any clubs in US and didn't do any community service or get any awards prior to starting the application process even though I had two and a half entire years to get engaged in something. I didn't treat the whole thing seriously. I didn't know even what major I would be aiming for. Instead, i got all As in school (which was a no-brainer after receiving education in my home country which was like 3 years ahead) and watched TV, read books, and played tons of computer games in my free time. My essay also sucked as no one checked it for me. I sent it as it was written in my less than perfect English then. To my surprise I got into 2 of top 20 colleges and 2 of top 30 colleges at that time. I was astounded because I really thought I screwed up. This lead me to believe that perhaps some adcoms do not check for all the stuff in great detail. How can they accept someone with no ECs?? It wasn't like I just arrived in country and had to apply the next month. I wasn't what is considered a minority in US except that i was a foreigner. It was more like they went solely by my numbers. So the bad thing was that if i put in some more effort, I could have gotten some scholarships before entering and acceptances from better places. The good thing was that I put in so little effort, i enjoyed my time, and still got into some good places and eventually went somewhere that turned out perfect for me. Meanwhile i enjoyed all that TV, and books, and computer games (hey, they helped me learn english too). I got smarter, of course, by the time of grad school applications, quit all TV and almost all playing too.</p>
<p>but how exactly do you get to talk about in detail about all (or at least some) of your ECs?</p>
<p>on the application you have smth like max 4 words to fill for each (and "gigi's club of boston" doesn't say much..nor does "physics training courses"...nor "national physics team" for that matter)
so i don't see how this list might have any influence whatsoever(unless they know exactly what you meant)</p>
<p>you have that one short essay about the most important one. about 50-100 words, right? not that much...but anyway, that's 1. 8 left.</p>
<p>GC's description. how would your GC know as much as you about your EC's, or about their impact on your life? plus, i've been told that exceeding 1 page is a no-no. and there lots of other stuff to say in there, besides EC's...like school-related stuff (which should the main issue there)</p>
<p>teacher's evaluation...again..mostly school related </p>
<p>and finally, the big essay. but, taking into consideration the general advice almost every school gives you, you're supposed to write "something about you that doasn't appear in the rest of your app". this is your sole chnace to prove your uniqueness, your personality. wouldn't it be a waste to fill it with EC's, only because they might not have a clue what one of your EC actually is, and what work/skills it involves?</p>
<p>bottom line...i vote for more than max 20 chars for each EC.
take MIT or Caltech for example. they have room..they're still alive...</p>
<p>we do pay like a 60$ fee only to apply...they could spend an extra...1 minute.. to read a few sentences, which would only bring more cohesion to app as a whole ->making their job actually a lot easier, rather than scraping for every bit of info from other hundreds of essays.</p>
<p>there's this guy in my class. he goes by the name of ryan and he's supposedly planning to make up community service hours and other extracurricular stuff on his UC application. any way he'll get caught? i just hope he does because it's pretty unfair for other kids if he gets accepted. you know</p>
<p>"there's this guy in my class. he goes by the name of ryan and he's supposedly planning to make up community service hours and other extracurricular stuff on his UC application. any way he'll get caught? i just hope he does because it's pretty unfair for other kids if he gets accepted. you know"</p>
<p>If you feel extremely strong about this, I would suggest contact the schools he is applying to and suggesting that they check some of his extracurricular activities. It can be anonymous and if a few of you send letters of this type, there's a decent chance it'll get checked out.</p>
<p>I had the impression, however, that the UC system was extremely numbers-based.</p>
<p>The UC system is fairly number-based...but they expect students to have some ECs and community service, so if they don't then they have a reason to lie.</p>
<p>I guess since they only check 10%, some people do get away with lying on the UC app...I just have to wonder if anyone really believes it is worth it.</p>