<p>Today I met a few friends at the post office. Here is what one of them told me.</p>
<p>He said that he did not have any activity and job but that he is going to fake it in his application. He even intends to send the adcoms a supplementary material CD and that too is not his work.
I know two other guys doing the same thing.</p>
<p>Now I am an international and I dont think collges even care to cofirm what we wrote in our activities column. Watching people like them really discourages me to be honest. Sometimes I feel like making my own EC list longer just by faking info.....after all I do not want to see the end result in their favor.</p>
<p>How many of you think that you wont be caught by faking ECs in applications??</p>
<p>I think in general most people who lie, at least small lies won't get caught. No one has time to check over each detail of every application. It is unfortunate that people will cheat, but I hate to say it you just have to get used to it. It happens all over the world. Chances are the bigger the lie the more likely you are to get caught. Sending a supplementary CD that is not your own work is much more likely to get you caught then adding a few extra activities to your list. </p>
<p>If you get caught later you can be expelled or have your diploma revoked. Is it really worth lying just to get accepted? I think not. A lot of people do, and then have to worry about getting caught for the rest of their lives. For me its too high a price to pay. I can't imagine wanting to lie. That's just low.</p>
<p>Agreed, I just think that the risk of getting all your hard work revoked later in life for something that you did before entering college is too trivial to risk; for me I look to the people who's doctorates are being revoked for fudging just a <em>little</em> bit of data or lying to get into their desired program.</p>
<p>Your "friends" may want to have integrity safties to go along with their financial and academic safties. Then if they decide they cannot live with their lies, they can go to the safties.</p>
<p>I'm hoping that they are not just doing this because they think that it is clever.</p>
<p>Hmm. I think something would smell fishy if your friend's supplementary thingy is incongruous with his teacher recommendations, his personal essays, his transcripts, so on and so forth.</p>
<p>But seriously, that's really a new low. Sending a fake CD? Man, as desperate as I am to get into Yale and out of Singapore, I never once thought of stooping that low. What satisfaction would he derive from getting into whatever college he wants to get in, with full knowledge that he didn't get in by his own abilities? </p>
<p>Just out of curiosity. Does your school print an official list of all extra curriculars you've taken part in? Because the schools here do that and so it was impossible for me to fake activities (and I needed a lot of faking, to be honest). </p>
<p>Anyway, cheating may be tempting but I wouldn't risk it. Just my two cents' worth.</p>
<p>well....our guidance counselor recommendation is pretty much a list of all the activities that we did INSIDE the school. He does not endorse anything outside of school.........so many people take full advantage of that.
but i am thinking........they did not make the software in the CD and they actually said that they have been learning computer languages and have taken months to prepare for it.......either this thing is incongrous to their entire application...or they lied everywhere else too!!</p>
<p>Remember that even in the world of international applications, it is still a very small world. </p>
<p>The biggest misconception that people make is building a laundry list of EC's where most of these ECs don't mean a hill of beans. Your friend may be submitting a CD about his EC but the CD probably won't even be looked at (waste of time on his part). If you are an officer doing a world recognized EC activity, that is easy to check. But to say you started or created the latest and greatest widget is not going to do much for you.</p>
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they actually said that they have been learning computer languages and have taken months to prepare for it
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<p>Admissions committees know that these things don't happen in a vacuum. A student really doing something like this would be remiss to also not be doing some research at a university or with a teacher at school. The story would then be corroborated through another source.</p>
<p>AS some of the posters have already stated, if one is as involved as they say they are in their EC's it usually is going to show up in their recommendation, this would especially be true of a GC at an international school because it is a perfect opportunity to toot the horns of their student.</p>
<p>Remember the old adage, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.</p>
<p>The sad truth is, that elegant construct, our completed application, to which we devoted days of our life, scrutinizing key placements of punctuation, what to say, how to say it, agonizing over minute details, recieves about fifteen minutes of an admit officers attention. Unfortunately, unless his lies are extraordinary or he gets unlucky, he will probably get away with some of the stuff he put down.</p>
<p>A girl my brother went to school with created a big story about how she was from Spain, deeply identified with the Spanish culture, and even wrote her admissions essay in Spanish. She's from NJ, she started taking Spanish classes with my brother in 9th grade and her family is about as Spanish as mine is, which is to say not at all. </p>
<p>The results? Scholarship to Yale. </p>
<p>The day she gets caught will be a happy day indeed.</p>
<p>Anyway, things such as checking an extra box on your application for a club will usually go by unnoticed. Why? Because it doesn't really matter.</p>
<p>Small ECs won't make a difference in the admissions process, unless there was a super similar applicant possibly. But that is such a rare scenario--pretty much negligible.</p>
<p>Now, lying about big ECs is something else.</p>
<p>You can very well get caught if you are lying about something big or something could be checked. If you say you are the president of a club or organization or won a contest that is very easily checked. They can just google it.</p>
<p>sydneyann.........i kinda feel the same for liars around me as well.
I mean just think about it. Most of the people in my country have no ECs at all (I mean 90% of them) and then there are 3 or 4 who can really fill pages of these. And job experience is something that you may find in 1 or 2 special applicant.
When I said to these people that I dont have a job experience and this will work against me, they said, who cares, just fill the list with fictional jobs. it sounded pretty luring at the beginning. </p>
<p>Our teacher recos are something that we are ashamed of (but its got advantages as well). None of our teachers write them. We write whatever we want and they only read it and sign it. And sometimes they dont even read it at all!! It's easy to escape with false recos. that way you see.</p>
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<p>Remember the old adage, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.<<</p>
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<p>I had this problem although my ECs were 100% true. My alum interviewer told me that upon receiving my CV prior to our interview, he had forwarded it on to one of his colleagues to determine if they too thought my ECs were a bunch of B.S. (his words, not mine). So, imagine what the admissions officers thought?</p>
<p>Most school websites list that type of thing. But there are many international clubs and organizations as well as international competitions. Those could be easily googled.</p>
<p>Just because you can get away with it that doens't mean you should lie. That's why I really begrudge US universities for relying on ECs and activities so much. Most everywhere else they really rely on scores (IBs A Levels, Abitur, etc) You can't lie about those.</p>
<p>If I google my website, it does not come up. I also skated in a semi-national competition last year and nothing comes up when I google it. Would making copies of this stuff and sending it in be overkill? I guess it would make me look desperate, right?</p>