Let’s say you apply, and the adcoms discover that you lied about something.
Is there any way for the student to sort of argue his case?
Let’s say on the application I said I got a gold medal on the IMO. They think that it was the International Math Olympiad.
BUT, in reality it was a typo and I ACTUALLY got the gold medal in a competition called the International Magic Orientation or something.
Do students ever get a chance to argue their case (typo, lack of clarification leading to confusion) or do colleges reject you on the spot without any further consideration. And does it have to be a blatant lie for them to do that.
For example: If someone said they hosted a charity but in reality they just made a facebook event page…
It shows a complete lack of integrity, which hurts the student more than the adcoms. Any reason why is is ‘OK’ to do so is just rationalization. Far better to tell a good story than to lie.
Most applications ask for a short description anyways. Also, they would probably want the full name, not an acronym. Using only an acronym and no description to confuse the "IMO"s would probably send up red flags for them.
As for the hosting a charity thing, um, that’s pretty blatant lying. And would only take a quick Google search for them to catch your lie.
As long as you don’t lie about something huge, like winning a prestigious competition, there’s a good chance you’ll get away with it. Colleges almost certainly won’t check to verify claims like “secretary of debate team” or “president of school’s DECA chapter”. You could also lie/exaggerate volunteer work without getting caught. Your whole admission essay could be a lie and you’d almost certainly get away with it (as long as you don’t write about achieving something extremely noteworthy). My point is, you could lie on a LOT of things and get away with it, as long as you don’t lie about something extremely impressive or something that can easily looked up on Google.
You could probably get away with lying about hosting a local charity event. Admission officers simply don’t have the time to Google things like that. Besides, it’s hard to Google who actually hosted a local charity event since the internet is so huge.
I agree that lying in your transcript should be punished with an immediate rejection.
I wanted to know about the exaggeration part. As some of the things are terribly difficult to prove, mainly wondering what the adcoms would do, especially about what @tooold4school said about the story part.
You can’t prove that somebody was exaggerating, yet these things can add up. Is there any way of counteracting this besides ethics and morals?
Disclaimer: From my past posts you can tell that I do not have a lot of EC’s, and I do not plan on gaming the system by making things up to make myself look better. This is just out of pure interest.
Don’t listen ^^^^ to @maaz97 unless you want more trouble.
When you apply to colleges, you sign that you are submitting a truthful application, stating that they have a right to dismiss you if anything is false. They don’t need students who lack integrity because they can always fill your spot with someone else. Also, once they find out, your name and identifiers goes to a clearinghouse so that other schools know that you have a history of lying. You do get caught.
@marvin100 Ok, thanks for the straight answer. I thought so anyway because selective schools that heavily consider EC’s and Essays don’t really need to take the risk of admitting an untruthful applicant as they have plenty of wonderful people to choose from.
Because it is multiple readers for an application, I would assume both would have to agree for them to take action?
@“aunt bea” Oh that’s very interesting. I did not know that.
Exaggerating and misleading without actually lying is commonplace in real life – look at advertising, sales, and marketing of products or politicians (although sometimes these contain actual lies as well). It really is mostly just your own sense of ethics and morals that controls your behavior in this area. Of course, if the exaggeration or misleading is noticed, people may be offended by being misled (even if what was claimed was technically not a lie) almost as much as they would be by being lied to, with potential damage to your reputation.
Sure, @ucbalumnus - I don’t like that, and have never partaken in it myself, but you’re right. And of course it’s also true that many (most?) lies/embellishments aren’t ever even noticed. That said, I was addressing the consequences of colleges finding out about a lie or suspecting a lie, and I do believe my answer is accurate.
They are not likely to ask you for an explanation. No you will not get to ‘argue’ that fudging was innocent. They will simply move on if you have a suspicious application, but it is true that some will call your GC for clarity if the application seems otherwise clean.
Yes, see my last sentence in reply #11 that says basically the same thing as your reply #8 (since such damage to one’s reputation for being detected lying or misleading will mean rejection by the admission reader at a college).
I do not agree with lying or misleading in general, but I recognize that the many of less-than-strict ethics do lie and mislead, get away with it most of the time, and are only rarely punished in a way that is clearly the result of lying and misleading.
Lying on the application is most frequently uncovered when the student is brought up for an unrelated disciplinary charge. If, for example, there is a concern about plagiarism or cheating on a test or any other question of integrity, one of the things schools (and employers, by the way) do is delve into the entire record looking for a history of inconsistency, exaggeration or outright lying. What starts as a simple inquiry into a dubious lack of citation in a paper is suddenly a much bigger deal. That’s why students who think, ‘it’s just a minor exaggeration, no one will ever find out’ later regret it. Their integrity is called into question on something else and it suddenly appears as if they have a track record of lying or cheating. Just don’t go there. The silly things people ‘exaggerate’ about just plain aren’t worth it for the ‘boost’ it gives their chances of admission (if ‘worth it’ is your criterion, rather than just valuing your own integrity.)
I agree on every point. You would probably get away with minor embellishments, but the potential boost they might give your application is too small to risk the consequences of getting caught. The larger lies, that might get you accepted, are much likelier to be detected. It’s sort of like shoplifting or embezzling in that respect. The longer-term risks are those of crossing a line, seeing how easy it was to get away with the deceit, and choosing to keep compounding lies. Once you decide to be dishonest, it gets easier, and the dishonesty becomes your character.
If your application stated that you were an IMO gold medalist and neither your teachers or GC commented on that in their letters, that would be a big red flag to admissions. If your application lies and says you have leadership positions that you don’t, it will also be a big red flag when your GC fails to give you a high ranking on leadership on the bubble forms they fill out and/or when no one mentions any of this so called leadership in any of their letters. Be yourself. Don’t start your college career on a lie. You don’t want to be wondering if you really deserve to be there and you don’t want to be worrying about being caught.