Perhaps it’s also fair to note that it’s also in large part a matter of opinion. Perhaps from one point of view that consistent attendance and aid given to new members was useful and important, and in another point of view it is merely a mediocre contribution. In truth, the relative merit of things is often a matter of perception and perspective, which is why essays and interviews generally hold more weight than resumes beyond an initial pre-screening phase that separates the “definitely unqualified” from the “possibly qualified.” In that light, very simplistic interpretations of events EMPHASIZED with RANDOM CAPS are pretty detached from reality. Makes for great rhetoric to say that any possible stretching of the truth is lying, but truths that are opinionated rather than factual have no such cutoff. Most opinionated statements can be turned into factual ones (e.g. any legal document ever) but if no such factual criteria are used, then there is no moral obligation to say “good” instead of “very good,” or “moderately important” instead of “key player,” etc., if you can justify it.
I will also note that in most cases, the more you did the easier it becomes to make it sound like it was a valuable experience.
On the subject of who is worried most, I would argue the opposite. US schools are, fairly or not, considered to be the best in the world and are a ticket to a better life, while schools in their home countries are probably either not useful or impossible to get into (e.g. IITs). Most state schools are not highly competitive or have a backup option in the form of community colleges, and both state schools and CCs are not phenomenally worse than Ivy caliber schools. International students probably do not know this is so, and so they are more likely to act out of desperation (the only reason for cheating for almost everyone - it really is a bad risk to lie, and any level-headed person knows this).
It depends what you see the system as. In a meritocracy as most schools are (at least to the extent that they can be), it is ethical and correct to abide by the honor code. In any less fair scenario where merit isn’t really what determines success, I would liken it more to a Prisoner’s Dilemma in which a mutual “collude” agreement is to the benefit of the peer group.
Yes, if they could justify it. And I have seen it done before to great effect. Not with baseball, but nevertheless as a minor supporting member who made enough of a contribution to warrant calling him/herself a key member of the team.
I can’t imagine admissions officers pay a whole lot of attention to these kinds of self-descriptions without any supporting details. “Key player” or “highly competitive team” mean much less than “named team MVP” or “league champions.” Every kid wants to believe they’re above average. Just look at the tiny number of kids on the “chance me” threads who believe they’ll get anything but stellar letters of recommendation from their GC’s.
Here’s where I draw the line.
Saying you’ve played on varsity for 4 years and perhaps leaving the reader with the impression that you’re a star athlete when in fact your school doesn’t field a JV is okay. It’s true and doesn’t stretch the truth. Claiming you’re the team’s high scorer when your team hasn’t yet scored a single point is just duplicitous.
Saying you’ve been taking weekly piano lessons for 10 years but not mentioning you still have a tin ear is okay. Trying to play a piece well beyond your skill level, then claiming it as your current working piece or picking up lessons in your senior year after quitting in 3rd grade then trying to claim those 10 years is not.
I guess for me the test is this. Would you be embarrassed to show what you’d written about your EC’s to your friends, teachers or coach? Would they agree with your description?
When my daughter was talking to a college coach about possibly playing for her she mentioned she was the team captain and the coach asked how many captains the team had. Even though DD had said “the captain” not “a captain” it was clear the coach was used to kids fudging their credentials by claiming sole captainship when in fact the team had multiple co-captains.
Again, it’s mostly about proving value. Titles are meaningless beyond a first impression and I see nothing wrong with creating a better first impression through clever but not strictly dishonest use of language.
Value, yes, spin, no. The example of the ballboy is that it could actually be woven into an excellent essay. But if someone claimed to be an integral player when they were not a player, that is not a “matter of opinion”. That is a lie.
“Key team player” means nothing. Being a merely above average player means no more than being the worst player on the team. Both put in the same time commitment, neither will be recruited, neither will get a bump in admissions that anyone else with a 12 hour/wk. commitment to any other EC will get. Both experiences could be woven into a good essay if written well, or into a lousy essay if written badly.
A player with the potential to play in college will have hard stats and/or official accolades and should be looking to coaches for support.
As I’ve said elsewhere, any award or EC serious to make a difference in your college chances will be reflected elsewhere in your recommendations or will be extremely easy to check. Things you can fake are generally not going to make a difference. It’s very easy to check who won the state science fair. It’s much tougher to check who won the school spelling bee, but that’s not going to impress anyway.
As for “clever but not strictly dishonest use of language,” there’s a word for that, “dissembling.” It’s rather shady, like saying when you’re a member of a club that gathered names but never met or saying you beat out a dozen people for the goalie position when everyone was forced to try it but no one but you was willing to play the position. It may not be an outright lie, but it’s not something a college admissions officer will appreciate.
70%-80% of the job applications we see now contain falsehoods. The easiest thing to do when they are detected is to simply not hire that applicant. I’m sure the colleges follow a similar strategy.
Easiest certainly, but far from the best. If your goal is to hire the applicants who will do the job best, a marginally related criteria (willingness to put oneself in a more favorable light on the resume in a way that someone may assume is a falsehood) is not particularly predictive.
I think it’s pretty stupid to lie about things that don’t even matter, like claiming to be a “key player” on a team if you’re not a recruitable athlete. Who cares? It’s taking a risk for nothing. The things that are worth lying about are much more likely to be checked.
And then there are the “educational and admissions consulting companies” that feature bogus testimonials from fake students. Does one ever wonder where kids get their ideas about integrity?
The problem is simply that those cheating feel that the consequences of doing so are far outweighed by the benefit of cheating, they figure that for example if School X has 30,000 applicants for 150 slots, it is unlikely they will bother to deeply check if the credentials are good. Worse, there are schools where for a bribe administrators will issue bogus documents and such (talking secondary schools), that are ‘official’, and how would a university know? The way these things are eventually found out is when they start getting a lot of students that come to the school and don’t do well, don’t measure up, and if they see a trend from a certain group of secondary schools, they will clamp down, so eventually things do come out.
In the music world, this happened with video auditions (not talking regional auditions, talking where kids sent video auditions of their playing), schools ended up getting kids where they from their video audition looked great, and then the kid shows up and it is like ‘who the heck is that?’. Said schools ended up sending faculty to do regional auditions overseas, because they had far too many kids who showed up who shouldn’t have been there.
The other thing about cheating is it also depends on your view of college. In some countries, with the elite universities everything is getting into them, and once you are there, a lot of kids coast, so the kids, not unreasonable, assume other elite colleges are like that, so if they get into X (where X is some ‘highly sought after school’), their ticket is punched, until they get there and realize that it is not what they expected…
Low level cheating sounds that there is a point at which cheating moves from acceptable to unacceptable. Who decides where acceptable ends unacceptable cheating begins? Cheating is cheating! Similarly, plagiarism is rampant. Everybody does it is not a reasonable or rational response to lying about, stealing, or otherwise suggesting something is about you or your own when it is not. Aside from honesty issues, how does a student learn how to behave or to acquire skills when the easy although dishonest path is taken? How does a student succeed academically when admission is based on fraudulent information?
Believing that college is easier and exaggeration on applications is typical is at best speculative. Freshman classes may not be all that hard in comparison to high school classes in the beginning, but procedures for teaching, time management and evaluation differ. By midterm, lots of kids find that a college schedule with fewer hours per week than found in high school does not mean that students have lots of free time for watching television, sleeping, partying, exploring life without parental supervision. etc. Instead, kids must recognize the importance of class attendance, regular studying (not memorizing) as well as reading the textbook carefully and often, taking class notes, completing assignments on time and so is critical to success. Lots of good students fall headfirst into a world of hurt as freshmen and can’t rely on do-overs, forgiveness and compassion from faculty, kind-heated deans in academic affairs offices,…There are academic and social consequences to getting in over your head.
Finally, whose ox gets gored? As parents, wouldn’t you be very angry if your qualified student applicant was passed over by someone who was less qualified academically, but more skilled at fabrication? Then the cheater washes out or barely hangs on. I would be seriously annoyed. The SAT/ACT, however you view their merits of lack thereof, sent directly from the testing agency are among the most objective information available for ferreting out cheaters.
I hate to say it, but the system is kind of set up for this kind of stuff.
This may take some flak, but I don’t think other students have a responsibility to report it. Why? They should not have to deal with the consequences of getting dragged in and becoming a possible target of retaliation. Maybe a confidant of a cheater will rat him out, the cheater will lose then a month later, the confidant’s house get vandalized or his tires get slashed. That kind of headache/drama just isn’t worth the minutes it takes from one’s life.