<p>Hello, yesterday my older cousin was telling me how he put down on his college application that he volunteered for the Obama campaign when he actually didn't. He said that the colleges would never find out, schools like Harvard and Yale. Wouldn't they be able to ask the campaign or something like that? Thank you!</p>
<p>I doubt he will get caught. If a highly selective college receives 20,000 applications and each lists an average of 5 ECs (both conservative estimates), that means roughly 100,000 phone calls for verification. That simply won’t happen. </p>
<p>The exception would be if he claimed a truly exceptional EC, such as managing the state-wide Obama campaign. This is the kind of EC that would both raise the competitiveness of the applicant as well as become much more easily verifiable. Adcoms typically call the high school GC to talk about questions of this nature, even if the activity in question is outside of school.</p>
<p>Generally however, a small lie on the application will have a negligible impact on admission. Only if it is a big lie would it have any impact.</p>
<p>The downside of this is that it is easy for a disgruntled class mate (or cousin) to call the adcoms and tip them off about the lie after hearing about admission based on a lie. I have heard many stories of admissions being rescinded based on lies on the application that probably did not even impact the admission decision. Bad idea!</p>
<p>The other moral issue is whether you want to gain admission to a school and not know if you truly earned it on your own merit or if it was based on your ability to lie. This could nag you for a lifetime.</p>
<p>Some schools, like the UCs, do random audits of ECs and ask for proof. Seriously, why lie about an EC? If it is something big, it would be easy to verify and if it is little (like field work on a political campaign) it is not going to be a tipping point for a selective school.</p>