<p>your guess on whether you are checked up on is as good as anyone else’s. Most top schools ignore the applications unless you have scores that show you are exceptional. Middle to lower schools may admit you if you can show them the money.</p>
<p>@texaspg- when you said trimester/semester/yearly marks for the transcript…did you mean all or any of these? many people say final scores should do, atleast for indians…but i cant help wanting to double check. however, will a transcript with just final marks for each year be considered less than one with everything?</p>
<p>I had my finals for each year. It did not make a difference(or so I assume, since I got admitted and never heard from the adcoms about it).</p>
<p>It is specific to each school. The schools in US are grading on 6-9 week period that gets rounded off to a trimester or a semester at a time as a final grade. Each of the end point grade is what is reported on on the transcript. As an example of a semester grade - my kid has 3 six week grades followed by one final semester exam grade and the four grades are averaged into a single semester grade. That semester grade is counted as a grade on the transcript and the grades obtained on the report card for each 6 week period or the final test are irrelevant. Even if continuing in the same subject, the next semester grade is counted as a separate grade. It is very hard to reproduce this in India and it is possible you can only have a single grade at the end of each year, just for the final exams.</p>
<p>A good score varies by school you are applying to. If you check the school 25-75% scores and you fall in above 75% range, your score is considered essentially at the highend for that school since you match the top 25% of the admitted class. Most Indian students make up the deficiency in SAT score by being really at the high end for SAT II subject scores in the admission process. Good ECs do help.</p>
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They don’t during the application process, but they (especially top 20 schools, don’t think the others do, but Ivies, etc. definitely yes) check with the school after you have been accepted-- some time after acceptance letter but before school year starts, i.e., anytime between may 1 to ~ July end. That gives them enough time to check with the 200 or so internationals they have. Checking is more common with internationals than US students. If they find discrepancies, at the minimum, your acceptance is taken away. On a stricter level, you might be disallowed entry to the US for life, because you have attempted to enter US territory on false pretenses.
I know quite a few people whose high school told them that a phone call/letter was sent to the school principal regarding the admitted kid’s credentials. This is especially common in cases of schools which are not as well known as DPS RKP and modern/ La Martineire (sp?).</p>
<p>
Lol, isn’t that obvious? 16erDad is pretty enthusiastic about this too. Sick. Guys the least you can do is be a bit less transparent lol.</p>
<p>Anyway, a kid with a good transcript would also have to have good SAT scores (both Reasoning and Subject) etc. And the board (class 10 and 12) results tell all. Board results come out sometime in may, which is during the time unis are contacting schools.
And from what I have learned after coming here and talking to the admissions office is that the Adcoms here know that many people in India try to fake a lot of things, ranging from transcripts to ECs. All the adcom members wouldn’t care to check about fake transcripts, etc., but the person who is assigned to look at your application before it goes on to the main committee, i.e, the regional officer, is well experienced with everything students try.</p>
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<p>I mean why principal, he does not know or have my records. Is not my Guidance Coulcellor the one supposed to be contacted?</p>
<p>my school got some letters; some of them were addressed to the school princy and some to the guidance counsellor. seems to be pretty random. 
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<p>In my school, the principal was the most important person, so even the letters addressed to the guidance counsellor were ultimately shown to him (because they were from abroad ;)).</p>
<p>If your school has a website and they can identify identify a name, that is who they are going to call or write to. If they don’t trust your records, why should they care who you list as a counselor? you could have made that person up.</p>
<p>Your principal should have access to everyone’s records.</p>
<p>The thing about honest reporting is not whether the adcoms verify it or not. If you think you are fooling the college with misreporting again you are not. You are not being honest to yourself. Even if you succeed in fooling ten people around you it does not matter because they don’t know that. But you know that what you get you do not deserve that and are not worth it. And even if you make it by fudging you will be a misfit in a college that admits you on the basis of those. You will be the one miserable not them. You will be heading home after the first or second semester. And you and your family are the ones who will have to live with all the disappointments and heartburn IF you are caught. At the end of the day you have to make that call on how you want to begin your journey into your adult life.</p>
<p>I am from Bangladesh and I can say many students here exaggerate a great deal about their application SPECIALLY the ECs.</p>
<p>I personally know I a guy who applied to 15 schools for Class of 2014. He was rejected by Harvard and MIT but waitlisted at Princeton, Dartmouth and Duke. He took a gap year and later got into Duke, Dartmouth, Amherst and Cornell for the Class of 2015. He had great academic qualifications but most of his ECs were weak and if I had not known him personally I would have thought he deserved these acceptances. </p>
<p>In fact there is a thread in CC about this guy:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/926932-matter-ethics-student-who-should-busted.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/926932-matter-ethics-student-who-should-busted.html</a></p>
<p>Like slakedlime in the above mentioned thread says, he is a star when it comes to academics. Therefore, I believe even if Duke (the school he attends now) did contact the school to verify his credentials, the school could have covered up. </p>
<p>Also I know another student who got into UVA and UCLA from my school but she faked a lot of ECs (surprising since UC system has its own verification method). A contributing factor could be my school has students to Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, MIT, Stanford, Chicago, LSE, Oxford, Cambridge etc - adcomms might know about the strength of our school so they might not have checked.</p>
<p>My point is schools could often cover up for an individual provided the student is popular with the school administration and such occurrences are pretty common in this part of the world.</p>
<p>On a side note, to texaspg, anialways and perfectpixie: My major EC is painting which I have been pursuing for 12 years. I am enrolled at a private art school and a significant portion of my time is spent painting, participating in art competitions and organizing art related events. Should I drop a note to my counselor to mention these in my school report? I will be submitting an art supplement and of course recommendation from my art school.</p>
<p>I think the stellar ECs could be easily verified by a little googling. Otherwise universities like Harvard and Princeton don’t even care about small stuff.</p>
<p>^ True that. But it’s only for ECs/Awards received in 9th/10th/11th grade because anything in 12th grade is too new for Google to pick up … unless you solve cancer :p</p>
<p>I don’t like essays :(</p>
<p>Isnt this debate sort of meaningless? <em>No offence</em> If we have any sense, (and we all do) we wont fake anything anywhere. Too big a risk to take! :O</p>
<p>Btw, what should i do if I have a lot of material in Arts (paintings, sketches and photography) but have had no formal instruction? Does that merit filling the Arts supplement? Im asking because the AS for some colls had fields like, statement by formal arts instructor, honors recieved, institutions attended, whatever. I have done a lot of work, but none of it is, strictly speaking, professional.</p>
<p>Also, if my SAT 1 math scores are below the 25-75% mean for some colls, does that mean i have no chance? (for many, they ARE below the range 
)</p>
<p>It doesnt have to be professional. Only submit an art supplement when:
- It involves a significant portion of your time and you are quite devoted to it and/or
- Your art work has received national/international level awards and/or
- Your artwork isn’t just average drawing and painting- its much more beyond that and/or
- You are applying to art, architecture and design related major.</p>
<p>Art Supplement is strictly speaking supplementary and I have talked with adcomms from several top schools. If your artworks are truly exceptional and you plan to continue it at college it could probably give a boost provided your academics, ECs and recommendation letters are on the par.</p>
<p>The US economy is at its worse right now. Many people are advising that its better to do your undergrad from India and then go to States for Grad since the job markets are declining rapidly and it’s going to be tough in the future. Could anyone throw some light on this? Would it be worth doing undergrad from the states if not from one of the HYPD’s?</p>
<p>Hmm. I have spent a lot of time on it, no awards/prizes, have exhibited ‘locally’ (in an IIT), i plan to take up visual arts, i certainly hope its better than average. I think I will put it in.
Thanks a lot DarthSpawnus (Interesting name 
Darth Vader fan? :P). So what are your dream colls?</p>
<p>Another thing I have learned from admissions counselors here is that they basically take for granted that students from here exaggerate a bit regarding ECs. So they focus more on national/international awards rather than smaller things such as community service for which a certificate can be easily faked by giving a little money.
Honestly, nobody at top schools like HYP cares about anything lower than a state level award. And those too, are mostly verifiable nowadays.
What I have gauged is that they focus more on academics for internationals from places known to focus more on academics than ECAs; my friend from Japan only had Art Club as an EC…</p>
<p>Regarding job market-- it’s only going to get tougher for internationals to get a job here as years progress. I personally, have no wish to work in the US for an extended period of time, although I might work a couple of years before I go for grad school.</p>
<p>PS: Lower ranked schools/schools needing money yet well ranked might still take you in. So people who have the money and fake a tiny part, might still get in. However, those needing financial aid would basically destroying all chances.</p>
<p>The schools are only responsible for confirming waht you did at school. So if you were an academic star but said you played tennis for the school also, the tennis playing is not even checked. Any EC exaggeration that you did that did not belong at the school (if you said you were headboy and the school knows you are not, they need to confirm) can’t be confirmed by school. So if you said you worked in the slums representing RSS or sangh parivar or something like that, the colleges could not care less to check up on that. OTOH, if you said you worked for a well respected/well known scientist or economist on research, it is easy enough for them to send an email to that person.</p>
<p>If they are checking back in May/June time frame, they are essentially checking on your graduation and how you did in your finals.</p>
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Why would you ever want to work in the US? :eek:</p>
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<p>I will stick to what I have been preaching all along. If you do not get scholarship and not super rich, I would strongly advocate - save your money and get your undergrad in India. This is why you should not slack off on the Indian entrance exams. Again, my answer is geared to the math/science/engineering degrees. For jobs, honestly, your named school will only be a name, your experience is what counts. We have many Indian professionals here who are doing very well and they got their undergrads from India and never went to school here in the US.</p>