<p>ex: I've been playing the piano since my sophomore year, I'd say I've been doing it since I was in 7th grade or so. </p>
<p>I've attended one or two meetings of certain clubs, I'll say I'm an avid member.</p>
<p>I crammed in all my community service hours my junior year, and I may spread them out to make it seem like I volunteered consistently throughout highshool. </p>
<p>There's a job I wanted to have over the winter as a ski instructor, but they were all hired by the time I asked for an application. I'm going to do it next year, but I may say I did it this winter as well... What are they going to do, call the ski company?</p>
<p>I would never make up an OUTRIGHT lie saying I traveled to Africa to help malnourished children or was a member of a sports team I know nothing about. Like I said, I'd be doing "tweaking..."</p>
<p>I'm sure everyone does it.</p>
<p>Oh, and I may become a lesbian buddhist polygamist just for the admissions process because they look for diversity.</p>
<p>You will definitely get caught. Just wanted to let you know ahead of time. Your application will be nulled and you will be rejected straight out.</p>
<p>Use common sense my friend. The top schools receive around 20,000+ applications each. They devote about 1-2 hrs per applicant. Do you really think they have the time to fact-check? The best they can do is cross-reference your resume with the school’s transcript (assuming it lists your in-school ECs). Having said this, I do not in any way advocate falsifying information on a college application. It is immoral and downright despicable.</p>
<p>^Well that’s not completely true. There was definitely an Ivy-caliber student in my district who got caught. Apparently one school (I don’t even think it was an Ivy) found out and the counselor or someone alerted all the other schools; not sure where the student is now. From what I heard, her parents fought like hell against this but a lie was a lie. I don’t even think it was a significant EC–something like starting a club that didn’t exist</p>
<p>Many of the top schools use alumni interviewers. Alumni who take their free time to interview high school students tend to be very plugged into the community. I have been an alum interviewer. I have caught students in lies including about clubs they claimed to belong to that they didn’t. Indeed, one student falsely claimed to be an active member in a club that my son was president of and that I had extensively volunteered with. The student probably never figured out why they got a rejection letter.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard of students who traveled to interview on campus at a college and just happened to interview the same day as did a student who was the real president of an organization that the other student lied about heading.</p>
<p>I do believe that everyone fudges the application process a little bit. That’s life. I think people also fudge on their resume (as a matter of fact, I was at a professional development seminar that was discussing how to do exactly that, to cover up gaps in education or employment). That’s acceptable.</p>
<p>However, some of the stuff this person (a friend of yours?) is talking about is outright lying. It’s one thing to start playing piano in the middle of your 10th grade year and fudge it to make it look like you started at the beginning, or to liberally estimate your community service hours (or list no hours at all, and just dates, to make it look like you did more than you did). It’s a completely different thing to pretend that you starting playing an instrument a full 3 years earlier than you did (which implies a skill level that you probably don’t have), or to say that you have had a job that you didn’t have (you say you’ll do it next year, but what if you don’t get the job).</p>
<p>This isn’t simple tweaking; this is further than tweaking. It’s a bad idea and shouldn’t be done.</p>
<p>If your lies…uh, I mean “tweaks” are big enough to to give you an admissions boost, then they can be easily found out. If they are so small as to not be found out, then they are too small to help with admissions. So what’s the point?</p>
<p>"I do believe that everyone fudges the application process a little bit. That’s life. "</p>
<p>Not true at all. The students whom I’ve seen who are most involved in activities tend to forget to include things that they’ve done. They also tend to sometimes have to be pushed to include activities that they felt that they didn’t do enough with. I experienced this with both of my sons, and have seen it with other students. I’ve also had to sign off on students’ volunteer work. Often the students who did the most work are the ones who did the worst job keeping track of their volunteer hours: They are the ones likely to underreport their hours and forget to include information about projects that they had major responsibility for organizign. </p>
<p>I’ve seen the same phenomenon with college and graduate students and other adults who are deeply involved in their ECs. For instance, just last week, I was writing a recc for a grad student who’s applying to a leadership program. The program particularly was interested in the student’s community service. I noticed that the student had forgotten to include a drive that she organized during exam period to collect and repair used toys, and then donate them to disadvantaged kids.</p>
<p>The student did that in addition to taking classes, being a teaching assistant, serving on the board of a community organization, starting an on campus graduate student organization, advocating for human rights, and working a part time off campus job. </p>
<p>Yes, there really are people who don’t have to lie about their activities. There are people whose problem is that there isn’t room on applications to list all of the things they are deeply involved in.</p>
<p>northstarmom, reading that made me remember that i forgot some of my service projects - habitat-building, construction at kids’ camps, random mindless volunteer jobs. i’m having a bit of a homer simpson moment here. oops. and that’s the stuff i really love, too.</p>
<p>Anissa, You’re like my sons and many other people – including me – who tend to forget to list on applications the things we most enjoyed doing. That’s because we didn’t do those things to impress people or decorate our resumes. :)</p>
<p>if it didnt happen and you put it on your app, then it is a blatant lie!
I’m not sure how much they check to verify your activities, but if you get caught, they took take away your admission! Chances are they wont though</p>
<p>Those are just blatant lies, it is absolutely not okay. Many people’s estimates for hours spent on an activity are slightly off (either high or low, it’s hard to be exact, especially if you’re really committed and don’t keep track), but don’t add extra years when you didn’t participate in something or intentionally lie.</p>
<p>Colleges know the hours estimates aren’t perfect and that sometimes people do a bad job calculating, so they wouldn’t kill you for a small mistake, but what you’re suggesting are just blatant lies.</p>
<p>even if you say that youre an avid member of a club or you have played piano since the 7th grade, your lies are not much of a difference from what you really did. </p>
<p>And honestly, the college admissions people wont care that your part of some club, even if you lie. Do you think honestly think you your one of the “few people” who have been in clubs? Piano since the 7th grade? So what? I know people who have been playing since the 1st grade and completed all the levels of the MTAC, received Panel awards, and earned a spot in the Young Artist Guild, only a few out of thousands of californians make. Your lies make no difference and your tweaking makes your activities seem even more generic. You know, you might as well not list them. </p>
<p>Why would you tweak things? Its kinda pointless. In a pool of hundreds of thousands of applicants, it makes virtually no impact on your application.</p>