<p>"Being Student Gov. president involves, 99% of the time, more work than cleaning band uniforms."</p>
<p>It matters where you are SGA president or are in charge of band uniforms.</p>
<p>I've seen schools in which the SGA officers are officers on paper only. The advisors do the little work that gets done. One example: An SGA officer was supposed to be the student rep to the parent/teacher organization that I was head of. At each monthly meeting, when it was time for his report, he had nothing to report. When we attempted to start projects involving the students, he gave lame excuses for those projects not being possible, and didn't bother to show up at meetings. He asked me for a recommendation for a scholarship program that he was applying to, and was surprised when I told him that I couldn't do it because I had never seen him do anything in his position except say that he had nothing to report.</p>
<p>Being responsible for making sure that 100 band uniforms are cleaned, repaired, etc. each week is a very time consuming, but important responsibility that a person would take on and do well with only if they truly cared about an organization. It's not something that someone would choose to do to try to impress colleges.</p>
<p>The student who did this also expanded the job by taking on duties of mentoring freshmen band members, and creating a program that helped them realize their responsibilities and become truly connected with the band. All of her actions showed a lot of selfless leadership, far more than I have seen in many students who had more impressive sounding positions.</p>
<p>If you lie about Volunteer hours, they will not catch you because they wouldn't really care.</p>
<p>Look... for most things they'll take your word for it. But there's a reason for that. It's because they see the same things over and over... chances are if you're a 2400 4.0 800 x3 SAT II student, you'll get into HYPSIvies or a couple of those anyway with minimal EC's. It's only when your stats are weaker that EC's MAY* be accounted for more.</p>
<p>And if you put something that is REALLY substantial that can actually get you into the Ivies w/o steller stats (something along the lines of Intel, Siemens, USAMO, IMO, USchO etc. etc.) you can bet your bottom dollar that they have a list of those or at the very minimum will google you.</p>
<p>I agree, I have a hard time picturing an admissions officer calling an applicant's guidance counselor to verify that he or she is vice president of the community service club. Obviously lying on an application is immoral and the person willl pay for it subcontiously. The fact that probably less than 1% of applicants exaggerate their ECs tells me that it would be a waste of time for admissions officers to verify each EC of an applicant.</p>
<p>I would say at least 50% of applicants fluff their application though...
But I guess we can define "fluff" as "putting yourself in the best light possible".</p>
<p>i.e. Instead of "co-president" --> "president"</p>
<p>You wouldn't think that colleges would verify the really small stuff. But when I was applying to school, I was in a musical group in which every senior ended up applying to stanford. The two directors listed on their apps that they were directors, as did another guy.</p>
<p>Several months later, our guidance counselors got a call from Stanford, and forwarded it along to the music program directors. Word got out, since the directors asked around to verify what they had thought about the club. Guy who lied got rejected, the story got out around school, and he didn't get in anywhere representative of his stats. On top of that, he made enemies throughout our senior class.</p>
<p>Man, that was quite the choir group. I think we used to advertise at audition time that you had to have a certain SAT score to preserve our average... (jokingly, of course)</p>
<p>whoa. um, what if one of your clubs has four presidents? (it's a huge club... sooooooo... yeah).. and they are in truth presidents.. just that there are many of them?</p>
<p>The thing about the Choir Thing.
It's because 3 people applied to Stanford from the same school and all wrote down the same thing.</p>
<p>For most admissions committees, your regional director will sift through the applications first before advocating you in front of the whole committee. So what does this mean? You will be compared with kids in your region, and your school. Don't lie about stuff that some other kid applying to the same school can tacitly prove that you're lying.</p>
<p>yeah, i understand that that was the reason why, but what if all four presidents (in my case) write down "co-president" and apply to the same school...? We're all going to apply to around the same schools, I think. wouldn't that look funny?</p>
<p>The simple solution? Don't lie. Period. It seems like it's overwhelmingly not worth it. You are free to focus on highlights, but do not lie, and exaggeration shouldn't be neccessary. I looked over my application after reading this. It looks great, and I'm very proud of it. Everything is verifiable, and that is the biggest reason I am proud.</p>
<p>Spare yourself the agony. Just be honest (;</p>
<p>i don't know if you were taking to me... but i just want someone to directly answer my question... would that look weird? I'm not going to lie on my app.</p>
<p>It seems to me that if you're one of four presidents you can truthfully write either "president" or "co-president." However, if you write "president," you may feel stupid if you have to admit in an interview that you were one of four.</p>
<p>I agree that you shouldnt lie about your activities, but how should you list the hours/week and weeks/year for something like soccer? during the season we spend a lot of hours per week doing it. During the offseason, we only spend a few hours a week.</p>
<p>I was president of the school's robotics club last year, but this year I stood down to give an underclassman an opportunity to lead the club. The club sponsor gave me the title of President Emeritus this year (look it up if you don't know what it is >_<). If I put down President for this year and last year, is that any reason to worry? Would they really care about that?</p>
<p>I underestimated my hours. As crazy as it sounds, it is because I didn't think that they would believe that I worked over 40 hours a week on clubs plus fit in volunteering that added up to many hours (250+ in one organization since the beginning of 2006 and random hours in other things) and odd jobs. I would rather underestimate and not raise eyebrows. All of my rec writers, plus my dean, mentioned my involvement though. And one rec writer mentioned that I was active in a club that I didn't even list, which would probably let them know that I'm involved beyond what I focused on in my activities sheet.</p>
<p>"Can someone change "co-president" to "president" on the app since the other president is in a different grade?"</p>
<p>If there is more than one president, you are a co-president no matter what grade the other president is in.</p>
<p>As for the person who asked about what if there are 4 co-presidents: All are still co-presidents. It does sound, however, like your high school is trying to help people fatten their resumes because no matter how big your h.s. is or the club is, it should be able to operate with one president. After all, even places like the U.S. and national organizations have only one president.</p>