<p>I heard that many students misrepresent themselves and thus were admitted ih Harvard. </p>
<p>How can Harvard find out the misrepresentation? For exampl, EC’s have not any documental evidences.</p>
<p>They have to take you for your word. If you lie, you''ll have the rest of your life to feel bad about it...you'll never really know whether you actually deserved to be there. It's not worth it.
On the other hand, you should be able to "market yourself". If you can't, your chances aren't good. Just don't lie about anything and hope other people are as honest as you are. Lying on applications really isn't as common as people might think...the consequences (i.e. rescinded admission, even if you've been there 3 years) are too great. I heard somwhere that less than 1% of applicants have someone write their essay for them. That's pretty minimal.</p>
<p>Actually, considering how many people are applying to college these days, that's A LOT. That's totally ridiculous that people who have no integrity can get into better colleges because they lie than people who are HONEST.</p>
<p>There's a fine line between lying and good marketing. Let's face it - to market yourself is, to some extent, to misrepresent yourself, because you are making yourself look better than you perhaps really are. For example, a smart applicant is only going to get teacher rec's from the teachers who really really like him, and not from those teachers who are only lukewarm. A smart applicant is going to use the essays to talk about those particular activities and/or traits that really make him look unique and desirable to the school, and not those other activities/traits that don't make him look that desirable. </p>
<p>So the question really comes down to how you choose to define the word "misrepresent". If your definition of 'misrepresent' is to put yourself in the absolute best light possible so as to make yourself look far more desirable than you really are (without actually saying anything that is categorically false), then I would say that practically all students at Harvard misrepresented themselves to get in. And not just at Harvard, but at every other elite school also.</p>
<p>It's only ethic issues, but what about objective things. For example, all the things that are not required to be proved with documents can be easily misrepresented. I am wrong? No one university can disclose it. Yes?</p>
<p>GreenStorm,</p>
<p>sorry to say this.. but you sound like you want to lie or something and want to know if you will get caught. lol... its just a feeling i get.</p>
<p>either way, these days, so many ppl have outstanding ecs and such.. so what you put on your EC list is no longer that important.. they won't care much if you are member of a french club or such. that one thing wont help u get in. they are looking for MAJOR commitment and accomplishments... and for those ones.. if they are really major and outstanding, teachers and counselors should include it in their recommendations.. and for things like volunteering, if you dont get letters of reference, it is very bad.. my GC told us to get letter of rec from volunteering places.. just listing it down is no good..</p>
<p>to sum it up, they wont find the misrepresentations, but they just won't take note of things that do not have substantial evidence in your file to support it.</p>
<p>No, I honest by nature. I only interested in this question, because I know many accidents in it, but I consider it absolutely WRONG!</p>
<p>yeah.. i know. i am not saying that's your intention, dont get me wrong. its just that ur msg gave me that kinda feeling. lol..
dont worry about it.. college admission ppl have ways of telling lies.. especially for regional officers, they are very familiar with the schools... and if more than one student apply from one school, they expect the info to be consistent.. for ex, if someone said they are the founder of this club in 10th grade, another says they are the founder in 9th grade, then obviously there will be phone calls to the school as to find out who is not telling the truth. its a dumb example, but its an instance... as i said, GCs and teachers are usually able to comment on major achievements, and its only the major ones that set you apart.. so dont worry about it.. and i hateapostrophes so i dont ever use them. excuse me.</p>
<p>I am an alum inteviewer for Harvard. I have heard directly from GCs that Harvard's adcoms will spend about 45 mins. on the phone talking with the GCs about students whom Harvard is strongly considering. This typically happened with students who were admitted from my area. I am sure that this is how inconsistencies are spotted.</p>
<p>I also have spotted inconsistencies in students' resumes (which students tend to bring to interviews) when I have interviewed them.</p>
<p>yes.. interviewers can easily pick up lies and inconsistencies.... lol. i forgot about that one....</p>
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<blockquote> <p>the consequences (i.e. rescinded admission, even if you've been there 3 years) are too great.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>They are even tougher than that. Harvard says it will even rescind your degree after you have already graduated when your lies are found out.</p>
<p>Thank you. I'm glad that really qualifying people gave me some answers, but if no interview the applicant has.</p>
<p>Last thing in this thread. At last, how many people during admission lie about themselves? Were they banned? </p>
<p>It seems to me that this is rather pervasive, and need urgent fighting against it. Ufairness must be deleted not only from the admission process but from the entire world.</p>
<p>I'm tired of it.
Thanx another time</p>
<p>Not to sound like a broken record, but I think it all gets down to how you define the terms "misrepresent", "inconsistency", or "lying". </p>
<p>A smart and wily applicant will tailor the application to fit the school. A smart and wily applicant will give different essay answers to the same essay questions, depending on what school the application is. A smart and wily applicant will answer interview questions differently, depending on what school the interview is for.</p>
<p>I know one applicant that was applying to B-school. In his Stanford GSB interview, when he was asked the inevitable question of "Why Stanford?", he talked about how he felt it was important to go to a business school that wouldn't require having to uproot his entire family (they lived near Palo Alto). Yet in his MIT-Sloan interview, when asked "Why MIT", he talked about how his burning passion was technology management, and so he wanted to go to the B-school that provided the best tech and quantitative management program in the world. In his Penn-Wharton interview, he talked about how fascinated he was with the mechanics of finance and how he desperately wanted to make a career change to I-banking. And for his HBS interview, he stressed leadership, leadership, leadership. In every case, the guy basically strongly implied, if not said outright, that the school in question was clearly his top choice school. The guy was admitted to all of them.</p>
<p>So was that lying? Was that misrepresentation? Was that being inconsistent? Or was that just sharp and aggressive self-marketing? You tell me. I would just ask - logically speaking, how can 4 different schools all be be a guy's top choice simultaneously?</p>
<p>In my opinion, as long as you don't outright lie--I would never say that I was a nationally-ranked oboe player, for instance--a little manipulation is to be expected. Like the business school applicant, he said what he knew the schools wanted to hear. BUT, he didn't know that would work or not until he'd been accepted. It could have easily backfired on him. It's marketing yourself, putting yourself out there. </p>
<p>I, for example, am eating, sleeping, breathing and speaking journalism in ever corner of my Dartmouth ED application, talking about how important it is to me in the extra-curricular free response space, and writing about newsmagazine design in my essay. I'm linking my other activities to journalism (like publicity for NHS) in my explanation section. I have a laundry list of journalism awards (some of them national-level), I'm editor-in-chief of my paper and lit magazine, and I'm on my state's journalism student board. Basically, I'm letting them know that journalism is my lifeblood, that I'll make their college newspaper phenomenal (The Dartmouth is kind of weak now), and that it's what I'm passionate about. Am I pushing it really, really hard? Yep. Have I stretched facts? No. I just have a feeling that the REALLY strong high school journalists are probably going to high-ranking J-schools (Chapel Hill, BU, MU, NYU, USC, Northwestern, etc.), and that most other applicants who were on their high school papers were just reporters and did it to fluff their resumes. I highly doubt that there are very many, if any, ED applicants with my numbers and a strong journalism core (at least one as strong as mine). It's a "type," and I'm making darn sure that in my application, I'm fitting it. </p>
<p>I think my case shows that you can run a passion into the ground without stretching it too much. I'm not lying about anything, but I'm letting them know the EXACT nature of my journalism experience and how important it is. If YOU make your achievements seem important, it can only help you. But don't be overly modest because you're afraid of being called a liar.</p>
<p>A good read is the Chuck Hughes' book, "What it Really Takes to Get into an Ivy League School". When you read the chapter about the ECs and what top colleges view with interest, you realize that padding the resume is useless unless you lie big time. And if you do that, you risk getting caught, since those type of honors are very easy to verify and the lists often come up when you are working on ivy admissions. In other words, Harvard does not care that you are a tri-captain of the swim team or sole captain--it does care if you can swim fast enough to benefit the Harvard swim team, and those stats are easily verified and will be by the athletic department. To exaggerate the extent of your ECs will not likely help you as they are looking for ECs of national or international calibre. That you sit first cello at the youth orchestra is not a big deal to a school with Yoyo Ma type cellists. And if you are up there in the EC department, the school will know. So all you do is risk getting caught exaggerating and padding the resume with no upside benefit if you get away with it. It is amazing how many coincidences occur in college admissions, and I know the craziest stories about people who get caught because the adcoms god daughter happens to be editor of the newspaper at the same school that an applicant is claiming to be the editor when he is really a section editor, not editor-in-chief. The world of elite colleges is a lot smaller than people think and you may not be as anonymous as you think you are. My kids have come up with all kinds of connections during interviews that are just astonishing. </p>
<p>As to each school being a favorite, if a student can feel that way about each school in an interview or essay as he writes it, that is one thing. I don't see many 18 year olds that sophisticated and that is a rare talent in itself. Also the interview does not seem to count much from what I have seen, unless some unsavory infor come out in it. I know kids who are terrible at interviews, admit that they bombed the interview and are still accepted over the smoothies who sell ice to Eskimos. It ain't necessarily the interview that got the smooth talker into a school. Nor the essay. Those are small tip factors compared to the strength of the applicant and if he has something that the college specifically wants. Sometimes you can hit it lucky that way. If a school is building its German department and you walk in as a German major with a great profile in that area, well, a good spiel could get you in the door over an applicant with a better overall profile but with nothing the college particularly needs that year. I have found that to be the strongest hook of all--not a laundrey list of ECs, an exciting essay, or a smooth interview.</p>