Making up things in common app activities and awards

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the passion project movement is rooted in this "trust and never verified" system.

you can laugh but the kids who found a "passion" in spring of junior year to cook with grandma (look for our podcast!) while connecting your love for baking with your interest in chemistry were super super successful with top colleges

the fact that you cooked with grandma 4x, did 4 podcasts that were 7 minutes each, than you dropped it all and actually plan on transferring into CS asap all go unmentioned. our high school counselors let people tell their own stories, even when they side eye it all

This is actually what private college counselors help kids do.

There’s a whole cottage industry that charges $50,000 to create these narratives. Very very easy to do and you don’t need to pay to do this well.

Where's the evidence that it actually works though? It's really hard to tell since you'll never know how any particular kid would have done without it.

It works at our private school. For schools like Vanderbilt or Barnard or Middlebury.
Don’t think it’s working for a top 10 school.

It absolutely does work for some. Many of the Coke scholarship winners have grossly exaggerated the impact of their “nonprofits”, most of which are no longer in operation before the end of their senior year.

I know a Coke scholarship winner. Also know a good number of kids that got into Ivies. Most had non-profits or 'passions' that emerged when their family member (grandma, grandpa, etc.) or tribe (parents' village in china) goes through real (grandma's glaucoma) or imaginary suffering (lack of education opportunities at said chinese village) and decided to do something about it (ML programs written by dad or paid programmers in another country to parse through eye photos to detect glaucoma early or educational app developed by foreign developers with 'thousands of visits' from a bot farm in another country). Just checked the app. Downloads stopped the month after the ivy admission. Almost all of them are gunning for wall street or law school . They are not about the money

Best part is, it's not just one kid in the family. If the first one gets into Harvard, guess what, the next 2 or 3 will get in as well. They have perfected the formula, why not keep using it?

Do you have any evidence for your racist remarks?
On the other hand, it has been confirmed that an incredible amount of white students lie on their college applications.
"The main finding: 34 percent of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application. The most common lie (by 48 percent of those who lied) was to be a Native American."
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2021/10/25/survey-asks-if-applicants-are-truthful-about-race#:~:text=The%20main%20finding%3A%2034%20percent,to%20be%20a%20Native%20American.

I know what these kids did! It's not like it's published information that I can share on an anon forum, duh! And I'm not White BTW if that gives you any comfort. Don't just throw out the racist card just because.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the passion project movement is rooted in this "trust and never verified" system.

you can laugh but the kids who found a "passion" in spring of junior year to cook with grandma (look for our podcast!) while connecting your love for baking with your interest in chemistry were super super successful with top colleges

the fact that you cooked with grandma 4x, did 4 podcasts that were 7 minutes each, than you dropped it all and actually plan on transferring into CS asap all go unmentioned. our high school counselors let people tell their own stories, even when they side eye it all

This is actually what private college counselors help kids do.

There’s a whole cottage industry that charges $50,000 to create these narratives. Very very easy to do and you don’t need to pay to do this well.

Where's the evidence that it actually works though? It's really hard to tell since you'll never know how any particular kid would have done without it.

It works at our private school. For schools like Vanderbilt or Barnard or Middlebury.
Don’t think it’s working for a top 10 school.

It absolutely does work for some. Many of the Coke scholarship winners have grossly exaggerated the impact of their “nonprofits”, most of which are no longer in operation before the end of their senior year.

I know a Coke scholarship winner. Also know a good number of kids that got into Ivies. Most had non-profits or 'passions' that emerged when their family member (grandma, grandpa, etc.) or tribe (parents' village in china) goes through real (grandma's glaucoma) or imaginary suffering (lack of education opportunities at said chinese village) and decided to do something about it (ML programs written by dad or paid programmers in another country to parse through eye photos to detect glaucoma early or educational app developed by foreign developers with 'thousands of visits' from a bot farm in another country). Just checked the app. Downloads stopped the month after the ivy admission. Almost all of them are gunning for wall street or law school . They are not about the money

Best part is, it's not just one kid in the family. If the first one gets into Harvard, guess what, the next 2 or 3 will get in as well. They have perfected the formula, why not keep using it?

Do you have any evidence for your racist remarks?
On the other hand, it has been confirmed that an incredible amount of white students lie on their college applications.
"The main finding: 34 percent of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application. The most common lie (by 48 percent of those who lied) was to be a Native American."
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2021/10/25/survey-asks-if-applicants-are-truthful-about-race#:~:text=The%20main%20finding%3A%2034%20percent,to%20be%20a%20Native%20American.

I know what these kids did! It's not like it's published information that I can share on an anon forum, duh! And I'm not White BTW if that gives you any comfort. Don't just throw out the racist card just because.

So you don't have any evidence. You're just being a racist. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the passion project movement is rooted in this "trust and never verified" system.

you can laugh but the kids who found a "passion" in spring of junior year to cook with grandma (look for our podcast!) while connecting your love for baking with your interest in chemistry were super super successful with top colleges

the fact that you cooked with grandma 4x, did 4 podcasts that were 7 minutes each, than you dropped it all and actually plan on transferring into CS asap all go unmentioned. our high school counselors let people tell their own stories, even when they side eye it all

This is actually what private college counselors help kids do.

There’s a whole cottage industry that charges $50,000 to create these narratives. Very very easy to do and you don’t need to pay to do this well.

Where's the evidence that it actually works though? It's really hard to tell since you'll never know how any particular kid would have done without it.

It works at our private school. For schools like Vanderbilt or Barnard or Middlebury.
Don’t think it’s working for a top 10 school.

It absolutely does work for some. Many of the Coke scholarship winners have grossly exaggerated the impact of their “nonprofits”, most of which are no longer in operation before the end of their senior year.

I know a Coke scholarship winner. Also know a good number of kids that got into Ivies. Most had non-profits or 'passions' that emerged when their family member (grandma, grandpa, etc.) or tribe (parents' village in china) goes through real (grandma's glaucoma) or imaginary suffering (lack of education opportunities at said chinese village) and decided to do something about it (ML programs written by dad or paid programmers in another country to parse through eye photos to detect glaucoma early or educational app developed by foreign developers with 'thousands of visits' from a bot farm in another country). Just checked the app. Downloads stopped the month after the ivy admission. Almost all of them are gunning for wall street or law school . They are not about the money

Best part is, it's not just one kid in the family. If the first one gets into Harvard, guess what, the next 2 or 3 will get in as well. They have perfected the formula, why not keep using it?

Do you have any evidence for your racist remarks?
On the other hand, it has been confirmed that an incredible amount of white students lie on their college applications.
"The main finding: 34 percent of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application. The most common lie (by 48 percent of those who lied) was to be a Native American."
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2021/10/25/survey-asks-if-applicants-are-truthful-about-race#:~:text=The%20main%20finding%3A%2034%20percent,to%20be%20a%20Native%20American.

I know what these kids did! It's not like it's published information that I can share on an anon forum, duh! And I'm not White BTW if that gives you any comfort. Don't just throw out the racist card just because.

You don't have to be white to be a racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

But these lies are also probably not going to make the difference in whether they get in or not.

(I agree that it's terrible for the kids to lie, and I'd never condone it. But I think people overweight the value of an individual element among their extracurriculars.)

IDK, it's everything "interesting" about them. the GPA and the scores are the only thing that are harder to fake. and now test scores are over.

Activities section and essays can be super bullshit

The things OP listed aren't that interesting. Anything truly interesting (national kazoo champion?) is probably also verifiable.

But there is no time to verify that a) an org exists, b) how to contact them, and c) verify every participant who won from then.

We need a cleaning house like college board to certify application details so one trustworthy org confirms for all schools, like they did for testing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

But these lies are also probably not going to make the difference in whether they get in or not.

(I agree that it's terrible for the kids to lie, and I'd never condone it. But I think people overweight the value of an individual element among their extracurriculars.)

IDK, it's everything "interesting" about them. the GPA and the scores are the only thing that are harder to fake. and now test scores are over.

Activities section and essays can be super bullshit

The things OP listed aren't that interesting. Anything truly interesting (national kazoo champion?) is probably also verifiable.

But there is no time to verify that a) an org exists, b) how to contact them, and c) verify every participant who won from then.

We need a cleaning house like college board to certify application details so one trustworthy org confirms for all schools, like they did for testing

But what if they’re all small little things that then add up to significant magnitude?

You can give the example of a love for languages or literacy, where kids have a deep interest in something very humanities focus.

So they:
- created a club at school and may be embellished their role or title;
- volunteered hundreds and hundreds of hours to an organization that is in a large metropolitan city but a pretty small one at that;
- did some online research for a small local community college on their preferred language snd disparate impact in immigrant populations - but never published;
- became an interpreter at some municipal organization for their specified language;
- took the AP exam in their language;

And there are other things, and I’m sure they could’ve done as well.

My point is that some of these things are so small in my view to that it’s not worth the AO time to verify, but put together with other very pointy or highly focused activities, it creates a compelling narrative.

When you tie this with the fact that they got the letter of recommendation from their language teacher, and also wrote a very compelling personal statement on how languages are important to them, as an admissions officer are you actually going to check that the hours were embellished, the titles are wrong, and possibly one of the organization is made up?

NO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.

Exactly. The issue with the Varsity Blues scandal is that there were a few coaches who were on the take. And they paid the price for it.

I mean, a couple paid the price. The thing we learned for Varsity Blues is colleges are hackable. Nobody verifies shit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.

Exactly. The issue with the Varsity Blues scandal is that there were a few coaches who were on the take. And they paid the price for it.

I mean, a couple paid the price. The thing we learned for Varsity Blues is colleges are hackable. Nobody verifies shit.

In this case, the people who were supposed to do the verifying (in this case, the coaches) were corrupt. That is certainly going to happen again and there is practically no way to prevent it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

But these lies are also probably not going to make the difference in whether they get in or not.

(I agree that it's terrible for the kids to lie, and I'd never condone it. But I think people overweight the value of an individual element among their extracurriculars.)

IDK, it's everything "interesting" about them. the GPA and the scores are the only thing that are harder to fake. and now test scores are over.

Activities section and essays can be super bullshit

The things OP listed aren't that interesting. Anything truly interesting (national kazoo champion?) is probably also verifiable.

But there is no time to verify that a) an org exists, b) how to contact them, and c) verify every participant who won from then.

We need a cleaning house like college board to certify application details so one trustworthy org confirms for all schools, like they did for testing

This is not going to happen, because contrary to what many people (especially on DCUM) think now, ECs don't actually move the admissions needle all that much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.

Exactly. The issue with the Varsity Blues scandal is that there were a few coaches who were on the take. And they paid the price for it.

I mean, a couple paid the price. The thing we learned for Varsity Blues is colleges are hackable. Nobody verifies shit.

They verify the parental finances and assets, that part they have down to a science.

But I’m ready to volunteer to do the resume audit on every parent here who is AGHAST that kids may do a little embellishing on their applications.

Surely YOU never exaggerate or leave things out of YOUR job applications. That would be dishonest!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

But these lies are also probably not going to make the difference in whether they get in or not.

(I agree that it's terrible for the kids to lie, and I'd never condone it. But I think people overweight the value of an individual element among their extracurriculars.)

IDK, it's everything "interesting" about them. the GPA and the scores are the only thing that are harder to fake. and now test scores are over.

Activities section and essays can be super bullshit

The things OP listed aren't that interesting. Anything truly interesting (national kazoo champion?) is probably also verifiable.

But there is no time to verify that a) an org exists, b) how to contact them, and c) verify every participant who won from then.

We need a cleaning house like college board to certify application details so one trustworthy org confirms for all schools, like they did for testing

This is not going to happen, because contrary to what many people (especially on DCUM) think now, ECs don't actually move the admissions needle all that much.

I think they do if they are part of a coordinated, cohesive area of interest/ narrative. That is the whole point. Random one-offs here or there will not move the needle - I agree.

But if he’s embellished an entire narrative by strategically accentuating volunteer hours/activities etc, and have been organized enough to include all of that in your brag sheet in junior year to your recommenders, and your CCO well, then it’s all backed up by the usual places AO would look for verifiable support, isn’t it?

If you want more information on this, I suggest you go to Reddit. A lot of these students spend a significant amount of time talking about how exactly to do this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.

Exactly. The issue with the Varsity Blues scandal is that there were a few coaches who were on the take. And they paid the price for it.

I mean, a couple paid the price. The thing we learned for Varsity Blues is colleges are hackable. Nobody verifies shit.

In this case, the people who were supposed to do the verifying (in this case, the coaches) were corrupt. That is certainly going to happen again and there is practically no way to prevent it.

Except now they know that the FBI may investigate. Probably not worth the risk for the vast majority. Any organization--private company, church, non-profit etc. -- is going to have some cheats. Higher ed does not make it especially easy to cheat in ways that matter a ton, but it's going to have some.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.

Exactly. The issue with the Varsity Blues scandal is that there were a few coaches who were on the take. And they paid the price for it.

I mean, a couple paid the price. The thing we learned for Varsity Blues is colleges are hackable. Nobody verifies shit.

In this case, the people who were supposed to do the verifying (in this case, the coaches) were corrupt. That is certainly going to happen again and there is practically no way to prevent it.

have you ever heard of an AO verifying .. anything? literally anything?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.

Exactly. The issue with the Varsity Blues scandal is that there were a few coaches who were on the take. And they paid the price for it.

I mean, a couple paid the price. The thing we learned for Varsity Blues is colleges are hackable. Nobody verifies shit.

In this case, the people who were supposed to do the verifying (in this case, the coaches) were corrupt. That is certainly going to happen again and there is practically no way to prevent it.

🚨 exactly right.

AO: Coach this looks fishy, is this kid really a superstar?

Coach (counting pile of hundreds): For sure, man! This kid is the number one Water Poloist in the state, we need them now.

AO: Okay then, admit. I don’t want to be the guy to screw the team over.

Coaches were the weak link because they aren’t paid that much (unless football), and they have a lot of personal leeway in deciding who is talented at these sports with few fans and few players.

Everyone can tell who is good at Basketball. There are HIGH SCHOOL teams that are famous.

Water Polo? Sailing? Crew? Dressage? Who knows. Someone with domain knowledge needs to weigh in, and that’s Couch Corrupto and nobody else.

This is why national science prize winners and Eagle Scout/Gold Award are so appealing to schools: someone exterior to the school that is a trusted source did some vetting. You can easily check if they actually won the award with one email or phone call.

If you’re concerned about fakery, encourage your kid to do verifiable stuff and invite the school to check up on it or provide hard evidence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

But these lies are also probably not going to make the difference in whether they get in or not.

(I agree that it's terrible for the kids to lie, and I'd never condone it. But I think people overweight the value of an individual element among their extracurriculars.)

IDK, it's everything "interesting" about them. the GPA and the scores are the only thing that are harder to fake. and now test scores are over.

Activities section and essays can be super bullshit

The things OP listed aren't that interesting. Anything truly interesting (national kazoo champion?) is probably also verifiable.

But there is no time to verify that a) an org exists, b) how to contact them, and c) verify every participant who won from then.

We need a cleaning house like college board to certify application details so one trustworthy org confirms for all schools, like they did for testing

This is not going to happen, because contrary to what many people (especially on DCUM) think now, ECs don't actually move the admissions needle all that much.

I think they do if they are part of a coordinated, cohesive area of interest/ narrative. That is the whole point. Random one-offs here or there will not move the needle - I agree.

But if he’s embellished an entire narrative by strategically accentuating volunteer hours/activities etc, and have been organized enough to include all of that in your brag sheet in junior year to your recommenders, and your CCO well, then it’s all backed up by the usual places AO would look for verifiable support, isn’t it?

If you want more information on this, I suggest you go to Reddit. A lot of these students spend a significant amount of time talking about how exactly to do this.

Well if anonymous randos on Reddit are bragging about it, that’s all the evidence I need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the thing about this that makes me mad is when college AOs say, "We have people call our school to complain than X kid got in when Y kid did not. But the thing is, they don't know why they were admitted, they didn't see their application or read their essay. We know what we're doing. We dont make mistakes." (The Dartmouth dean says this a lot).

I'd never call a school to rat a kid out, but .. no, Dartmouth, you don't know a kid better than his/her classmates do. Some of these kids have known each other for 12 years .. and you spent 12 minutes reading their app. There are certainly things on the application that their classmates don't know, of course. But they also know that little Larla was not the lead author on that journal, did not start a NFP, didn't play varsity tennis, and did not organize the clothing drive that was the essay topic. There was no clothing drive.

THat's the part that bugs me.

Colleges are not new at this - they know how to verify certain information, and with whom, and they know when a parent starts a non-profit in their home country, and they absolutely know when a parent is jealous of the kid down the street, who was accepted, while their kid was not. Don't dig the hole deeper for your kid, parents.

Colleges didn't even verify kids played the sports they were recruited for - something I could google from my office in seconds.

If you are recruited to play a sport, you are recruited by the college coach, and he or she certainly knows whether or not you play the sport.

Exactly. The issue with the Varsity Blues scandal is that there were a few coaches who were on the take. And they paid the price for it.

I mean, a couple paid the price. The thing we learned for Varsity Blues is colleges are hackable. Nobody verifies shit.

They verify the parental finances and assets, that part they have down to a science.

But I’m ready to volunteer to do the resume audit on every parent here who is AGHAST that kids may do a little embellishing on their applications.

Surely YOU never exaggerate or leave things out of YOUR job applications. That would be dishonest!

I'm okay with embellishing. But these NFPs that are basically throw up and then dismantled 6 months later for the sake of college apps alone is a big problem with college admissions today. I wish a college would do an internal review, a year after they admit kids, to go back and check all those founder stories ... the blogs and podcasts and NFPs .. how many are still active. 80%? 50%? okay. but is it 3%? then , let's get honest about this whole thing