Making up things in common app activities and awards

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS, senior, told us several people in his class have made up titles and awards on their common app; examples below. I’m pissed. He said it’s super common sadly.

- varsity tennis (co-captain); in reality just a member

- Model UN; delegate award

- environmental club; vice president

- food drive; organizer

It’s crazy right? I mean it’s not huge or the end of the world but….

None of that stuff is going to put you over the top if the rest of your application is inadequate. It's all "better than a blank space" but nothing special and AOs know it.

It's certainly not "dad paid for me to found an NGO to help the underprivileged in Rwanda learn how to crochet" level of fakery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys need to read who gets in and why - kids who do this are not in the dozens

How many?

[Anonymous]

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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

And what? Kick the kid out if the NFP isn't still up and running? What about the kids who played French Horn in high school and listed that as an EC, but stopped playing in college, do they get kicked out too?

DP. Yes! But before you do that, stand in front of a mirror and call yourself an idiot for creating a situation that makes kids list all that crap on an application. of course, it's not you. So go yell at your boss for making you do that.

[Anonymous]

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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.

So you actually expect someone to share hard evidence on individuals with strangers? Maybe you need a new brain!

[Anonymous]

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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

Why? To let the world know how they've been fu*king up all these years? What's in it for them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is better:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/s/w4h2NbczQk

This is so incredibly revealing. Wow.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Does this actually work?

[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

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.

Does this actually work?

The above poster is over the top. What high school kid would actually do that, unless it's some off the rails parent pushing that agenda.

And even so, if the school is looking for people interested in some obscure language, the above activities do show that interest, above and beyond what high school students would typically do. What more is the poster expecting a kid to do?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

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.

Does this actually work?

The above poster is over the top. What high school kid would actually do that, unless it's some off the rails parent pushing that agenda.

And even so, if the school is looking for people interested in some obscure language, the above activities do show that interest, above and beyond what high school students would typically do. What more is the poster expecting a kid to do?

But it sounds so performative/fake to manufacture?

I know ppl fake a lot. But it seems weird that this is what it takes…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

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.

Does this actually work?

The above poster is over the top. What high school kid would actually do that, unless it's some off the rails parent pushing that agenda.

And even so, if the school is looking for people interested in some obscure language, the above activities do show that interest, above and beyond what high school students would typically do. What more is the poster expecting a kid to do?

I don't think schools care as much about what you do vs. the fact that you actually do one of two things consistently and deeply - Theater, Band, Robotics, travel sport, writing for the school magazine, exploring a dead language.. whatever. Just do one of two of these for multiple years. If you progress within that, great. If not, you are still showing passion and the ability to commit. Also talk to how this impacted you, changed you as a person, etc. wherever possible in the application.
And all of this ONLY matters if you cross the academic threshold. GPA, Rigor and Test scores. All three need to be excellent for top schools. Two of the three need to be excellent for schools below that level.

[Anonymous]

Almost all private colleges do audits and spot checks of a random sample of students.

Not sure about public universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Almost all private colleges do audits and spot checks of a random sample of students.

Not sure about public universities.

Hmmm. Not so sure.
I think that’s if the whole thing is a blatant lie.

But what if you wrote about your 3-4 months of volunteering with seniors 1x a week with teaching senior citizens tech-savvy stuff and you only did it 2x. There’s no record…so you say you do it 12, 14, 16 weeks a year?

Same for a cashier and stocking job you've had for 3 summers in a now out-of-business ice cream & sweets store.

Same for a tech “internship” with your fathers friends company where you did small tasks and eventually claimed to present at a management meeting?

But you do have some of the other in school EC stuff substantiated.

But the 3 other things are pretty much fabricated.

So I think this is how it works. Nothings a crazy lie….everything is just stretched.

Is that to be expected?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised at so many people dismissing this is minor. Or somehow suggesting that the system created this. This is a case of someone trying to claim a status that isn't theirs. My kid didn't get an office in her club/team. She presented herself as best she good, listing as Sr. + her function on the team. There is no need to invent because you lost a popularity vote. And, making up awards in lieu of earning them just betrays a Trumplike or Santosy justification for whatever it takes to get ahead. Grr.

There is a poster on this board who views the AOs as omniscient beings with the ability to discern truths and lies and all applicants as forthright.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They verify what they want to verify - the money. They have gotten the government involved in this .. just to apply! Allow the IRS to upload your data to APPLY. I'm sure they're wondering how they can get banks to verify your assets. And then come over and tell me even more. WHEN did you buy that Toyota?

They don't verify anything else. They dont even try.

agree with this. they verify what they value.

they could outsource auditing some % of apps and tamp down the lies, but they don't

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Almost all private colleges do audits and spot checks of a random sample of students.

Not sure about public universities.

This is. Not true.