How do colleges verify activities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Generally the first step is they call the school counselor to see what they know.

What school has the bandwidth to call high school counselors to inquire about some random extracurricular in a laundry list of activities as they review applications from thousands upon thousands of applicants?

The AOs just email to verify, and, trust me, the high schools respond fast because their reputations are on the line!

How would the high school counselor know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Generally the first step is they call the school counselor to see what they know.

What school has the bandwidth to call high school counselors to inquire about some random extracurricular in a laundry list of activities as they review applications from thousands upon thousands of applicants?

The AOs just email to verify, and, trust me, the high schools respond fast because their reputations are on the line!

Did you know schools lie? My local school has a student newspaper which published an article about a team getting an award. The members of the team were listed. I know one of the kids on the team - he moved to a new school. The school newspaper article was changed to replace that kid’s name with another student’s name. I checked the competition website and the original kid is still listed there. So crazy and corrupt to “give” the award (so to speak) to a random kid who is also applying this year. So if a college calls/emails to ask if original kid did this competition, the school will probably say no!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD volunteers at Ronald McDonald house. Applied ED to Swarthmore. Someone from Swarthmore called RMH to check.

RMH answered and said "would you like fries with that shake?"

How do you know that Swarthmore called RMH?

[Anonymous]

I think calling organization is super tricky because how does a college get to the correct person who can verify if one person has volunteered? My kid did a paid internship at Microsoft this past year and clearly it's a giant company and my kid interned in a regional office of thousands. When my own kid had a question about his program, he couldn't even reach anyone and he was working through a chain of names he was directly given.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think calling organization is super tricky because how does a college get to the correct person who can verify if one person has volunteered? My kid did a paid internship at Microsoft this past year and clearly it's a giant company and my kid interned in a regional office of thousands. When my own kid had a question about his program, he couldn't even reach anyone and he was working through a chain of names he was directly given.

Human Resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think calling organization is super tricky because how does a college get to the correct person who can verify if one person has volunteered? My kid did a paid internship at Microsoft this past year and clearly it's a giant company and my kid interned in a regional office of thousands. When my own kid had a question about his program, he couldn't even reach anyone and he was working through a chain of names he was directly given.

Tax return, pay stubs, reference letter, HR for employment verification letter, contact information for program coordinator.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Volunteering without impact will not have any weight in your application. Don’t worry about it.

He definitely has impact.

Then unless he's Batman, there will be another adult outside of this who could attest to this, and he could also document the impact. Should the activity get questioned, there would be evidence of it.

Well yes, obviously there are adults who know he does this. But there's no place on the app, as far as i can tell, to put a reference.

If the colleges accept an extra recommendation letter and you think his activity supervisors can do it competently, have him request one.

[Anonymous]

Do the Top10 google kids? I'd do a google check and see what comes up. I was surprised when I googled my kid, his national award and other things, like his math team accomplishments, popped up. Maybe they do this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do the Top10 google kids? I'd do a google check and see what comes up. I was surprised when I googled my kid, his national award and other things, like his math team accomplishments, popped up. Maybe they do this?

Yes I was told by current AOs at these schools that they do.

[Anonymous]

I’m a teacher. UVA called me a few years ago about a student . (Emailed me to set up a call first.) So it does happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yale is checking by calling college counselors. UCLA is asking for random applicants to upload pdfs of W2 or paystubs to verify jobs. They are doing a lot more verifying this year

Yale is the school that admitted the crazy girl who was outed by her roommates as a fraud, so this is no surprise.

Also lots more verification in general post Varsity blues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher. UVA called me a few years ago about a student . (Emailed me to set up a call first.) So it does happen.

what did they ask you?