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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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.)[/quote]

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[/quote]

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

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 [/quote]

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.[/quote]

Does this actually work?[/quote]

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?
[/quote]

But it sounds so performative/fake to manufacture?

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

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