<p>I was wondering because UGA allowed me to put organizations that was in church. I was in this organization called Eucharistic Youth in Our Lady of Vietnam. How do colleges know if you are in a club or not? I was really in Eucharistic Youth in Our Lady of Vietnam since I was young, but I’m scared they might think that I’m lying.</p>
<p>They believe you.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to denigrate any particular activity of yours or anybody else’s, but nobody’s acceptance really hinges on his participation in Eucharistic Youth in Our Lady of Vietnam. If the extracurricular activities you list are the kinds of things that most teenagers do (spring musical, varsity tennis, teaching Sunday school, mock trial, etc.), they really don’t question it. Some colleges might check up on a more extraordinary extracurricular claim (e.g., Broadway cast of Newsies, rather than spring musical, or nationally ranked tennis player, rather than varsity tennis team). But those, of course, are things you really could check with just a little bit of Googling.</p>
<p>I think colleges just want to get an idea about your ECs. They only care from 9th grade on, but you can list you were there since you were young. It’s not unusuall to belong to a church since you were young. Lots of kids are. They will catch you cheating if you list the hours and they don’t add up to 24 hours a day. That is how they can tell.</p>
<p>Most colleges really don’t care if you are in extra curricular activities or not, especially the state schools that are primarily numbers-driven in admissions.</p>
<p>For the schools that do put any weight whatsoever on extra curricular participation, listing membership in one organization or club vs. any other really doesn’t make a difference…what those schools are actually examining is the quality of your participation.</p>
<p>In other words, how did your belonging to that organization have an impact…on the organization, on your community, on you? What did you accomplish? Even if you were the president of the organization, it doesn’t really matter, because schools are aware that offices are often no more than popularity contests…the question will be, when you were the president, what did your group accomplish/achieve because of your leadership?</p>
<p>well, if it’s school related, they can call if they think there’s something suspicious. oftentimes, they also ask for a contact so they can verify if someone did something or not.</p>
<p>another hint: if it’s something important enough to make a difference to an admissions committee, it will pop up in a brief google search. </p>
<p>I used to volunteer in the counseling office at my sons’ high school. Very occasionally a college would call to discuss an application with the GC. The GC did not feel any obligation to protect a lying student…her reputation and her ability to help honest students were not worth wasting on a student who misrepresented herself in an application.</p>
<p>Back when I was in school, our punishment/detention was called “Dean’s Club”. One brazen senior listed this as an EC on his applications. Apparently it sounded impressive enough that one college called the GC to ask about it. Unfortunately, the biggest gossip in the school was in the GC office when the call came in, so the whole school had a good laugh about it.</p>