<p>Colleges can probably verify stuff that’s been published, like National Merit and other awards. Sometimes, they’ll just think that something seems suspicious and take it to be a lie. At a Penn information session, they said that one admissions officer doubted that an applicant was really doing all of the activities she said she was, so he counted up the number of hours per week she was living. Her application indicated that she was doing about 200 hours/week of activities, not even including school and sleep and other day-to-day activities.</p>
<p>Honestly, admissions counselors can tell when an application seems a little “off”. The person claims to be a member of all of these activities, but there is no consistency between the activities. Or maybe these activities are never metioned again, whether in recommendations or in essays and such. Or maybe the applicant is a really bad liar and says that they led all of these events put doesn’t have any solid, credible evidence to show for it.</p>
<p>I’m proud to say that all of the information on my applications were 100% true. Besides, I didn’t want to take the risk of lying or exaggerating and getting called out on it.</p>