<p>I know a friend of mine who is a bit more active than me (he is EXTREMELY liberal too) who asked me a couple weeks ago on whether or not I would like to help him organize a rally/bigger protest. I politely declined, since I had been busy with a lot of research stuff. But since then, I have found a bit more time (at least until around mid-December) to dedicate myself to other things. </p>
<p>So is it really worth my time to join my friend in organizing such an event? And if so, how will the schools I apply to know that I really was in fact one of the major organizers of the protest/rally? I’m sure with all the cheating going on these days, they would be much too suspicious of me, and simply dismiss all my hard work, no?</p>
<p>And please don’t think that I do everything in life with college admissions in mind; the only reason I’m in fact asking such questions is because I have been really stressed lately with the standardized exams and A LOT of research stuff outside of school, and so I am extremely tired. I just need a mental as well as a physical break, and I really feel that I can’t work much harder right now unless I weigh in this extra bit of incentive.</p>
<p>gametheory,
Only you can figure out whether it would be worth it to organize that rally. For some people who really care about a issue, the hard work of organizing a rally in support of their views would be a big stress reliever despite their carrying a heavy schedule,</p>
<p>For others, it simply wouldn’t be worth.</p>
<p>Colleges would only know what you’ve done if you tell them (probably via the interview or essay). Since most public colleges select students based on stats and state residency, public colleges probably wouldn’t care. Most private universities wouldn’t care either because they, too, make admissions decisions mainly on stats, and count ECs mainly for merit aid (if they give merit aid. Organizing a protest isn’t likely to help one get merit aid).</p>
<p>The most competitive colleges may care. Why would they be suspicious of you when they know that some students do organize protests? Of course, if during your interview you don’t seem to have much knowledge of or interest i current events, that kind of behavior would cause them to doubt you. Otherwise, however, they’d probably take you at your word.</p>
<p>Northstarmom: What you have said is very warming, yet very chilling at the same time. For it is excellent for me to know that the competitive schools will indeed care somewhat about such work, yet it chills me to think that just about any student can put it on his/her application without ever actually doing the work.</p>
<p>Students can lie and put a lot of things on their apps that aren’t true. However, as various posts in this thread indicate, it’s not hard to catch liars.</p>
<p>Also for an accomplishment to stand out enough to tip someone into a top college, it has to be very remarkable, and that’s easy to verify.</p>
<p>When it comes to protests, years ago, when I was running a journalism internship program, an applicant said in her essay that she had led a protest because by the time that she graduated from h.s., 12 students who had entered with her as freshmen had been murdered.</p>
<p>I thought that was unbelievable, so I checked the archives of the newspaper, and indeed found an article that mentioned the march, quoted her, and I also found the names of the students in her h.s. graduating class (that only had about 400 students) who had been murdered.</p>
<p>OK, on my common app, I tried being as honest as possible. However, for one of my activities, I exaggerated and put down a position that I never really had (but was supposed to have). I already submitted it to a couple of colleges. My conscience is getting to me. Is there any way that I can change my application or create a new one? I know that college officers probably wouldn’t suspect me; I have the GPA, test scores, and recommendation letters to back up what I wrote. However, I don’t want to taint my conscience for the rest of my life because of such a small mistake on my application. After all, the rest of my application is completely factual.</p>
<p>what is the threshold for hours where the colleges start to say “does this kid sleep, do hw and ecs or are they lying?”</p>
<p>FellowCCViewer,
IMHO, you should disclose that you were co-president. My S was co-president one year, president the following. He indicated the same on the explanatory section of his activities section, as well as in his activities resume. It might take a little space, but he was going to make that issue clear.</p>
<p>Doctorjohndorian (love the name, btw), this might help:
[In</a> or Out: Inside College Admissions - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/education/article/0,8599,57724,00.html]In”>http://www.time.com/time/education/article/0,8599,57724,00.html)</p>
<p>“Another [way to know if kids are doing activities just to put them on their apps] is to ask how many hours students spend on each activity. And in an instance where the numbers seemed high? A gimlet-eyed Cornell officer whipped out a calculator to reveal that the (unsuccessful) applicant claimed to spend 50 hours a week on after-school pursuits.”</p>
<p>does that mean i’m an auto-rejection if i noted that i had 42-47 after school hours…w/ leadership positions of course though</p>
<p>and 5-10 of those hours are work employment (i noted that in an attached email sent after the application b/c it was in fact an average of summer and after school)</p>
<p>^Oh and that reminds me of another question, how do colleges verify work experience? And if they don’t, I’m going to kill myself, since I’m sure every single cheating, bad, grrrrr, meanny will put that on his/her application while people like me work their butts off 25-30 hrs a week.</p>
<p>well i had to send in a letter to clarify because 20-25 hours a week during the summer but 5-10 during the school year which averaged out to 15 hours per week during both school and summer, but that was skewing my total amount of after school hours</p>
<p>I’m a college counselor at a top school in Caracas, Venezuela. I have gotten calls from universities checking info once the candidate has made it to the final stages of admission. One kid once put in his resume that he was a member of an elite gifted program done here in English (for native or near-native English speakers) called KBM, that I personally teach. Not only was it not true that he was in, this kid didn’t even take the test to try to get in the program. The university wanted to know what KBM was because they had a similar program according to the description. I told them about the program but that he was not in it. I called him to my office, called his parents and had him send an email to all the colleges he was applying to, correcting the “mistake.” He got accepted only to one of his safeties (paying full price … around 45K) despite having good grades from our extremely demanding school. The kid must hate me now, instead of hating his mistake. BTW, all the other kids from my school, make it honestly to all the elite colleges in the US, Canada, Europe (Hugo Chavez is causing a brain drain here) and here in Venezuela, without fluffing anything. When you’re good and you come from a tough school, you don’t need to lie… because they check, even after you’re in, and even there.</p>
<p>I think some are taking this too far. Of course you should not lie or mislead. But remembering whether you worked 12 hours a week or 10 is not important. My son worked at a cafe a few years ago and not only do we not remember how many hours and most weeks it varied but neither would the supervisor.<br>
And schools and college counselors don’t know those answers either. So the simple mistakes like this are not a big deal. And I told my son to do his app as if he had completed hs. For example, if he is in honors now, then put senior year. But technically, he has not completed it. I do not see this as exaggerating or as a lie. But putting he told more APs or was President of something and was not is a lie. And I TOTALLY agree with whoever said that schools do not accept you because you were in the band for two years vs four …it is that you were committed to something and stuck with it.</p>
<p>AND YOU GET CAUGHT BECAUSE
Top notch schools have students meet local grads. Those grads know who is in what and details about local events. So if you said you organized a rally and there was no such rally or someone else was the organizer, it is usually here that it comes out.</p>
<p>OMG this issue seriously annoys me like no other!</p>
<p>I definitely know ppl who say they are on our school’s Science olympiad team, which happenes to be very good. We have a competive team (pretty selective) and a practice team. Those on the practice team say they’re on the A team all the time. >.<</p>
<p>Some exaggeration is okay. 45 hours of volunteering to 50 hours. But putting down leadership positions never held is plain dishonesty and is wrong.</p>
<p>Rounding up to the nearest hour, honestly estimating on your hours, simplifying the title for a leadership position outsiders wouldn’t understand, and basically anything that doesn’t affect your conscience enough to motivate you to post a question about it–don’t worry about those. But to put it rather bluntly: Are you really self-centered enough to take a seat at a top school away from someone who might have honestly earned it? Until I started browsing these boards, I didn’t know kids who were so competitive they BSed their applications like this. Sure, it might make you look better, and at rare best it might actually affect adcom’s decision, but at what cost? Colleges don’t look at these things just to see who made themselves the busiest. Colleges want students who have something to contribute to campus and who are capable of the challenges they will present. To cheat into a school by pretending you have something to offer that you don’t is a disservice (or at least disrespect) to yourself and to the school.</p>
<p>President vs Co-President vs 4 Presidents</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you are 1 of 2 (or 4) Presidents, you should put down Co-President and then explain why. There must be a division of labor (Co-President responsible for finances, programming & membership vs whatever) or the fact that the club has 300 members and needs more than one President (who is, perhaps, really a higher titled VP - but still has certain responsibilities).</p></li>
<li><p>You say you can’t do that because the common application or on-line application only has boxes to check (e.g. Brandeis on-line app is terrible in that they have a minimum of titles you must check from drop down boxes)?
THEN PRINT AND COMPLETE A PAPER APPLICATION AND MAIL IT IN!!! Even if a school says they only accept the Common or on-line application, take the time and send them a paper one! How many others will do that? I seriously doubt you would be disqualified - you will stand out not as a non-conformist (which isn’t bad) but as someone of initiative who demonstrates tenacity and forces the school to look at your accomplishments that might otherwise get lost in the “mechanical processing”.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“Some exaggeration is okay. 45 hours of volunteering to 50 hours.”</p>
<p>No exaggeration is OK. If you volunteered for 45 hours, put “45 hours” on your app.</p>
<p>I’ve been hearing about people who lie about things they do OUTSIDE of school…alot harder to check…and it makes me so, so angry…because really, it is just plain not fair…and yeah i know people are gonna say life is not fair and yadda yaddda but you’d think people applying to highlevel schools would have a stronger moral character</p>