We’ve seen this time and time again among adults. The latest admissions scandal, CEOs exaggerated resumes, etc. Most experts say 40-50% of college applications have at least been exaggerated. Admission “hooks” get a lot of attention these days, it seems easy to just say that neither parent (whether true or not) went to college, look at that now, I’m a first gen and “hooked”. I imagine this has to be happening on a regular basis. Even CA public’s reserve spots for first gen as it seems to be an emphasis area right now.
To me this must have been going on for decades, I mean if Elizabeth Warren wrote in her law school application that she was Native American (not even White and native American) the amount of applicants must making stuff up has to be pretty high. The other issue is the lack of verification by the colleges.
It depends. Is exaggerating the same as lying? I’m willing to bet that the majority of applicants do some minor exaggerating about things that don’t harm anyone, like volunteer hours, or their occasional babysitting gig. I don’t think that’s an issue. Outright fabrication is not acceptable, of course, especially if the fabrication is intended to create a hook of some sort.
I have been way too naive up until now. My kids agonized over whether they practiced 20 hours a week… or 21…and would the schools check. My daughter wrote 19 essays on her own and refused to allow anybody to see them…she finally agreed to allow me to read them as long as I didn’t say anything… I had to agree to stay silent unless I saw a grammatical error.
I still think that most people don’t lie, but I am sure there is some minor exaggerating going on ( is that a lie?). I do know parents who insisted that their kid take on some odd sport or instrument their junior year, but those ideas didn’t work and that’s a whole other topic.
I think the number of people who outright fabricate big things is relatively low, or at least I hope…maybe that’s me being naive.
@twogirls , lol! Same here, trying to count up the days and hours they had volunteered or whatever, and what about the one-off time they helped out at the tournament, did it count, should it just be counted with something else, and so on…
The college shouldn’t be verifying this kind of thing. Was Elizabeth Warren being deceptive? Maybe she genuinely thought she was of Native American heritage at the time, because that was the story passed down in her family. Does the college need to verify it, and should they? I’m not sure about that. If, on the other hand, she applied for a special Native American scholarship, maybe that would be a different circumstance.
The Common App asks for parents’ educational background. So if the numbers of first gen applicants surge, I am guessing colleges might have to take steps to verify that information. First of all, an applicant has to sign the app saying that they are being truthful. It takes a baldfaced liar to falsify information about parents. Are there more brazen liars now than previously? Not sure about that. First gen is only a hook if evything else is in place. I guess I am trusting that the number of liars in the world remains constant.
Since I don’t think you get much of an advantage by exaggerating versus being really accurate - I think it’s better for the soul and character (long term) to be in the specific camp.
And exaggeration now at 18 and believing it is ok and maybe it helps, is what potentially leads to Enron etc later in life.
@twogirls yeah I’ve been naive about how many are lying I think. I used to think everyone was truthful. Now given new info, like the admissions scandal, the Harvard home sale, on top of old news, I’m starting to think most applications have lies in them. My kids also have tracked volunteer and practice hours on excel spreadsheets to make sure they were accurate. Seems pointless now.
@privatebanker , come now. The kid who exaggerates his volunteer hours is not destined to become a fraudster. If I wanted to play devil’s advocate, could we say that you are perhaps guilty of exaggerating? 
The Elizabeth Warren story above is actually false. But I’ve flagged it anyway, since it is political.
@Lindagaf You’re right of course!
It wasn’t what I meant , exactly. So let me explain a little better.
Exaggeration and little lies that “achieve an end” can become a slippery slope. And if you read up on madoff, Rachel dozel and Enron’s they all started as little lies and blurred lines that snowball.
I think it’s better to be as accurate as possible. Especially at this age.
Now being the “president” of x club that has two members is perfectly ok. Shaping a narrative in your application that’s directionally true. A ok by me.
But the habit of making little lies and exaggerations are like all other habits.
To me it depends on exaggerating volunteer hours. Guesstimating based on average hours and number of days and rounding up to give yourself the benefit of the doubt I can see if you’re not tracking super closely.
Knowing you have 123 hours and rounding to 150 is a straight up lie. Don’t see any reason for it.
I proofed my kid’s entire app. No lying or exaggerating unless you count writing a slightly more dramatic common app essay than might naturally flow out of his normally pragmatic self. And we tracked everything super closely. He homeschooled so he had a 13 page transcript with book lists, exact curriculum. etc etc etc.
I definitely think the varsity blues scandal is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to admissions fraud.
Call me cynical, but I’ve seen a number of students with outright lies on their transfer apps for CA publics. Mentally ill mothers seems to be one easy invention to demonstrate that you had hardship in your background. Another student who wore Gucci clothes and drove a BMW wrote about not having electricity in his family’s apartment for six months. Kids are making up all sorts of stuff.
I wonder if admissions offices are going to have to start employing “fact checkers”. (Or more than they already do, hard to know how much of that currently goes on already by current admissions employees)
I think they cross reference a lot already.
They require letters of recommendation. If there are inconsistencies from the student narrative and the info there they can catch things.
They do fact check what they say is most important. Official transcripts for Gpa and course by course grades. Class rigor evaluation from gc. Standardized testing. AP scores. National awards or specific achievements like a published book or scholarly research.
I think the general litany of activities and ecs, as well as, “life stories” are taken with a grain of salt. They gather more meaning when it’s written about by others in the process,which validates the student’s commentary.
Most majors don’t require LORs from transfer applicants to the Cal States and UCs, so there’s really not a good system of checks and balances. This is why the whole idea of holistic admissions is so frustrating. One person’s idea of a “difficult background” differs tremendously from another person’s. I’ve seen students who have truly miserable backgrounds who are too proud to talk about it in an app, and kids who have had pretty commonplace hardships who exploit that to the nth degree.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
No, it’s not. It is not against ToS to give wrong information (and to be clear, EW’s NA claims were not on hew law school application). Incorrect information can be refuted in the thread (as you have done). Additionally, stating a politician has done an action does not necessarily make it a political post. That said, we do not need 50 million posts saying that she never claimed to be NA on her law school application, so let’s move on from that non-topic.
I’m more concerned that I see little in this thread that has not been covered before ad nauseam.
I guess my real concern is first gen applicants, I simply don’t think there is any way to verify if your parents went to college or not.
@Lindagaf, I see a lot of harm in exaggerating or inflating volunteer hours. D21 has a ton of volunteer hours she has to do, and it takes a lot of time management and sometimes sleep deprivation to fit it all in with her already busy schedule. She’s working her buns off to do every single minute of every single hour. It is definitely not okay for some kids to lie about their hours and get away with it while others juggle fifteen things at once and work hard to get it all done. Lying about volunteer hours is just as bad as lying about anything else on the application, IMO.
I just finished judging about 60 third-party scholarship applications. Dear me! Some claimed activities for 70 weeks out of the year. Some claimed doing school-sponsored activities for 40+ hours a week (on top of actual school and other activities). I also saw several applicants list a one-time, one-day, three-hour volunteer gig as an EC (at least they were honest, even if the amount of time spent wasn’t worthy of any points).
I realize there is a line that overly-interfering parents can cross, but to be perfectly frank… if a student asked a parent - or anyone really - to simply glance over the application for those simple kinds of errors, the student’s odds of winning jumped significantly.
I said this on another thread:
Colleges know that all first gens are not the same. There is no box on the Common App that says “Check here if you are first gen.” They will take the information as presented and do with it what it will. So an applicant that fails to mention that his/her parents graduated from college yet hold well-paying professional positions and live in a solidly middle-class (or above) neighborhood will not be viewed the same as the applicant living in Bed-Stuy whose single mother is working 3 minimum wage jobs to put food on the table.