@JanieWalker . we’ll have to agree to disagree. The student who is exaggerating volunteer hours is not anywhere nearly as bad as a student lying about first gen status or race. Extra volunteer hours are not going to tip the balance for a kid trying to get into a very competitive school, but first gen status might.
There are little white lies and brazen lies. They might all be lies, but one of those is downright lying to achieve an unfair advantage and the other is harmless. Really. Your daughter has done a great thing, and she has the satisfaction of knowing she’s been 100% honest. it affects no one but Susie Smith if Susie says she volunteered for 16 hours, but only did 10. If Susie says she volunteered 70 weeks of the year, well then, she looks like a fool and it serves her right if she doesn’t get in.
@skieurope , re your comment about nothing new in this thread that we haven’t all seen a thousand times, that’s probably true of the majority of posts on CC, lol.
@Lindagaf - yes, we will have to respectfully agree to disagree. There are a few major awards and recognition events that require many volunteer hours. The kid that lies and then gets those awards takes those awards away from the kids who were honest. And yes, having that extra award may very well tip the balance for an admissions decision.
@JanieWalker Yes there is. If someone got a terrible haircut do you lie when they ask you how it looks? I do. I bet you do too. If we are going to exaggerate, your example is as good as mine. Obviously I don’t think it’s ok to lie about volunteer hours when it matters, as in the situation you suggest. We can both take things out of context, right?
Let he who is without sin…
ETA: just saw your post, @OhiBro . That’s an interesting idea, but colleges do expect that a student will at least ask a teacher to read their essay. In fact, admissions officers will tell students that they should have someone check their essays before they submit them.
Seems to me the easiest and most common way to cheat is to have someone else write your essay. So, with colleges using a holistic approach that can largely ignore objective measures such as test scores, the essay becomes paramount.
Essays should be entirely the work of an applicant. No proofreading by others, or anything, but there is no way to ever verify this.
@Lindagaf We are speaking of college applications and the like, yes? That is the context of this thread. Nowhere on the Common App is there a question about anyone’s haircuts…
How am I exaggerating? I am saying it is not okay to lie about volunteer hours, period. That’s not an exaggeration. If someone claims they worked at a homeless shelter for ten hours, but in reality it was only seven and then they took three hours to go see a movie and get their nails done, then that makes that person unethical and a liar for claiming they volunteered the whole ten hours. In the meantime, some other kid does the full ten hours then goes home and does schoolwork without the benefit of the nice movie/nails break. Then both receive equal credit even though one was unethical and one was honest. That’s not okay.
Lying about volunteer hours means a candidate is claiming they did something they did not do. Awards or no awards at stake, the person is presenting themselves in a false light. Applicants are supposed to be truthful. A lie is a lie.
As CC is not a debate society, I’ll leave my response at that and not reply further.
I think volunteer hours are the type of thing it is hard for a college to validate. I mean, my kids got SOME of their volunteer hours signed off on when they needed to for school (if they were volunteering to fill the service requirements their high school had). But if they went beyond that or did something unrelated to that HS service requirement, they got no proof. Their word is going to have to be good enough. I’m sure some people exaggerate their hours. I agree it is unethical. The impact on admissions would vary – someone who said they had 300 hours when they didn’t do it at all, for example, might get some admissions benefit. The person who says they did 20 and did 10, it isn’t going to make a difference.
Other types of things are easier for colleges to validate. Certainly specific awards, or finishing in a certain spot in a state tournament or large competition lends itself to Googling. I’d assume positions like captain of a school team might be revealed by a call to the GC from the college.
But GCs don’t know everything students do. Like one of my kids was active in 4H and had some state fair ribbons to show for it. The HS GC wouldn’t have a clue. Same kid club fenced, and did really well in some local tournaments - no fencing team at school, I doubt the GC even knew my kid was doing it. Oh, and she had some poems published in an online poetry magazine - maybe that could be Googled, but again… GC, no clue.
I wonder if a future scenario might be that colleges will only accept apps that have been approved by a HS GC, and the GC then quizzes kid about the validity of the contents. Obviously this causes issues for non-traditional students of various types, but I’m just trying to imagine how colleges could take steps to be more sure that applicants are portraying themselves accurately.
@JanieWalker, I think that it’s more likely that many kids don’t know – to the hour – how many hours they volunteer. Volunteering is a way of life for my family, so we don’t keep track. Who knew college applications were going to ask for a number. We certainly didn’t. So we estimated. Then we included descriptions of some of our favorite projects. Unless families keep detailed records I don’t know how they’d possibly know. Guessing isn’t lying.
@austinmshauri - I agree, guessing to the best of one’s ability isn’t lying. That’s just honestly trying to do the best one can.
My kids started volunteering at very young ages with two associations that kept track of everyone’s hours for their own records. I wasn’t thinking of number of hours back then because they volunteered just to volunteer, but by the time middle school ages rolled around, tracking exact number of hours became important for various reasons (membership into certain EC organizations, state awards, a national award, their umbrella school for homeschooling, etc). We started keeping track ourselves, getting signatures from supervisors with hours verified every few months. This is the norm where we are with what we are involved with - getting hours documented and sent to supervisors for signatures, so there is verification and no need for estimation. And my kids happened to start volunteering with organizations that kept track of everyone’s hours anyway. I see in your situation where estimation is needed and I agree with you that isn’t lying or unethical.