I don’t know how many kids lie on college applications.
I also don’t know how many people lie on their resume or on an employment application but it’s a lot. And very frequent stupid lies (as in- easily verified or not). If you passed the bar- that can be verified. Taking it three times doesn’t count if you haven’t passed. If you got a degree in whatever from wherever- there is a centralized repository where most of the colleges and U’s in the US have moved their data. A very few have not so you have to check it by calling/emailing/logging on to the registrar’s office. But most degrees are verified in seconds nowadays.
And my favorite- language fluency. Don’t claim to be fluent in Dutch if you aren’t. “Cause I’m going to have someone from the Amsterdam office log in to your Zoom screening interview and ask a couple of VERY easy questions like “is it raining where you are?”.
Why people lie about this I cannot fathom. Or lie about “named most promising finance executive under 40 by Business Week”, since a two minute scan of the lists going back 20 years easily shows that someone is either on it or off it.
But getting back to college apps- there’s stuff that’s easy to verify and stuff that’s impossible to verify. Why students lie about the stuff that’s easily checked is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.