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I knew a classmate who openly admitted to putting made up volunteer activities on her college applications, arguing there was no chance the school would fact ch

I knew a classmate who openly admitted to putting made up volunteer activities on her college applications, arguing there was no chance the school would fact check her. She was right!

pzh 9y ago
The problem with these is that they couldn't have been significant enough to make a dent in the outcome. Pretty much all significant achievements are fact-checkable. E.g. you may falsely claim that you were doing karate or basketball, but if you did win any trophies, then most selective schools wouldn't care about you.
- cperciva 9y ago
  You might be surprised. I was on the committee which adjudicated major entrance scholarships for six years, and I can count on my fingers the number of times someone said "can we get some verification of this?" We've never thought that fraud was a common problem, and when you're competing to recruit the top students you really don't want to go back to them and accuse them of dishonesty.. And (although we're revising the system and hopefully changing this part) the relative weighting of "significant achievements" of an easily fact-checked nature vs. "doing lots of stuff" has skewed heavily towards the latter; you could have a resume full of "volunteered at X" and "leader of student club Y" which would be worth as much as the difference between a 90% high school average and a 95% high school average, while containing nothing which would show up online or elicit commentary from a referee beyond "this student is heavily involved". (We're putting together a new system starting next year which is aimed to be more about identifying students who are in some way exceptional as opposed to merely being generally all-round good people. A large part of the motivation for this is to avoid easily "gamed" metrics; nobody spends 15 years playing violin or becomes a national chess master simply because it will look good on their resume. So with luck we'll end up having less of a fact-checking problem in the future; but we're still going to have a significant amount of trust built into the system.)
  - Bakary 9y ago
    Due to the volume of applicants and the rise in competitiveness, don't you end up being faced with a glut of exceptional candidates anyway? In which case the selection would still inevitably amount to a draw based on arbitrary criteria or simply the way committee members felt that day.
  - pzh 9y ago
    I never really understood why admissions committees give any credit whatsoever to 'well-rounded' students. If somebody spent all their time volunteering in 10 different inconsequential clubs, playing 5 musical instruments, and participating in 3 different sports, I would consider them a 'tourist' or a dabbler, if you will, and wouldn't give them any credit. Now if they happened to win a championship, get a gold medal, or qualify for the Olympics, etc., then that's an entirely different story.
    - nharada 9y ago
      What's wrong with doing a bunch of stuff instead of being the best? These kids are in high school, maybe they just wanna try out a bunch of clubs and see what interests them in college and beyond.
      - yorwba 9y ago
        There is nothing wrong with that, but why should trying out a bunch of stuff make someone more eligible for a scholarship?
        criddell 9y ago
        Why shouldn't it?
        protomyth 9y ago
        Doing a bunch of stuff in high school is a pretty big indicator that you are from an affluent school and/or an affluent background. The rest of us had after school jobs or chores. Never mind the parents that can arrange those unpaid internships. As to after school clubs, we didn't have any because we didn't have the money to pay teachers to stay around. If a school actually care about the diversity of its students, then judging on these activities self selects a much narrower socioeconomic background.

I knew a classmate who openly admitted to putting made up volunteer activities on her college applications, arguing there was no chance the school would fact check her. She was right!

pzh 9y ago

The problem with these is that they couldn't have been significant enough to make a dent in the outcome. Pretty much all significant achievements are fact-checkable. E.g. you may falsely claim that you were doing karate or basketball, but if you did win any trophies, then most selective schools wouldn't care about you.

cperciva 9y ago
You might be surprised. I was on the committee which adjudicated major entrance scholarships for six years, and I can count on my fingers the number of times someone said "can we get some verification of this?" We've never thought that fraud was a common problem, and when you're competing to recruit the top students you really don't want to go back to them and accuse them of dishonesty.. And (although we're revising the system and hopefully changing this part) the relative weighting of "significant achievements" of an easily fact-checked nature vs. "doing lots of stuff" has skewed heavily towards the latter; you could have a resume full of "volunteered at X" and "leader of student club Y" which would be worth as much as the difference between a 90% high school average and a 95% high school average, while containing nothing which would show up online or elicit commentary from a referee beyond "this student is heavily involved". (We're putting together a new system starting next year which is aimed to be more about identifying students who are in some way exceptional as opposed to merely being generally all-round good people. A large part of the motivation for this is to avoid easily "gamed" metrics; nobody spends 15 years playing violin or becomes a national chess master simply because it will look good on their resume. So with luck we'll end up having less of a fact-checking problem in the future; but we're still going to have a significant amount of trust built into the system.)
- Bakary 9y ago
  Due to the volume of applicants and the rise in competitiveness, don't you end up being faced with a glut of exceptional candidates anyway? In which case the selection would still inevitably amount to a draw based on arbitrary criteria or simply the way committee members felt that day.
- pzh 9y ago
  I never really understood why admissions committees give any credit whatsoever to 'well-rounded' students. If somebody spent all their time volunteering in 10 different inconsequential clubs, playing 5 musical instruments, and participating in 3 different sports, I would consider them a 'tourist' or a dabbler, if you will, and wouldn't give them any credit. Now if they happened to win a championship, get a gold medal, or qualify for the Olympics, etc., then that's an entirely different story.
  - nharada 9y ago
    What's wrong with doing a bunch of stuff instead of being the best? These kids are in high school, maybe they just wanna try out a bunch of clubs and see what interests them in college and beyond.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      There is nothing wrong with that, but why should trying out a bunch of stuff make someone more eligible for a scholarship?
      - criddell 9y ago
        Why shouldn't it?
        protomyth 9y ago
        Doing a bunch of stuff in high school is a pretty big indicator that you are from an affluent school and/or an affluent background. The rest of us had after school jobs or chores. Never mind the parents that can arrange those unpaid internships. As to after school clubs, we didn't have any because we didn't have the money to pay teachers to stay around. If a school actually care about the diversity of its students, then judging on these activities self selects a much narrower socioeconomic background.