In the adult earth, it is fairly common, almost expected, for one's resume to exaggerate their past achievements. In fact, a recent written report establish that 85% of people lie on their resumes in ane form or another. A babysitting gig tin can easily become experience "supervising an energetic group of young associates" and an part filing chore demonstrated your power to "promote synergy and vertical integration for data-management systems." These examples are non lies in the sense that they are not conjured from thin air, but are rather comically souped-upward versions of the truth.

Compare that to famous examples of adults who have achieved notoriety for flat-out fabrications. Frank Abagnale of Grab Me if You Tin can fame, managed to work in high profile professions such every bit medico, lawyer, and airline pilot without possessing a single credential. MIT's Dean of Admissions, Marilee Jones, was exposed in 2007 of not actually having earned any of the three degrees she claimed on her resume. Amazingly, she had been at MIT for 28 years and had even been bestowed an award as their best administrator.

In the college admissions realm, you'd be surprised how oftentimes students, in an effort to brand themselves stand out, go a little as well far in exaggerating their accomplishments and end up putting forth contradictory or incompatible information. For case, if a pupil's resume claims that they had a lead office in The Glass Menagerie just their drama instructor's recommendation lauds them for their admirable work as a stagehand, suspicions will inevitably arise. This is one of many means applicants can stretch the truth and run a risk setting-off an admissions counselor'southward BS-alert.

Write the essays yourself

Ane of the bigger hotspots for countenance-raising contradictions comes on the essay section. A student with a 480 score on the writing Sat whose admissions essay is composed with Hawthorne-level prose will heighten more red flags than a Kyrgyzstani color guard (their flags are red – Google it!).

Regardless of your literary bona fides, admissions officers expect your essay to be written in a 17- or 18-year-sometime voice, not a xl-year-old voice, unless of class you lot are a middle-aged applicant, in which example writing in a teenage phonation would be quite strange. Leave the "quarter" words resting in the pages of your SAT report guides and stick with language of the small change diversity. Nosotros're not saying to impaired anything down, but if an admissions officer comes across an essay littered with words like "lugubrious" or "perfidy," they are going to assume that your essay was written by either a paid essay autobus or the ghost of a 19th century crime reporter.

Of course you should get feedback and editing help from adults throughout your essay-writing process. Just make certain that as you comprise their advice on grammer, flow, judgement-construction, etc., you do non accidentally incorporate their voice as well.

Be honest about extracurriculars

Practise not exaggerate your level of volunteer, piece of work, or extracurricular experience or the number of weekly hours that you spent engaged in such activities. The notion that you somehow volunteered at a nursing home twenty hours per week, while playing iii varsity sports, taking four AP classes, and editing the school paper seems logistically impossible and, if it somehow was truthful, still sounds more unhealthy than impressive.

In that location is no reason to be less than 100% honest about what y'all did in your spare time during high school. Some students, curt on activities, panic at the sight of then much blank infinite on their extracurriculars department that they resort to grossly embellishing or completely inventing clubs, sports, jobs, and the like. This miracle is seen way as well frequently in admissions offices around the land—the applicant from the Great Plains region who founded a spelunking club, the do-gooder who alleges to have volunteered more hours than exist in a week, and the teen who claims to fluently speak five languages merely seems to take trouble remembering any of them during the interview. If you need proof that this fashion of operating ever ends in disaster, see George Constanza's antics in but about any Seinfeld rerun.

Your interests should lucifer your past pursuits

This last topic is not an issue of dishonesty merely rather sheer incongruity. Some candidates stated academic interests in terms of higher and career are not at all supported by their past experience. If you claim to be passionate virtually political scientific discipline and yet passed up the chance to take AP Government & Politics senior year in favor of a massive block of report halls, you take some 'splaining to do. This is non to say that the above scenario cannot represent a sincere and compelling true story. Peradventure you had no interest in history until yous watched the film Dunkirk this past summertime, which then led yous to clear out the history/politics bestseller list off of Amazon, igniting a passion that fueled your search for the nation's top political scientific discipline programs, and forever changed your life course. No problem. Just be sure to relate your unique journey in the application.

Never outright lie/forge/deceive

On a less subtle front, information technology's probably worth touching on the near obvious deception—actual forgery or outright lies. There have been many prominent cases of people going to extremes to deceive admissions committees and eventually getting nailed for information technology. Adam Wheeler was a pupil at Harvard who not simply fabricated Sat scores, transcripts and recommendations in gild to gain acceptance just then went on to forge boosted documents while attention the school in club to compete for prestigious prizes. And so there is story of Akash Maharaj who forged a Columbia transcript with straight A's in gild to transfer to Yale. Committing criminal-level fraud to become into a prestigious academy is a surefire way to go famous for all the incorrect reasons.

Of class, the nigh notable recent example of charade in college admission comes in the form of the Operation Varsity Blues scandal which saw many prominent entertainers and business organization moguls attempt, via a criminal intermediary, to purchase imitation able-bodied scholarships for their children at schools like USC and Stanford. Needless to say, unless y'all want to proceeds infamy as a character in a Netflix documentary and potentially confront prison fourth dimension, exercise non pay someone to take the SATs for you lot, Photoshop your confront onto a crew star's body, or ransom coaches/admissions officers for a hope of acceptance. Information technology feels a little bit silly to fifty-fifty have to put this communication in writing, but, based on recent events, nosotros absolutely feel it is necessary to country this explicitly!

College Transitions' bottom line:

Falsifying any part of your awarding can actually cause an applicant more than damage than a mere blemish or two. Believe information technology or not, an admissions officeholder does not desire to run into a supernaturally well-rounded applicant who claims to accept filled every waking moment with some type of extracurricular activity and even volunteered for a sleep study at a enquiry institute simply to cover those embarrassingly lazy non-waking moments. Colleges want to encounter a real man being capable of communicating their passions and actual life experience. Exist genuine. In the world of college admissions, an honest stagehand is ever a more marketable applicant than a fraudulent lead histrion.