Embellishing Your Application

Level 2 - Admissions 101

Welcome back! One of the most common questions that we receive from parents is on the application submission.

Every college and grad school application includes some reference to a resume, and in particular, a reference to extracurriculars.

While extracurriculars will have a varying degree of impact in your acceptance to a given program, it does not stop people from actively exaggerating their accomplishments in an attempt to stand out and look better in their application.

The question is, should you do it?

Part 1: How common is embellishing?

The short answer: fairly common. People exaggerate on their resumes all the time for job applications - they will do it in an attempt to get to be noticed.

College and grad school applications are no different. Many people exaggerate their applications all in an effort to make themselves stand out.

There are three ways in which people exaggerate their applications:

1. Inflation - where an individual takes an activity that they did and portrays the impact as greater than what it was (e.g., reporting 2000 hours of community services when they actually did 1800 hours)

2. Misleading - where an individual misrepresents the impact of what they have done (e.g., states that they have led research in high school that they were only a participant in)

3. Outright lie - where an individual completely fabricates a specific component of their application (e.g., says that they were on a varsity swim team when they were not a swimmer)

Before we go into these subcategories, we will preface this - we do not believe any individual should exaggerate or embellish their resume. While we accept it is common practice in some circumstances, you should stand on the merit of what you have done. There are other risks as well (we will cover those later), but to be clear - we do NOT endorse embellishment.

That being said, let’s go through these particular options.

The first category of inflating your stats is probably the most common and least risky. College admissions officers are not likely to fact check you that way. Remember, inflation is first based on fact - meaning that you actually did the underlying activity. It also is in the ballpark of what you actually did. Meaning, it’s not inflation to say that you started a lemonade business and sold $10,000 in a few days if you never opened the business - that would be an outright lie.

The second category is also common, but is a bit riskier. There are several applicants that will misstate the impact of what they did. The easiest way to think of it is a group project - imagine that someone takes credit privately for the work of the entire group when they had a small role on the team. It’s difficult to verify upfront, but you can be exposed for it if someone actually knows what you claim to know.

Here’s an example we have seen: an applicant works on a robotics team that achieves some regional or even national recognition. They had a specific role, but they put on the application that they led the entire initiative. They sell themselves as if they are a leader, visionary, the brains of the entire operation.

Here’s the problem: what happens if you have an interview with someone who actually knows robotics? Now you risk being exposed for overselling yourself. Again, the likelihood of being found out on an application is relatively low, but understand the risk.

The final category is an outright lie - simply put, you put something on your resume that is not grounded in any truth. This happens a lot with families that realize at application time, the applicant does not have all of the “boxes” checked.

This is the most dangerous of all - and one that is NEVER recommended or encouraged.

Part 2: What are the risks?

If you are going to embellish your resume, you need to know the risks.

First, understand that admissions officers review thousands of applications. Therefore, the effort needed to independently verify each activity, line item by line item is pretty high relative to the potential outcome.

Secondly, understand the risk if you are caught. In our view, every admissions officer expects some level of embellishment (think category 1) from an applicant. Therefore, it is unlikely someone is going to come after you on the numbers themselves. But if you are caught in an outright lie (think category 3), you are probably disqualifying yourself from admission. A lie on your application is grounds to rescind your acceptance, and then you have to explain THAT for all character and fitness questions for a very long time.

Third, consider the benefit. You could lie on your application and get in, but the question is this - will one extracurricular really make the difference in your admission decision? Unlikely. And the more outrageous it is, the more likely it is to be verified. If you state that you worked as a congressional staffer and wrote policy that became law, be prepared for that to be checked.

Ultimately, this is why it is our belief that the trend in acceptance will shift away from a checklist approach to extracurriculars and instead an impact driven model, where applicants are evaluated on impact of their actions, but that is the subject of a future post.

As always, feel free to ask questions!