College Application Activities

College Application Activities April 18, 2012 Your college application activities should be truthful ones.  Take a lesson from Richard Vos, the former VP of admission and financial aid at Claremont McKenna College who fudged admissions statistics to boost the schools US News World Report ranking. Dont fudge information on your college application! That means dont lie in your college essays. That means dont lie on your activity sheet. That means dont lie in your college interviews. If you spend three hours a week playing the flute, dont say you spend ten hours a week playing the flute. Its that simple. On your activity sheet, theres plenty of room to fudge the number of hours you spend in a given activity. Dont do it. If you spend three hours building houses for the homeless, dont write that you spend four hours. Its not like the additional hour is going to get you into college and lying isnt right. Not to mention it can very easily backfire on you! What if the teacher who is writing one of your letters of recommendation is also your club supervisor? What if they write that you spend three hours a week doing an activity when you wrote a number quite different on your activity sheet. Its never worth it to lie on your college application. Theres a good chance youll get caught. And even if you do get in and get away with it for now, theres always the chance that your admission decision can be rescinded at a later time. Do you really want to have to worry about this? We dont think so. Be honest in every component of your college application. Check out this video focusing on mistakes on the Common App activity sheet.