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I was wondering how the yale admissions committee or for any other ivy league school manage to detect students who either exxagerate their achievements or fake their teacher recommendations.

By Dadx (Dadx) on Tuesday, September 09, 2003 - 11:40 am: Edit

Well, it has been successfully done in the past at Princeton, --see this link.

http://www.mileendfilms.com/cm_synopsis.html
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I think the biggest issue is that your transcript and scores are difficult to fake (thank goodness), and if you are admittable you dont want to do anything that would give admissions committees a reason to reject you. If you make up significant accomplishments, your counselor may accidentally give you away---also, maybe schools have some way of cross checking applications to see who is writing the recommendations for you. If you apply somewhere and they dont have a record of you asking teachers for the recs, that would catch you.

Also, people who pull this stuff often get caught because there are enough other people looking into things to trip them up. I once got a call from my old roomate's brother about someone who claimed to have worked where I had. After some discussion including getting through a name change he had made, I remembered this guy as someone whose resume seeemed "too good to be true", and who we suspended when we discovered he had never received his degree. He never returned, but his past tripped him up again 12 years later when I got that call.

This stuff happens far too regularly, and with almost always disastrous reults for the "clever" fellow.

By Chrisy (Chrisy) on Tuesday, September 09, 2003 - 01:46 pm: Edit

Some schools have regional admissions counselors who are the first to read your file and can detect exaggerations/lies because they know your school well (they are the ones you see at your high school and at college fairs). Also they are not hesitant to pick up a phone and call your counselor.

By Ken (Ken) on Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - 09:52 am: Edit

Thanks alot Dadx. Its people like u who make this board worth visiting.