The University of California is now screening prospective
students to verify the truthfulness of the awards and
extracurricular activities they list on their application
forms.
It’s unfortunate high school students lie on their
applications to make themselves seem more qualified than they
actually are, but it’s not difficult to understand why they
do it. College has, over time, become a necessity for acquiring
high salary, prestigious jobs. And the higher ranked college a
student attends, the greater access the student will have to
top-tier graduate and professional schools, as well as to job
opportunities.
The bigger picture, thus, is not that students are lying on
their applications, but that high school runs more like a beauty
pageant than an educational facility.
Many high schools orient their curricula so it focuses on
preparing students for standardized and advanced placement testing
in hopes of increasing their college marketability. The detrimental
effect of this approach is less emphasis is placed on actual
education, as opposed to developing test-taking skills. This
explains the controversy over the last couple of years surrounding
the SAT I and whether it actually measures academic potential,
since students can excel in it by preparing for the test’s
word games, not by learning history or chemistry.
The change in the perception of colleges’ utility has
affected more than academics. Many students attempt to boost their
resumes by participating in as many extracurricular activities as
possible. They do this to increase their college candidacy
strength, not their character.
Every high school has clubs everyone joins not necessarily for
the merits, but because the clubs are regarded as part of the
standard list of organizations everyone else will put on their
applications. Students can be “members” of large high
school community service clubs, but that “membership”
only requires attendance at monthly half-hour meetings. This can
encourage lying among students who are non-members. So many people
say they belong to large groups like Key Club and CSF,
there’s no reason not to believe them. The students most hurt
by this wide-scale, pseudo-significant clubbing are those who
actually do work long, productive hours.
Just because a number of students lie about their
accomplishments on their applications doesn’t eliminate the
possibility that a larger number do work extremely hard to get into
college. The key is to develop a mechanism for differentiation.
Colleges should require more comprehensive personal statements
and fact check a greater number of them. Lying is much more
transparent and difficult when writing an essay than when listing
activities. Universities should also consider requiring a letter of
recommendation. This would add a significant amount of labor to the
admissions process, but it would also add more honesty. It’s
easy to recognize when teachers write insincere, pre-formatted
letters for a number of students and when they write a serious
letter for a student they actually believe is unique and promising.
Ensuring honesty means developing better measures for determining
qualitative value within the actual process.