Liar, Liar

Why lying on your college application is never worth it, and how schools are catching on.

Every spring, college admissions offices do something most applicants never think about: they go back and look at who they admitted. And sometimes, what they find leads them to withdraw an offer of admission. This isn’t hypothetical — it’s happening more often, and the consequences are severe.

At a recent meeting of the Independent Educational Counselors Association (IECA), admissions officers from Amherst College and the University of Pennsylvania shared candid accounts of exactly this. Their message was clear: dishonesty on a college application is being discovered at higher rates than ever before, and the fallout can be devastating.

The Early Decision Trap

Early Decision (ED) is a binding agreement. When a student applies ED to a school, they are committing that if accepted, they will enroll and withdraw all other applications. It’s not a suggestion or a preference; it’s a contract that the student, a parent, and the high school counselor sign.

But some students have been gaming the system. Here’s what happened in cases discussed at the IECA meeting: a student applies ED to School A and is accepted. Instead of withdrawing their application to School B (say, Amherst or Penn), they leave it active, wait for the Regular Decision round, and, if they get in, renege on their ED commitment to School A in favor of the more prestigious admit.

The result? Those students had their admissions offers rescinded, not just from Amherst and Penn, but also from the original ED school. They were left with nothing. No college. No plan. Just a very hard lesson learned at the worst possible moment.

Lies on the Application Itself

Beyond ED violations, admissions officers described a troubling pattern of outright fabrications on applications. Students have claimed to have:

•  Founded or led a nonprofit organization

•  Organized and directed major community volunteering programs

•  Experienced family hardships or circumstances designed to evoke sympathy

In each case, the truth caught up with them. This year alone, the University of Pennsylvania withdrew approximately a dozen admissions offers, more than in any recent year. Other selective institutions reported similar actions. These are not rare anomalies; they are a growing trend.

Who’s Telling on the Liars?

Here’s a detail that might surprise you: a significant source of tips to admissions offices comes from other students and parents. That’s right, the people sitting in the same AP classes, the same college counseling sessions, the same community events are the ones picking up the phone or emailing admissions officers to report the liars.

Think about it from the perspective of the student who was just rejected from their dream school. They’re devastated. They know that a classmate fabricated a nonprofit they never actually ran, and that classmate just got into the aforementioned dream school based on a lie or extreme exaggeration of the truth. They’re going to be tempted to say something. The Amherst and Penn admissions officers told IECA counselors that these tips are coming in with increasing frequency and that they investigate every credible report. 

Colleges Are Doing More Verification Than Ever

Admissions offices are not passively waiting for tips. They are actively increasing the rigor of their verification processes. A claimed nonprofit can be looked up. A community program can be confirmed with a phone call. Publication in a research journal can be verified. Social media accounts can tell a very different story from the one on an application essay. 

For example, Harvard very publicly rescinded admissions offers for at least ten incoming freshmen in the Class of 2021 because of a meme group chat in which these students used a private Facebook group to exchange highly offensive memes and messages that joked about the Holocaust, sexual assault, child abuse, and targeted various ethnic groups. 

Schools with highly selective admissions have the staff, resources, and motivation to dig deeper, especially when something feels off. And experienced admissions readers have seen thousands of applications; they know what genuine leadership looks like versus a description crafted to impress.

The Worst Part: The Timing

This is what makes application fraud so particularly cruel in its consequences: it is almost always discovered late. We’re talking about April or May, after regular decision results have been announced, after most students have already committed to a school, and after the May 1^st National Candidate Reply Date (aka Decision Day) has passed.

When an admissions offer is rescinded at that point, the student has almost no options. Other schools’ deadlines have passed. Waitlists are full. The few paths available (community college, a gap year, and scrambling to find a school still accepting students through late admission) are not what anyone planned for.

This is no slap on the wrist. This is a life-altering consequence, and it happens to students who, in many cases, were otherwise genuinely competitive applicants. The lie wasn’t necessary. It just made everything worse.

The Bottom Line for Students and Families

Your application is a legal document you sign. You are certifying that everything in it is true. That’s not a formality. It’s a legal and ethical commitment.

Here is my advice (and what we require from our students):

•  If you apply Early Decision, honor the agreement. Withdraw your other applications if you are accepted.

•  Only write about activities and accomplishments that are genuinely yours.

•  If your story is complicated or your background is challenging, tell that story honestly. Authenticity is compelling.

•  Assume that anything you write can be verified. Because increasingly, it can.

The right school for you is the school that wants the real you. A lie might seem to open a door, but it’s a door that can be slammed shut at the worst possible time, leaving you with nowhere to go.

Questions about your college application strategy? Let’s talk.