What's to stop people from embellishing their CV/Grad Applications?

[unpretentious username]

And is this common?

I don't mean faking transcripts or intercepting and falsifying GRE scores, I mean stuff like presenting a poster at some obscure undergrad conference or club (but not really), inventing an internship or volunteer opportunity or maybe even a modest departmental award. Do adcomms make any attempt to verify the softer parts of an application? And if not, doesn't this seem like an invitation for desperate students to try and take advantage given how competitive admissions have become and the time and money at stake.

And to head off the obvious question, NO, I don't plan on doing this myself. I'm just wondering if this is common and what checks are in place to prevent this kind of stuff.

Edited July 15, 2012 by unpretentious username

[TheFez]

A few thoughts come to mind.

First, the value of a poster at "some obscure" club or "a modest departmental award" has almost Zero marginal value.

It's pretty clear what Ad Comms place value on because you have to get photographed, fingerprinted and sign sworn affidavits (i.e. GRE/GMAT/LSAT scores), or it needs to come directly from the source in a sealed signed envelope (Transcripts), or emailed to them from three different people (LORs). So that's where 95% of their decision comes from anyway,right?

That might leave a small area to influence a decision with other "fluffy" stuff. But then:

1. For most people, the marginal benefit of lying isn't worth the marginal cost. The small-world principle of 6-degrees of separation makes doing this very risky for most people.

(Imagine the consequences of that made-up "modest departmental award" being accidentally discovered. Yikes - try getting an LOR from your UG professors when they hear about that.)

2. Those that aren't scared by that thought may be the weak applicants who get declined anyway. It seems reasonable that a person who would be "desperate" enough to lie on their grad application has struggled with coursework and school already. So cheating most likely happens by those who don't benefit from it anyway.

[Sigaba]

Rather than wondering about competing against aspiring graduate students who may embellish aspects of their applications, I recommend that you focus only on aspects of your own application that you can control. Everything else is a distraction from what is most important -- you doing the best you can to submit the strongest applications possible.