QiuYidio wrote:
This is correct - CBS now uses Re Vera and every student is checked. Or well, at least, we all paid to be checked. I think it is generally seen as tougher and more thorough. I worked at a fizzled startup several years ago and I had to find old docs to prove that it actually existed and I worked there. My main extracurrics also got called and my recommenders also. Funny enough, we were having dinner when he got it. In regards to employers, Re Vera will call, and then fax a form to your employer detailing essentially everything you wrote down related to that employer (title, length of employment, salary, etc.) and they have to verify it and send it back. I am positive that my past two jobs were asked. If you don't want your employer to know that you got in until a later date, you have the option to indicate this when you pay Re Vera.
No, the app asks no such information for extracurriculars, only for employers. So yes, that is a good question, but I guess that if the organizations you were involved in are well known they may get that information from public online resources. Of course, this creates some problems when the organization is fairly large and, as a volunteer, there may be no centralized information of your participation whatsoever. Take for example a political party with tens of thousands of volunteers. I guess in those cases, if they feel that it is an information that needs to be verified, they may ask you to provide a specific contact within the organization who may be able to confirm your involvement, which of course should not be a problem if you were truthful.
My guess is that the school has the option to customize the background check for each student, so they may verify more details for some students and fewer for others. It may have to do with the weight your extracurriculars had on your acceptance. The higher your involvement/position held, or the more resounding the organization, the more likely they are to want to make sure that you were honest, since it probably had more weight on your acceptance.
This sounds very reasonable. I was a Director (much less fancy than it sounds) of a regionally well known nonprofit. All it would have taken was a simple Google search to find out who to contact. I'm pretty sure that if you were grunt #8172 or door-to-door political campaign #2392, they probably realize it's extremely hard to confirm. Furthermore, I doubt that kind of stuff is what makes or breaks your application, so it would make sense not to bother with it.