Essay Stories

Question

What is stopping people from lying on their essays and making some intriguing story about how they saved penguins and seals in like argentina or how they led a team to build houses for kids in africa? There is no background check on that. If people go out of their way to risk cheating on the GMAT and risk going to jail then there are certainly tons of people lying on essays that cannot be verified to get you into school.

Therefore this leads me to believe that the adcoms have to discount stories like that. I think they are more looking to how you express yourself and how your passion comes out in your essays. They are looking more at your strategic thinking and how you connect themes as well as putting into words support for your profile and being able to identify your weaknesses and address them. And to this point I do believe that they would compare writing style on the AWA to your essay. If they are totally off, and there is no verification about anything in your essay, then what's to stop people from paying money to people to create distinctive, amazing, essay stories, true or not?

Or maybe I am just sour because I haven't saved any penguins to write in my essay :-D

MGOBLUE2 · Answer

They may not get caught, but some schools ask for the contact info of the organizaion that sponsored your service.

Maybe I am an optimist, but I doubt lying is profound in these apps. There is too much risk with the background checks, and frankly, I think the AdComs can sniff a fraud.

ncp · Answer

Agree.

sm332 · Answer

the more i read about essays .. the more obvious it seems that aside from some polish, what one really needs is your passion to come through. Not all of us are going to solve world hunger or find the cure to cancer. But incremental improvements achieved through your dedication and passion for a problem (be it minor) will resound and be effective in communicating your potential.

sam77sam7 · Answer

I would like outright lying is probably not that wide spread. That said, these are some of the top institutions in the world, I am sure they have their ways of sniffing out frauds. Either through intuition, checking up on illogical details, or pressing hard in the interview for detail after detail.

I think slight exaggerations are FAR more likely. Saying you managed 15 people instead of 10, or that you drove revenues of 800k instead of 500k. These would probably be harder to check on and raise a lot fewer red flags than espousing how you built whale shelters out of coral in the east Indian ocean...

That said, Don't Do It! Getting into school because you stretched the truth will only lead to self-doubt and guilt.

~Sam

This is spot on I think.

terp26 · Answer

yea that makes sense. I hope you guys are right. That is why I am leaning against an admission consultant or essay service. I feel if I can't figure out and strategize my essays myself, how am I going to strategize for million dollar companies?

sam77sam7 · Answer

Terp,

As a flip-side.. would you ever consider running a million dollar corporation without a financial adviser, or tax adviser? Consultants won't write the essays for you (if you get a respected one), but they will help you make sure your essays are in line with your goals, resume, etc... They often know how the admission comm thinks better than we do from a much larger pool of experience, thus they can guide you around potential rocks in the river you may not even think of.

~Sam

Essay Stories

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards