Randomly today I started throwing together a list of all volunteer work I had done over the years. One job in particular I couldn't remember if I had started 3/06 or 7/06 (no idea why, but it's between one of those two). It just got me thinking.. what's to stop someone from completely lying on their application? Seems a little scary to me that I could completely fabricate my shadowing, volunteering and medical job-related history if they really don't verify parts of your app.
What's to stop someone from lying on their app?
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What if they happen to? Take that risk at your own peril.
Like Jimmer said, I think the risks far outweigh the benefits. Im sure there are many who have lied on their application or exaggerated it, but I doubt that it ever made a difference between admission and rejection. Personally, I would never be able to do such a thing. Im not one to jump on the moral bandwagon, but I always wanted to know I earned my privelege to enter med school and I believe that many on this forum share my sentiment.
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What's to stop someone from lying?
Me.
I will look for them. And I will find them.
And then I will give them a stern talking to.
Me.
I will look for them. And I will find them.
And then I will give them a stern talking to.
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In reality there is no way to verify your ECs as the AMCAS application dosn't ask for any phone numbers, addresses, other than city and state, or emails.
Of the 8 secondaries I have recieved, not 1 asks for contact info either.
Obviously they don't care about ECs, as long as you have any medical experience they can use to check a box.
For this they need a clinical LOR, in my case from my volunteer coordinator for the ER I work in.
This proves that at least I wasn't lieing about that and since I worked in the ER the part about shadowing ER docs after my shift is also probably true.
In the end essays can be plagerized and ECs lied about but there are 2 aspects of your application that cannot be faked.
GPA and MCAT. The only 2 things that can be used to determine if someone has the intellectual acumen and discipline to make it through med school.
Med schools may say essays and LORs are important, and perhaps a really great one will help, but most are cookie cutters that say the same formulaic thing and can't help the school know whether or not you can hack it.
So lie away on the ECs, but unless your GPA and MCAT are up to snuff you could claim to be the Pope and have cured cancer and they will simply ignore the lies and reject you.
Or at least that's what I tell myself to help me sleep at night🙂
Of the 8 secondaries I have recieved, not 1 asks for contact info either.
Obviously they don't care about ECs, as long as you have any medical experience they can use to check a box.
For this they need a clinical LOR, in my case from my volunteer coordinator for the ER I work in.
This proves that at least I wasn't lieing about that and since I worked in the ER the part about shadowing ER docs after my shift is also probably true.
In the end essays can be plagerized and ECs lied about but there are 2 aspects of your application that cannot be faked.
GPA and MCAT. The only 2 things that can be used to determine if someone has the intellectual acumen and discipline to make it through med school.
Med schools may say essays and LORs are important, and perhaps a really great one will help, but most are cookie cutters that say the same formulaic thing and can't help the school know whether or not you can hack it.
So lie away on the ECs, but unless your GPA and MCAT are up to snuff you could claim to be the Pope and have cured cancer and they will simply ignore the lies and reject you.
Or at least that's what I tell myself to help me sleep at night🙂
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Nothing.
I think in practice it's supposed to be your "moral compass", but what premed has one of those.
I think in practice it's supposed to be your "moral compass", but what premed has one of those.
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my conscience. for me, feeling guilty is the worst feeling in the world. I HATE IT.
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Personal ethics? Self-respect? Being good enough to not need to cheat?
QofQuimica
Seriously, dude, I think you're overreacting....
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Interviews are one way. If you say something that's clearly inconsistent with what I read in your app, you're busted. If you mention an EC and I ask you for more details, and you can't give me any, you're busted. That has happened to me once so far. The applicant brought something up during the interview, I asked for more details about it, and he tried to fudge by answering a hypothetical question on the topic. The worst part about it is that we had a related question on the secondary, so it's not like this topic came out of left field where he wouldn't have had ample opportunity to think about it. 🙄
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I went to Berkeley and met a 'friend' who told me me that he had written his LORs himself and sent them into the campus letter service that manages our LORs. I didn't do anything about it and I still feel guilty as hell.
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While there will always be slips through the cracks, this is probably why GPA + MCAT >>> EC's and LORs. If you have an EC or LOR that is truly exceptional you most likely would get asked about it in detail. At least I did.
All that stuff about work experience and volunteer time lines, in all honesty, I had totally forgotten the exact month and 'hours per week'. Oh well
All that stuff about work experience and volunteer time lines, in all honesty, I had totally forgotten the exact month and 'hours per week'. Oh well
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Well, I had all my LORs like that. I was an Econ major so all my science classes were those really large pre-med classes (I'm not sure if I had one less than 300-400 students) and getting a genuine LOR from a prof was nearly impossible. What I meant is that he wrote his own LOR and signed it himself for fictional people.
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Integrity and honesty should be reinforced and facilitated. But I guess there's no real way to keep people from blatantly lying. Maybe it my hindu side coming out but I'm a firm believe in the saying: "what goes around, comes around."
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Yup.
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Not always. One of my hs friends lied her ass off to get into Berkeley undergrad. She never did a single activity but had friends in them all. Berkeley ended up giving her a regents scholarship. So sometimes lying pays off big.
I personally don't do it but who's to stop people from trying? A medical degree offers big rewards.
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I heard about the person who did that and they got caught. Apparently that means that they won't get in anywhere now....
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njbmd
At my two medical schools, we have a staff member that does nothing except verify material on the applications of the folks that we have selected to invite for interview. If you are not on the interview list, then who cares what you have on your application? If you are one of our selectees and we can't verify your materials (or you have lied), then you go in the "reject" file. You are free to fabricate if you like but you run some risks. Some schools elect to verify after interview if they are considering your for acceptance. I would hate to spend the money for an interview only to be rejected for fabrication.
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a huge part of being a [good] doctor is having integrity... being honest should not be something you do out of fear of getting caught lying...
but maybe thats just my take on it.
but maybe thats just my take on it.
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I'm glad finally to hear that some schools actually DO verify this stuff.
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Wait, now I'm a little scared...2/5 professors told me to write my own LOR, then send it to them...they are gonna have final say and all that, but is this going to earn me an auto rejection? One class is just large, and the other wanted me to emphasize what I would like med schools to know...both are signing and sending it in departmental envelopes and letterhead with signatures...now i'm worried...
As far as ECs go, 1 of my volunteer projects was through a religious group who very informally asked people to help, so there is absolutely no way to verify that. Also, one of my hospitals keeps a rolodex for hours, no joke, and from what i remember it was a monthly time card, so i highly doubt those are still available...from what people have said here, do I leave those off my AMCAS? Haven't submitted yet, but taking those off would be quite the blow to my volunteer portion...any thoughts on what's best? I don't want to be blacklisted for lack of verification...
As far as ECs go, 1 of my volunteer projects was through a religious group who very informally asked people to help, so there is absolutely no way to verify that. Also, one of my hospitals keeps a rolodex for hours, no joke, and from what i remember it was a monthly time card, so i highly doubt those are still available...from what people have said here, do I leave those off my AMCAS? Haven't submitted yet, but taking those off would be quite the blow to my volunteer portion...any thoughts on what's best? I don't want to be blacklisted for lack of verification...
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njbmd
Don't ask for letters from professors who do not know you well. If you were one of many and you didn't have a meeting with the professor so that he/she could get to know you, then you are going to get a very weak letter.
Don't put any EC on your application that can't be verified. If you don't have verifiable ECs then get some done. It's simply not worth a rejection.
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Actually, both professors know me fairly well...I've talked to each of them several times, and they both said they will edit it to make it as strong as possible, but the outline(?) of the lor will be mine...
As far as volunteering, the 2 unverified add up to about 225 hrs...the other few volunteer things are around 75 hrs or so and they are much more recent (start march 2009)...almost all my hospital volunteer was at a small private hospital over the summers (175 hrs) and this is the major one that can't be verified...problem with starting ec's now is i am applying this cycle...i can get random ppl in the hospital to verify i worked there (nurses in nicu, endoscopy), but i never even met the volunteer director and again, pretty sure my hours are not documented anywhere...in retrospect this was not a good place to volunteer...
shadowed docs, research, etc can be verified easily (except for intramurals, i dont even know who the contact person is for all those)
njbmd, thanks for the advice, much appreciated...if you have anymore that'd be welcome too...
As far as volunteering, the 2 unverified add up to about 225 hrs...the other few volunteer things are around 75 hrs or so and they are much more recent (start march 2009)...almost all my hospital volunteer was at a small private hospital over the summers (175 hrs) and this is the major one that can't be verified...problem with starting ec's now is i am applying this cycle...i can get random ppl in the hospital to verify i worked there (nurses in nicu, endoscopy), but i never even met the volunteer director and again, pretty sure my hours are not documented anywhere...in retrospect this was not a good place to volunteer...
shadowed docs, research, etc can be verified easily (except for intramurals, i dont even know who the contact person is for all those)
njbmd, thanks for the advice, much appreciated...if you have anymore that'd be welcome too...
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Amen.
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What kind of "lying" are we talking about here?
Is it the exaggeration about a certain activity by incorporating some sort of fabrication or making up a totally new activity?
If we are talking former, I wouldn't totally disagree with it as some amount of it is needed to make the app look good. For example, all those interesting autobiographies of people....I don't think everything and anything in there is true per say, some of it needs to be twisted to go with the flow.
But if we are talking latter, then that is running into a huge risk.
Is it the exaggeration about a certain activity by incorporating some sort of fabrication or making up a totally new activity?
If we are talking former, I wouldn't totally disagree with it as some amount of it is needed to make the app look good. For example, all those interesting autobiographies of people....I don't think everything and anything in there is true per say, some of it needs to be twisted to go with the flow.
But if we are talking latter, then that is running into a huge risk.
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But how do they verify without any contact info for the EC? For example, I helped found a club and was its vice president, however the professor who was the club advisor is no longer at the school. She was the contact I put down, but there is no way they are going to contact her. I have her cell phone number, but they didn't ask for it. Also, with my hospital volunteering, I don't remember the name of the volunteer coordinator. And if they look on the website, they are not going to find her name either because I tried that. However, the physician's assistant that I helped in the CVICU will remember me and I have her cell phone number, but they didn't ask for it.
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Shash: don't worry about this too much- one of the 2 hospitals I volunteered at didn't keep records either- we just showed up to whatever department we were in. I would maybe go there and talk to the volunteer coordinator, introduce yourself, etc just in case they do check.
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Awesome, thanks for the info kac...I'll probably go in Monday, even if she can't verify exact hours, I'll at least make sure she knows I worked there...much appreciated!
