Sometimes cheaters do get caught. In 2013, Cavya Chandra was eventually caught by the American Medical Application Service when it suspected she had forged her transcripts to medical school. Only then was it discovered that she had forged transcripts and letters of recommendation, been admitted to, and attended Carnegie Mellon and Cornell.
Most of the time, her lies were not caught. The same is true for other college applicants, and most probably lie less than Chandra did.
It goes without saying that students should not lie on their applications, but it is perhaps understandable why they do. Unenforced rules do not feel much like real rules. If the police gave tickets to everyone who went 1 mile over the speed limit, we would understand that the speed limit was true to its name. That doesn’t happen, so most people go a bit over: the enforcement is where the real limit exists.
A student’s extracurricular activities are not fact-checked. No one is checking whether their application essays are accurate, highly edited by someone else, or written by artificial intelligence.
If you think people aren’t lying – especially when there are few limits on them doing so and the rewards for doing so can be very high – then you’re lying to yourself.
Even grades lack authenticity because they are now so inflated. For instance, the University of California, San Diego found that a quarter of its students who could not do even middle school math had perfect 4.0 high school GPAs in math. Some high schools have many valedictorians, such as San Juan Hills High School, which had 242 valedictorians in 2025. Even though 12th-grade students currently have the lowest reading and math proficiency on record, 84% of students at 4-year universities report that they had A-averages in high school. Consequently, grades have become poor signals of academic preparedness.
Between the inflated grades, potentially AI-written essays, and invented activities, colleges don’t have much else to go on except teacher recommendations, which apparently some students still fake.
Colleges need objective assessments like the SAT and ACT to provide them with a standardized measure of basic academic preparedness. But, since Covid, most colleges have not returned to requiring these test scores. In so doing, they choose fiction over fact.
Imagine you apply to a job and an employer says to you, “There is relevant information that helps us predict your success at this job – and the most recent research shows it’s 390% as predictive as any other information – but it’s optional to send it to us. If you don’t send it, that’s fine – we won’t penalize you.”
First, you would wonder what was wrong with this employer. Every employer should want the most relevant information possible to assess whether a new hire will succeed at the job. Second, you would probably not believe them that they won’t penalize you for not submitting it: only those with low scores would not submit their scores, so it would not make sense to hire those who don’t submit that information. Third, if they were telling the truth that they won’t penalize you, then you would assume that they don’t care about the quality of the work or the success of the worker.
In college admissions, it’s a combination of all three.
Test-optional colleges would rather make decisions in the absence of useful information than with it. At top colleges, where the average SAT score is typically around a 1540 out of 1600, research shows that the GPA of students who did not submit test scores matched that of students with about a 1310 on the SAT.
It seems illogical to admit students with significantly lower unreported test scores, unless you realize that test-optional colleges don’t prioritize academic achievement: they want to attract as many applicants as possible so that they look more selective and admit whomever they want (legacies, recruited athletes, full-pay students, etc) without lowering the college’s reported average SAT/ACT score
Now it starts to make sense: colleges, especially test-optional ones, have larger concerns than authenticating the information in a student’s application, even their academic preparedness.
Colleges could require a proctored essay. For instance, the ACT offers one that students can complete. Zero colleges require it.
They could try to verify even one item on each student’s extracurricular list. They don’t.
They could require a standardized entrance exam measuring academic achievement to validate that the students’ grades accurately indicate their academic preparedness. Most don’t.
Kids might have the lowest math and reading proficiency in modern history, but they aren’t stupid. Kids can read between the lines: the truth doesn’t matter; looking good does.
College admissions will remain broken as long as the priorities of colleges remain broken. If and when they decide to value the truth, you’ll know. They’ll require it. Until then, many applicants and colleges will prioritize a false facade over true excellence.
About the Author: David Blobaum is a nationally recognized expert in the entrance exam and college admissions industry. He is the CEO of Summit Prep and the Director of Outreach for the National Test Prep Association, a non-profit that works to support the appropriate use of testing in admissions.
Last Updated on April 7, 2026 by NTPA Admin