A college application has always contained a peculiar amount of trust. A teenager types that she founded an organization, conducted research in a university laboratory or won a regional science competition, and an admissions officer generally accepts that the thing happened. There may be corroboration elsewhere in the file, but for the most part, the system has operated on an assumption that applicants are telling the truth.
Caltech is testing the limits of that assumption. Its admissions office now has what has inevitably become known as the Caltech admissions fraud squad, a four-person team that examines the applications of admitted students for possible college application fraud. The team checks science fair certificates, contacts counselors and competition officials, searches online records and even examines whether fonts and signatures on submitted documents look right. Caltech says the overwhelming majority of applicants are honest. The interesting part is that it has nevertheless decided trust is no longer sufficient.
For most of the time I have worked in college admissions, lying on a college application has been both possible and surprisingly uncommon. The traditional application contained a great deal of evidence that was difficult for a seventeen-year-old to manufacture. Grades came from schools, test scores from testing agencies and recommendations from teachers. Even extracurricular activities tended to be ordinary enough that there was little reason to invent them.
But selective admissions has moved toward accomplishments that are both more impressive and harder to verify. Students now describe independent research, nonprofits, startups, publications and academic competitions that an admissions officer may never have heard of. At the same time, the tools for creating plausible evidence have become extraordinarily good. The same technology that can help a student build a website or polish an essay can produce a convincing certificate, email or research abstract.
This creates an unusual problem for colleges. The more admissions offices try to understand students beyond grades and test scores, the more they depend on information without an obvious chain of custody. Holistic admissions expanded the definition of merit. It also expanded the amount of merit applicants must essentially self-report.
Caltech’s response moves in the opposite direction. The university now asks some applicants to provide college application evidence supporting extracurricular claims, including photographs, newspaper articles and emails. Students submitting research may also be asked to answer rapid-fire questions about their work on video. The application is beginning to look slightly less like a portrait and more like an audit.
There is an irony here. For years, colleges have tried to make admissions more personal, contextual and qualitative. Yet authenticity in college admissions may ultimately require making parts of the process more forensic.
AI is often discussed as a threat to writing because it makes authorship uncertain. Its more consequential effect may be on evidence itself. When producing a polished description of reality becomes nearly effortless, the scarce commodity is no longer the description. It is credible proof that the underlying thing actually happened.
The potential rise in college admissions fraud does not mean applications are suddenly filled with invented accomplishments. But Caltech’s fraud squad points toward a broader shift. The college application can still tell a story, but behind that story may increasingly sit the same unspoken question: Can you show me?
Marc is the author of Untangling the Ivy League, a best-selling guidebook on the Ancient Eight. He earned a BA from Cornell University and an MBA from University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Marc chaired the admissions ambassadors at Cornell and the admissions advisory board at UNC.
