Cappex College Blog

The AP has a must-read for anyone sending in a college application this fall. The story centers around “authenticity” on your college applications.

The story quotes counselors and admissions deans as saying authenticity is “an increasingly hot selling point in college admissions as a new year rolls around.”

So what is authenticity? For one counselor it means telling his students to include mistakes, like typos, their applications. For others, it is essays on their flaws or problems. Key passages from the story:

• Colleges say what they want is honest, reflective students. As Jess Lord, dean of admission and financial aid at Haverford College in Pennsylvania puts it, “everybody’s imperfect.”
• For some students, the challenge of presenting themselves as full, flawed people cuts against everything else they’ve been told about applying to college — to show off as much as possible.
• How do colleges find authenticity? They look for evidence of interests and passions across the application — in essays, interviews, recommendations and extracurricular activities.
• The challenge for students is a tough one to get your mind around: If you’re authentic, you feel pressure to rise above the fakers. But try too hard to do that, then you just appear to be, well, inauthentic.
• Colleges are guilty of playing games with authenticity, too.
• “They soften their image with pictures of kids under trees, smiling in front of the library, engaging with a professor in a small group discussion,” Goodman says. What’s the difference between a college trying to look good to students and the reverse?

What does this mean for you? I wouldn’t advise adding mistakes on your resume. But two points to take away: First, be yourself. Don’t join yearbook because you think colleges will like it. Everyone is on the yearbook staff. Find something you love and make it yours.

Two: Make your passions show up on your college application. I’ve spoken with lots of students that got into the college they wanted. One piece of advice regularly shared is “be honest.” Tell a school about yourself. Don’t tell them what you think they want to hear.