On your activity sheet, there’s plenty of room to fudge the number of hours you spend in a given activity. Don’t do it. If you spend three hours building houses for the homeless, don’t write that you spend four hours. It’s not like the additional hour is going to get you into college and lying isn’t right. Not to mention — it can very easily backfire on you! What if the teacher who is writing one of your letters of recommendation is also your club supervisor? What if they write that you spend three hours a week doing an activity when you wrote a number quite different on your activity sheet.

It’s never worth it to lie on your college application. There’s a good chance you’ll get caught. And even if you do get in and get away with it for now, there’s always the chance that your admission decision can be rescinded at a later time. Do you really want to have to worry about this? We don’t think so. Be honest in every component of your college application.

Check out this video focusing on mistakes on the Common App activity sheet.