Applying to college not time for 'truthiness'

If you've ever watched "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central, you've probably heard the host, Stephen Colbert, use the word "truthiness." I believe it is an official English word now; the American Dialect Society has endorsed the word, and it also appears online in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. According to Merriam-Webster, it means "truth that comes from the gut, not books" or "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true."

Truthiness is satirical and meant to be a humorous jab at the state of honesty in modern culture or politics. I think Marilee Jones must have believed in the loose idea of truthiness.

Jones, until recently, was the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She resigned because it was discovered that her resume lacked truth. Rather than analyzing Jones' career or her decision to fabricate a new truth about her educational background, I think there's a lesson about the importance of truthfulness to be learned here.

Though most of us strive to be honest, I can't imagine that anyone has lived a life without lying. We lie in an attempt to deny embarrassing, forbidden or unlawful acts. We lie to avoid punishment. We also lie when we embellish or manufacture the truth, and that can be a real problem for students who are completing college applications.

A college application is just a series of lines and boxes arranged so that students can introduce themselves to college admissions deans. Colleges want to know about courses and tests taken, grades and scores earned, co-curricular activities, talents, interests, passions, personal circumstances and more. They expect complete truth. Not truthiness.

Several years ago, I worked with a young man who had what I call "enormous horsepower." He was extraordinarily bright and articulate. He had straight A's, indeed many A+'s in all his classes. With no test prep or tutoring, he had SAT scores close to 800 on every section.

But that's all he had. He had no extracurricular activities. None. No sports, no music, no volunteering. No school club membership or religious involvement. No scouting or camps. No work experience. He also said he hadn't read any books beyond what was required for school. When I asked him what he did after school, he said that with his father's permission he gambled online. Apparently, he was quite successful at it, too.

Because he was underage, he was engaging in illegal activities. I told him quite frankly that colleges would likely deny him if he listed "gambling" as his extracurricular activity.