U.S. Colleges Stumped by Fraudulent Applications

An ocean of paperwork and little incentive to prosecute make admissions officers quietly reject fakes when they detect them

By Jane Porter

A letter hummed through on the fax machine at New York University's English department last May. It was a recommendation by Ernest Gilman praising a freshman who was attempting to transfer to Georgetown University and who had earned an A in Gilman's NYU literature course on antiquity and the renaissance. But Gilman was shocked to see a letter he had never written for a student he had never known. In 35 years of teaching, he had never encountered such fraud. "It looks like a three-dollar bill," he says. "I was really astonished that someone would go this far."

Georgetown's admissions transfer committee had initially been impressed by the candidate. On paper was a high school valedictorian with impressive SAT scores and solid grades from a year at NYU. But the academic dean on the admissions committee spotted an incongruous detail: The signature at the bottom of Gilman's letter resembled one at the bottom of the other recommendation letter, almost as though they had been penned by the same hand. An admissions officer called Gilman and faxed the letter to him. Gilman confirmed it was fake.

Georgetown soon discovered that the letter in Gilman's name was just one piece of a carefully fabricated application—including SAT scores, high school and college transcripts, and two reference letters—all of them phony. The student, who told Georgetown he was the victim of a prank, was rejected. An attempt to reach the student by e-mail was unsuccessful.

No Statistics on Fraud

As summer winds down and college campuses come back to life, schools are quietly revving up for the next admission cycle. With applications becoming increasingly global and students hopping from one school to the next, one of the most challenging tasks facing admissions offices this year will be to filter out rogue applicants.

Fake applications remain a small percentage of the documentation that courses through admissions offices. The National Student Clearinghouse, the main educational-credentials verification organization that works with more than 3,200 U.S. colleges and universities, doesn't even track statistics on fraud cases. But with more and more students clamoring for admittance to top colleges whose degrees can boost their careers, the stakes are getting higher.

Still, when schools open student application packets, they expect facts, not fraud. "Legitimacy…is not the first thing you are thinking of when you look at an application. You are looking to fill the class," says the Georgetown admissions officer who first contacted Gilman, and who spoke to BusinessWeek on the condition of anonymity because she no longer works at the school. "It's like trying to tell fake money from real money. You may have to take a couple of looks before you realize it's not legit."

Paper, Paper, From Everywhere

Extra attention can take up considerable time. With competition rising among colleges and universities, any delay entailed in verifying an applicant's credentials can leave the door open for rival institutions to nab a promising student candidate. Dale Gough, director of international services for the National Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and an advocate of stricter vigilance in checking credentials, says most schools speed up the admissions process to offer spots to attractive students, rather than take the time to double check their application materials.

Indeed, the phone call Georgetown made to verify Gilman's letter is a rare event, Gough says. "By and large, you get these letters in and the people reading them don't know the person who wrote them. Very seldom do they bother to pick up the phone or e-mail them."

To make matters worse, the college applicant profile has grown increasingly complex in recent years. Today nearly 20% of four-year college students are transfers from another school. International student applications are increasing, with 3.2% growth in international enrollment in the last academic year. Schools must track down a growing number of transcripts from all over the world.