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It seems that the latest trend among college admissions departments is to favor "authenticity" in students' college application materials. Looking for "honest, reflective students," some colleges, like MIT, go so far as to require prospective students to directly address the topics of failure or disappointment in their applications. Ever eager to please, some college counselors are now actually advising students to deliberately fake a simple mistake in their application (e.g. a typo or two) to better portray themselves to colleges as imperfect, "real" students. From a recent Associated Press article on this subject: "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. At the other extreme, when a college signals what it's looking for, students inevitably try to provide it. So you get some students t...

It seems that the latest trend among college admissions departments is to favor "authenticity" in students' college application materials. Looking for "honest, reflective students," some colleges, like MIT, go so far as to require prospective students to directly address the topics of failure or disappointment in their applications. Ever eager to please, some college counselors are now actually advising students to deliberately fake a simple mistake in their application (e.g. a typo or two) to better portray themselves to colleges as imperfect, "real" students. From a recent Associated Press article on this subject: "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. At the other extreme, when a college signals what it's looking for, students inevitably try to provide it. So you get some students t...