High school seniors spend weeks agonizing over their college applications and essays. Mortified by the thought of not getting into the college of their choice, students are forced to beef up their applications with a little stretching of the truth.

Although, college officials claim to fact-check the heck outta college applications, with thousands of applications and essays to read through in a few short months – checking if a student religiously attended Chess Club meetings is doubtful.

It may be a bold move to talk yourself up to the point of disbelief but who knows - maybe you’ll get lucky. Here at OTR, we pay tribute to those gutsy potential freshmen who lied shamelessly to wriggle their way into the nation’s best schools.

-  A Dynamic Figure – Once upon a million years ago (in the early 1990s), a high school senior wrote a hysterically well-written satirical essay bragging about participating in full contact origami, winning bullfights in San Juan and even translating ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees. The author of this college essay, Hugh Gallagher ended up winning a Scholastic Writing Competition in 1990 and was admitted to NYU.

- United Negro Fund: Check! – Affirmative action has been the plight of Caucasian students everywhere. Getting lost in a sea of applications, students will go to desperate measures to increase their chances at an acceptance. Back in the early 2000’s, my friend’s older brother was gearing up for college and in the middle of the grueling application process.

Worried about his Italian and Polish background, he quickly checked the African American box as well as The United Negro Fund. By some miracle of God, his ethnicity was never discovered and he was accepted to La Salle University (note: he never received any scholarship money from UNF).

- John Mongan - What  A Guy! - John Mongan did not have to lie much to get into MIT, he was an intelligent young man therefore making him a perfect candidate for the university. 

MIT is known to be one of the most prestigious schools in the country and apparently one of the most arrogant. After receiving a pompous acceptance letter from MIT, Mongan sent the university a letter back poking fun at their copy and making it clear that it would be an honor for him to accept MIT. This man certainly had courage to seemingly reject and mock this #1 school, kudos to him!