Despite the importance of such factors, graduate schools are often limited in their ability to check up.

"I doubt that any admissions committee in the world has either the time or the personnel," says M. Lynne Wootton, director of admissions at Yale Medical School.

The medical school interview process--which can often include several rounds--is the primary way lies are caught, admissions officers say.

Lee Ann Michaelson '77, the health careers advisor at OCS, says that over-programmed responses from students who are simply trying to please the interviewer can be easy to catch.

Michaelson says she once did a mock interview with an aspiring med school student and asked him the stock question: What field of medicine do you want to go into?

He promptly replied, "primary care."

"What is primary care?" Michaelson asked.

"I don't know, but I know I'm supposed to say it," replied the student.

Both med school and law school deans say letters of recommendation are crucial to the process. But they acknowledge that Harvard's decentralized advising structure makes it difficult for one person to know everything a student has done--or hasn't done.

"When you have 8,000 applicants it is impossible to check every aspect of every file," says Andy P. Cornblatt, assistant dean for admissions at Georgetown Law. "The best check I know is to listen to the person's letters of recommendations, which should echo [from one writer to another]."

And Beyond?

While some students surely exploit the possibilities for deception which lie within the process, others emphasize the long-term ramifications of being honest with oneself.

"No doubt everyone went through this process of preening your background in high school," says Andrew H. Ahn, a Harvard medical student who is nine years out of college.

"But it never ends," he adds. If you are constantly "buffing up your resume for the next launching pad, you're wasting your worthwhile time.