The Rise in Fraudulent Applications and How to Safeguard against Them

Last year, California reported 60,000 fake applications for Student Aid Scheme, pushing Federal authorities to investigate the problem. However, the cases have risen further instead of deterring, as a May 2022 report revealed a 50% increase in bot-driven college enrolment.

The recent Salt Lake Community College incident has put colleges and universities on high alert. Unfortunately, few institutions have the means to prevent these applications or detect them when evaluating them for admissions. Hence, the rise has made industry professionals understandably vigilant.

The problem is that this vigilance has started affecting legitimate applications and impacting results. The only solution is to set up a system to filter fake applications to ensure college administration only receives real ones to evaluate. The good news is that there are a few ways of achieving this goal, and this blog post covers those solutions.

Impact of Fraudulent College Applications

Fraudulent college applications may not be new, but the recent increase has caused extensive panic for college administrators. This panic leads to further problems along the line, the most prominent of which are mentioned below:

1.      Delayed Processing

Processing timelines are the first aspect to get affected by fraudulent applications. It is likely that institutes were not prepared for this activity and have to pay extra attention to each application to ensure they aren’t approving a fraudulent one. The problem is that colleges receive thousands of applications each year, and this careful consideration will cause significant delays in processing.

The delays will throw the rest of the planning off and push the administration to rush other tasks requiring due attention.

2.      Hyper-Vigilance

As mentioned above, the fraud has led administrators to become hyper-vigilant, which isn’t as positive as it seems. The hyper-vigilance affects real applications, often leading evaluators to view them suspiciously. Hence, coincidental similarities with fake submissions can land actual applications in the wrong category, potentially eliminating chances of admission.

3.      Lost Financial Opportunities for Deserving Candidates

Most of these scams have targeted Student Aid Schemes intended to help academically gifted students with financial assistance. Unfortunately, the deserving candidates do not get this opportunity because scammers use their bot applications to take advantage of the situation.

Each fraudulent application can take up to $2,500 in higher education funds. Experts estimate 200,000 applications to be scams, so the sector loses more than $500 million in funds to support talented students with drive and grades to achieve excellence.

4.      Unnecessary Scrutiny

Another extension of hyper-vigilance is unnecessary scrutiny. Trying to avoid fraud often pushes colleges to introduce unnecessarily invasive questions and application requirements that have little or nothing to do with caliber testing.

It makes the application process a hassle and discourages people from applying, especially if they don’t want to disclose personal information.

5.      Reputational Risk

The four consequences mentioned above are candidate-centric; however, they aren’t the only ones on the losing end. Colleges targeted by these scams risk losing their reputation, pushing future applicants and donors to question their capabilities.

Most scams target student aid programs, making stakeholders question the trustworthiness of the admissions decision. This loss of trust is devastating for colleges and requires immediate attention.

How to Safeguard Against This Fraud

Fortunately, there’s light at the end of this dark tunnel. Colleges and universities can take several steps to protect themselves against such scams, minimizing the fraud risk. Following are the top things your institute can do:

1.      Improve Application Review and Approval Process

Firstly, the administration department will need to entirely revise and reconstruct the application approval process. The new approach should have additional components like compulsory verification of references to ensure no candidate succeeds by entering fake information.

It will take longer, but you can offset the delay by hiring a few extra employees for application evaluation.

2.      Leverage Technological Solutions

Secondly, colleges have technology at their disposal to prevent such problems. They’re also lucky because we recently introduced a software solution targeting fraudulent college applications.

Student Application Fraudulent Examination or S.A.F.E. is an A.I.-based spam and fraud detection software that helps filter fake student applications. The software is designed for this function and is currently the only one of its kind. It operates 24/7 and leverages programming and machine learning to ensure it catches even the craftiest frauds.

It also has a system for international verification aside from fraud identification, allowing it to catch frauds from all regions. It is the optimal solution for the problem, so you should schedule a demo to learn more about its capabilities.

3.      Enter Cooperation Agreements with Relevant Institutions

Lastly, it is best to cooperate with related parties and create an integrated system for verification. For example, there should be cooperation in place, allowing colleges to reach certificate issuing authorities and similar institutes to check if the student has provided real or fake credentials or awards.

Centralizing and streamlining the process will make it efficient and help avoid fraud.

Wrapping Up

In short, the best solutions for the rising cases of fraudulent college applications are changing the approval process, introducing S.A.F.E.. These developments have led to the creation of an integrated system with relevant partners. We hope you found this blog post informative and will reach out to the team to schedule a demo soon.