As someone who sits in or runs technical interviews fairly often, we will try to determine if someone is lying on their resume. If a skill is on your resume, you are expected to be able to utilize it in a professional context. For entry level folks that bar is pretty much "did you touch the language in a class" or "have you committed code to a FOSS library" (to use two example).

That being said, if the extent of the lie is that a group project is sold as an individual project, as long as the person can talk intelligently about all aspects of the project it's nearly impossible to find something like that out. New graduates are expected to have few skills and produce largely academic (read: bad) code.

But you are correct that technical aptitude by itself has very little to do with getting an interview. You said you are getting your Master's, have you had a programming job in the past? What is your field? We take a pretty skeptical stance with candidates who have advanced degrees and no experience, because nothing we work with requires that sort of knowledge. That may be part of your problem.