<p>^ I did.
The teacher was like ‘your parents involvement wouldn’t help this case. And that I’m a criminal’ :p</p>
<p>^ you have a decent case for equitable relief through the courts, should you decide to pursue that route.</p>
<p>^ I don’t think I will.
I already had enough drama in my life :)</p>
<p>I wonder where can I get in with this status of mine</p>
<p>If you can explain the situation on your app (both MIT and the common app have a place for additional information), it is possible that some schools will be forgiving (write the full truth, and write as well as you possibly can). I don’t know which, though. Apply to a lot of schools that would otherwise be safeties, don’t fall in love with any of them, and hopefully you’ll be able to laugh this off next year. Also, you should apply to MIT anyway. If you have a good interview and explain it well, there’s always a chance.</p>
<p>Is it just me, or is it kind of incredulous that a student would fail a class, be placed on suspension, and lose a volunteer position all for providing minor lab setup assistance to a classmate?</p>
<p>I hate to say this, but I suspect that there is either more to this story or we are being trolled.</p>
<p>This guy is a transfer applicant who had a C+ in chemistry back when he posted his stats in May of 2011: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/1142619-do-i-have-enough-get-into-mit.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/1142619-do-i-have-enough-get-into-mit.html</a></p>
<p>Universities are usually a lot more stringent than high schools. So if you got caught doing something that’s against academic policy, you’re screwed. I’m sorry, but your best bet right now is to do well in that school after you get off suspension. If you can’t even get a decent GPA there, what makes you think you’ll succeed at MIT?</p>
<p>^ I took 4 chem classes in which i had C+,A,A and now this F.
Well I have pulled up my GPA and did a lot of other stuff too. I was well set for MIT, but now am royally screwed :D</p>
<p>and as far as more to the story… well the principal thinks I was the guy who did their experiment, as i helped them in setting their exp up, which is not what i did. Anyway there’s nothing i could do about it right now.</p>
<p>How can this be academic dishonesty? You should really take this to the courts.</p>
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</p>
<p>So can’t you explain to him what exactly you did?</p>
<p>Honestly, I cannot even imagine someone getting suspended from a school for copying homework or something.</p>
<p>Maybe cheating on a test. </p>
<p>I feel like a lot of labs are partner things, and I can tell you I would have been in a fair bit of trouble at my own school given how I did things. </p>
<p>I understand you don’t want to give yourself any more trouble than necessary, but the school deserves as much trouble as you can give them for this. Make them rot.</p>
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<p>Yeah, I’m with you here (see my first post :P)</p>
<p>Here’s what the principal thinks,</p>
<p>I did NOT help some other students in setting up, preparing and completing their experiment, rather I DID their experiments, as my exp was exactly the same as theirs. Now, according to my school, the other students did plagiarism as they copied someone else’ work.</p>
<p>Here’s what I did,
I HELPED them setup their experiment. Helping could be ambiguous, so here’s a breakup:
assembled the apparatus, told them how the experiment would follow and how they should write their observations and showed them the formulas for the experiment from the book. Every part of the experiment was actually done by them. I physically didn’t do their experiment. Since the setup was exactly what I used for doing for my experiment, thus most of the numbers matched, thus this is plagiarism.</p>
<p>And for those who think am hiding something, I wish there had been more to the story.</p>
<p>So umm… the reason why I opened this thread.</p>
<p>So how should I defend my case while applying to MIT ?
I mean I got a F, so basically what should I write to support it ?
lol perhaps a change of wind for the officers after seeing too many A’s and B’s in other apps :D</p>
<p>I hate to say this but you were probably not going to get in anyway. Your other grades just aren’t good enough.</p>
<p>Good Luck.</p>
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</p>
<p>Explain it to them as you have explained it to us. Tell the admissions office what happened, what the school believed happened, and how it has played out. I think that your faculty Letters of Recommendation become even more important. If there are faculty who are convinced that you were hard done by, and are prepared to say so in writing, then that may help a lot. Your school report will be very important, and impossible for anyone else here to predict.</p>
<p>If the school reports that they are convinced that you did other students work for them, in exchange for money or other favors, then I think that you are in real trouble. Or if they indicate that you are a recidivist, who has been warned about academic honesty offenses before, prior to the incident in the lab, then again, I think that that would be a red flag, not just to MIT, but to most universities. If they say none of these things, then you may well have a chance.</p>
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<p>This is just unpleasant and largely uninformed. MIT does try to admit the whole student, and a single bad grade, or even 2 are not necessarily killers depending on the strength of the rest of the application. And saying “Good Luck” doesn’t make the previous comment any less mean.</p>
<p>That being said, iceui suggested that you were a transfer applicant. If this is so, then you do need to be aware that transfer applications are much much much more competitive than even regular admissions.</p>
<p>@ptcbot, I’m sorry this happened. I’m a professor, and I’ve seen dozens of plagiarism and cheating cases at the college level. It is rarely black and white; there are all sorts of shades of gray. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to find a student accused of plagiarism or cheating who in fact never intended fraud or deception, who believed he was simply helping, or simply writing a draft. Explain it as clearly as you can and let the chips fall where they may. As painful as this is right now – your future has not come to an end.</p>
<p>^ Thanks guys for the support, I really need it :)</p>
<p>So should I write about this in my optional essay or if possible make one of my professors write it on my behalf as an additional note ?</p>
<p>^ I recommend both.</p>
<p>Careful, here. You do not want to insult your school’s policies, as asinine as they are. Explain that it was the result of misunderstanding, miscommunication and unhappy coincidence. (Seriously, data for my chem labs varied wildly, and we all used identical setups.)</p>
<p>Definitely write about it in your optional essay, but also explain what you’ve learned from it. Go for a positive spin. For example: you’ve always been an honest student who would never consider cheating, but now you’ve learned to be careful of situations that could be misconstrued.</p>
<p>If you can get a teacher to back you up on what a great kid you are (and speak to your integrity), you should be all set.</p>
<p>It seems like your principal thinks you did something completely different from what you actually did. Is there no way you can explain the full truth?</p>
<p>If not, your parents need to get more involved because that means the school is falsely accusing you.</p>
<p>Your parents can make your administrator’s lives hell. Threaten going to the BoE, too.</p>