How is it her fault for choosing a new question?
These quotes indicate, at least to me, that you still have not accepted responsibility for your actions and that is the most problematic part of the entire discussion.
^ this.
While you might be “qualified” for the schools you list in post #19, with a 3.78 unweighted prior to the C-, none of these could be considered sure bets. They are all very competitive for admission.
@skieurope I have already accepted responsibility of my actions and just wanted to tell @Sybylla the full story. I am truly regretful of what I have done and I feel very ashamed of my actions. This incident stemmed from the fact that I was undergoing a lot of pressure due to my close family member falling ill.
Why is it so hard for you to own your cheating? You did it, it’s part of you and your history. Why not write about it in your essay and let the chips fall where they may?
@JollyoRanchero sorry if this is harsh but what bothers me most is you received a gift by not having the cheating reported and your plan is to lie by omission and blame the grade on other circumstances with no mention of the incident. Cheating again. Bad enough you cheated, but you weren’t even careful enough to spend 5 seconds and read the prompt. Own what you did and live with the consequences. Sad to me that so many kids are driven to cheat their way to the top - behavior that catches up with you over time.
UCs only look at 10th/11th grades, but I really wish your college counselor had helped you make a more balanced list of schools. Keep moving forward, good luck!
What do you mean by qualified? Is it that your stats meet the interquartile range of the schools above? That means nothing, especially for competitive schools like Cal, USC, or CMC.
Your lack of rigor in the first two years of school along with a “moderate” Junior year already hurt your admission chances for all schools but the “safe UCs.” Combine that with your poor judgement choice of cheating on a test—attempting to take the easy way out—is an indication of your immature character in not accepting responsibility.
Anyone can be qualified for any school. I’m sure that 90% of MIT applicants are perfectly qualified, but that doesn’t mean that they’re getting in.
@Skadamoosh I use qualified in the sense that my college counselor labelled these schools as either ‘target’ or ‘likely.’
I am not sure if I am labelling my rigor correctly and would like to state that for my freshmen year, I took the hardest classes possible. For sophomore year, I took the second hardest classes possible. For Junior year, since we had many more options, I can’t describe the rigor level accurately and therefore, I will describe the classes I took. I took the two hardest science classes, the hardest math class, the hardest history class, the highest english class, and the highest Chinese class.
Sounds like you did well until that lapse in judgement. In college every long answer or essay will be put through a program such as Turnitin, designed to detect fraud/plagiarism - and in college, it IS reported (either zero for a grade on the assignement, or F for the class. In some colleges, especially those with an honor code, it can lead to expulsion. Some colleges have F* which indicates “F for cheating”.) In short, promise yourself that regardless of the pressure you feel, you will never pull that again.
Your list is reach heavy but as long as you’re ok with UCR/UCM, you have nothing to worry about.
Other than your test score, and perhaps your GPA, you do not qualify for those top schools just for your lack of integrity.
@billcsho at several top prep schools kids who get caught cheating get second and even third chances…young people make mistakes. cheating is wrong but it doesnt need to define OPs entire future
I wish @skieurope would close this thread. Kid learned a lesson. Life goes on.
@Center If he did learn the lesson, that would be good for his future. Making mistakes alone would not.
Where is the evidence that the ambient level of integrity at “top schools” is any higher than at schools like UC Riverside? Seems to me that our news cycle is overrun with liars and cheaters who went to top schools. Whenever cheating is discovered at a top school, pearls are clutched and people remark that they thought students there were better than this. Meanwhile, AO’s at those schools are busy trying to figure out which applicants really wrote their own essays.
I’m not defending what OP did. My reaction would not have been pretty, if one of my kids had done something like this. But she came here, admitted what she did, and asked for advice. If we can’t be better than to keep piling on, then I agree with @CopperlineX2 that the mods should close the thread. Of course we don’t know what OP has learned from this; that is for her to figure out. But let’s not pretend that kids who make it to any “top school” won’t meet a few peers who have done worse and have no intention of changing. This myth that admissions committees are really able to discern “character” is a dangerous one. Kids get to these elite schools and figure that everyone there must be a great person, until they learn the hard way that they must use their own discernment and caution, just like everywhere else. Doing the right thing is called “the high road” for a reason - there’s nowhere you can go where the high road will be overcrowded.
OP: You made a mistake. You were caught & punished. Don’t let one foolish act at age 18 define you.
Seems as if you have a healthy attitude about this incident. You have explained it well. A family member in a coma on top of intense academic pressure, while not an excuse, shows that you are human.
It’s not the fact that he cheated @Publisher. It’s the fact that he cheated and does not take accountability for his own actions. Tons of kids cheat, but to say that if the teacher used the same prompt he would of succeeded in cheating is ridiculous. I feel bad for him and his family, but there’s a discipline issue there. There are tons of kids applying to those schools who are mostly more qualified than he is and do not cheat. There was a actually a girl at my high school who had brain cancer for two years, and guess what? She graduated in the top 10% of the class with academic integrity.
Based on OP’s postings here, I’m not convinced
Any user can flag the thread for a moderator (but not me) to review and perhaps close. As a participant in this thread, particularly one that has an opinion at odds with the OP, I wish to avoid any potential conflict of interest.
@CopperlineX2 thinks that the kid learned his/her lesson. I’m not so sure.
Post #19 revealed lesson not learned.