My friend wanted me to post this for him since he doesn’t want any trace of evidence going back to him.
Basically, he got caught cheating on a national science olympiad and now he’s restricted from participating again. He definitely regrets cheating now, but a more bigger worry on his mind is if the administrators of that olympiad will somehow report his cheating to colleges, especially the more prestigious ones (HPYMS). They know his primary email address, full name, and graduating year. It seems likely that olympiad administrators would provide a list of scores to colleges for verification purposes. Would they include a list of people who cheated as well? I told him that it would probably be rare and pretty cruel to absolutely destroy a student’s chances at a college over an olympiad, but he wants other people’s opinion.
Wait, it’s “cruel to destroy a student’s chances at college” as a result of his own actions?
I think it’s a lot more cruel to teach him that his actions have no consequences.
And once again, I would like to reiterate. It’s not about the fact that he got caught cheating.
It’s about the fact that he cheated.
He wants an answer to his question, but doesn’t have the guts to ask it himself, hoping that he’ll get the answer without further endangering his chances at getting what he wants without fallout from his choice to cheat.
While I hope this bites your friend in the behind, I don’t see any reason why it would. He should just leave the Olympiad off his applications, and hope his GC doesn’t mention it.
On one hand I agree with bjkmom and NavalTradition that he should suffer consequences for his actions, don’t you think that being basically disqualified from every single college that he is aspiring to attend just for one extracurricular action is even a little harsh? Considering he’s been working towards college his entire life and cheating was just one really stupid mistake. And he has suffered consequences by being disqualified from ever doing that olympiad again. I just think that since it is an academic extracurricular, olympiad administrators shouldn’t feel obliged to report to colleges of cheating as a counselor would.
No one knows what will happen. I doubt that the consequences will be nearly as dire as you say-- the odds are overwhelming that nothing at all will happen.
But on the subject of “one really stupid mistake”— think of some of the other “one really stupid mistakes” out there. I’ll start with DUI. Then I’ll move on to what we now suspect caused that train derailment in Philly— though I know it’s early in the investigation and it may NOT have been the engineer’s fault. Think of someone in pharmecuticals making “one really stupid mistake” in dosage, or a surgeon making “one really stupid mistake” in the OR.
Sometimes we’re held accountable for our mistakes, particularly when they’re mistakes of judgment.
Are we talking USAMO, USABO, etc.? Or is this Science Olympiad (as in the extracurricular)? It might make a little difference, though cheating is obviously bad regardless.
@TheAtlantic Maybe, but I think I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a nice guy, and it even surprised himself that he decided to resort to cheating.
