I’m a high school senior finishing up the Common App and I just got to the disciplinary history section of the application. The only thing I’ve gotten in trouble for was being a few minutes late to my first period class to many times as a freshman. I ended up getting a detention for this.
I know that it’s bad if you keep previous infractions from the colleges you’re applying to, but is this serious enough to include?
How many times is too many? Is it bad enough to warrant your counselor discussing it in the letter of rec? If it’s literally a few times, I wouldn’t bother. If it’s more like, I don’t know, ten times, you might want to ask your counselor if he/she mentioned it. Did it keep happening in your other years? If so, again, ask your counselor.
No this is not serious enough to include. You just got 1 detention? No big deal. If you had been suspended or had numerous detentions then it;s worth asking about. It’s not like you were skipping whole classes which would be another matter.
The Common App asks this question:
So you don’t need to report detentions, but pretty much anything worse than a detention needs to be mentioned. Your tardies and absences may appear on your transcript.