Soooo today I met with my old stand partner and she showed me the arts supplement she will be submitting with her application and I don’t know how to say this without being rude but I think she may have edited somebody else’s playing over her own? Is that a thing?
I say this because I have played with her for 2 years now, both in a small group and a full symphonic group and I have attended her recitals because I like her but I was completely blown away by the. I just went to her recital on Friday where she played the same pieces but it was no where near as good, in all honesty, not even close and had a different set of bowings and interpretation.
The video quality is poor but the sound quality is very good and while it appears to line up well enough to her playing to be honest it is difficult to tell because of the angle of the camera and the blurry vibe ( they are both sort of faster pieces).
What should I do? I don’t really want to confront her about it, I don’t know if she is even aware of any discrepancy. I also don’t know really know her teacher. Maybe I’m just being a jerk but it is very suspicious to me that she went from barely blazing through the piece to a performance of professional quality in a single weekend. Should I just leave it to the schools to judge? I mean if you didn’t know the context of her previous playing you would in all likelihood not notice anything unusual about the recording except for a very gifted musician.
This has been asked and answered soooooooo many times here. Your responsibility is to make your application the best that you can; that is the only thing under your control. Don’t worry about her application.
If your goal is to help your friend present herself accurately, then you could ask her about how the piece was recorded. She might have been counting on you to catch that the recording isn’t right so she has a reason to tell the person who she suspects doctored it that she can’t send in an inaccurate recording.
I’m thinking it might be some pressure from her parents, because they absolutely dead set on her going to an Ivy. The reason why I ask is because while I know that my responsibility is to my own application I know that in school if I saw someone trying to get an unfair advantage I would report it to my teacher. This seems sort of similar to that, whether she’s aware of it or not she is presenting herself as a conservatory level musician, which will not only hurt her in the long run, it also might hurt other applicants with similar stats.
Forget it, it isn’t your problem. Unless she is applying as a music major, playing an instrument very well won’t be a huge factor in the application. If a college feels confident that the supplement is altered it will likely damage her application.
Do applicants usually submit blurry videos? Maybe you could mention that part, and if she did get a clearer video than maybe the problem you are really concerned about would be more noticeable.
Quick update, I chose to contact her teacher with the recording she had shared with me and he was completely unaware of her even making a recording and expressed that he also did not think it was her playing. He contacted our conductor who had written one of her recommendations and I assume they will take care of what ever is to be done.
I know some people might disagree with my decision but I feel that in not saying anything, I was complicit. I didn’t feel it would be appropriate or even effective to contact specific colleges but I did not feel right in not making any statement at all. She has the same top choice ED school as one of my other friends and knowing that the minuscule boost she would get from a top of the line recording might push her ahead of an honest applicant did not sit well with me. I know that if it were reversed and someone else knew about a student cheating in the application process to my top choice school, I would want them to come forward too.
Gutsy? maybe but I still feel it was the right thing to do. All I could think about was what if it was my kid applying to the same school? Or even if she was applying to my top choice school? Call it selfish, but I really don’t think it’s in any way selfish to bring to light someone attempting to gain an unfair advantage. As if the college process wasn’t difficult enough already, let alone knowing that there are people attempting to craft their way in on false pretenses and further still, that people would advise honest students who know about these things to not say anything.
Right thing to do- I don’t know I think that’s debatable. If that was my friend, rather than throwing him/her under the bus for something you merely suspected, I would’ve confronted him/her. Would it have been awkward? Yeah probably, but at the end of the day you owe it to your friend to hear their side of the story before you tattle, especially since it doesn’t directly affect you. Or at least that’s what I think would have been the decent thing to do.
Hopefully your friendship remains intact once this is all over and done with.
I imagine that ship has sailed! And with “friends” like this, the applicant sure doesn’t need enemies. I believe OP’ s action was vindictive, not gutsy. OP had no firm proof that the submission was doctored, and at the end of the day, this was none of OP’s business. No one made OP a member of the Application Police. Ick–this whole story makes me want to take a shower.
@CDOESenior2k16 If it was something I had any doubts about I would not have said anything at all probably but I’ve played with this girl for 2 years now. I know her and I know her playing. Turns out the recording was actually her teachers playing… We talked on FB after she shared the recording with me, but she was very insistent that it was her playing and that she had practiced all day for 2 days to get it made.
@MommaJ If you played side by side with someone for two years, you would know when they had done something like this. We aren’t talking about some slight intonation improvement or something like that, we’re talking about superimposing an entire different recording over the video of her own playing. A recording which turned out to be her teachers playing, who has gone to graduate school for cello performance. Editing is one thing, forging is completely another. How could I not say anything knowing full well that either she or her parents were attempting to gain an unfair advantage over other applicants by representing their daughter as a conservatory level musician?
I cannot stand this idea of remaining silent. It happens in my school when a girl cheated on a test and posted on Facebook about it, the one person who reported got ridiculed. It’s everywhere. People tell you just to mind your own business, thing is, academic and application honesty IS my business. It’s all of our business. Every applicant is impacted directly or indirectly by dishonest applicants. You are compared to the applicant in your school who added 9 extracurricular awards. You are compared with the applicant in your city who lied about community service. You are compared with applicant with the forged recommendation letter. Take a look at foreign applicants and the massive cheating that comes from that, there is not a doubt in my mind that the cultural idea of just minding ones own business contributes to that. I’m not saying we should contact specific colleges and had I not been able to contact her teacher, that’s all the further it would have gone. It seems extreme to go to the lengths of contacting schools but also irresponsible to say nothing at all.
Teachers and ad-comms alike share a lot of the same distance between students. Students will brag to each other about cheating, or lying. They will share things with each other that would never come to light if a student doesn’t come forward. Honestly, I don’t know why she would have shared with me that recording. The way I figured, I share it with her teacher and it’s real? Great he’s very happy for her immense work. I share with her teacher and it’s false? He can decide how to handle it. Even now, she still has plenty of time and power to exclude recommendations and find someone else before November 1.
This is a difficult situation. It’s hard to condemn blatant cheating if no one reports the cheaters. It sounds like this was an egregious case of deliberate falsification with the intent to gain a significant competitive advantage. I think bringing it up with the applicant directly might have been preferably, but it’s an awkward situation all around.
One thing that I applaud is addressing the issue before the supplement was actually submitted, so the applicant can go still ahead and apply honestly. Presumably if her conductor knows about it then she will be limited in her ability to get a supplemental letter, but that’s a small price to pay for intending to submit a fraudulent supplement. There has to be some consequence to immoral behavior.
As for remaining friends, I don’t think I’d want to be friends with someone who blatantly cheated.
Again, it sounds like this was an egregious case. Had there been any doubt whatsoever, I think the more prudent course would have been to not personally get involved.
@cowtownbrown: You chose a path that would irk many, for sure, but one which the colleges and universities implore young people to adhere to. I like your progression of the circle of comparison, above.
One can too often lose hours of one’s life mulling over a failure to act, a cowardice of sorts. Sometimes we turn on ourselves, making ourselves sick. Sometimes we secretly nurse a love/hate relationship with someone we wish would get their just rewards, only to find there seems to be no consequence for their escalating deceptions. Sometimes we have to walk away and just know that we put our best forward, and there is integrity in that, with no thought at all to whoever seemed to have the happiest of outcomes.
You will not find approval from many corners of your life when you act thusly, and will lose associations and even close friends, but remembering to make the code one which you both live by, as well as swear by, keeps you able to sleep at night.
I think OP did the right thing too. It appears the friend was using OP to test out the video. So not only was she blatantly cheating, but involving OP in it. If you know of an honor violation and don’t report it, aren’t you considered guilty too? Some friend.
I believe in talking to friends directly first, but I don’t see how that would have worked out for OP. The friend would be unlikely to admit cheating leaving OP in the worse position of being fairly certain the friend cheated but now having to accuse her of lying as well.
The friend could admit it, I suppose, but what’s to stop this friend from threatening to tell the administration OP was in on it and just got cold feet if s/he tells? Apparently, not personal ethics. Or the friend could admit it and “promise” to send an undoctored video leaving OP to wonder if she actually did and who might be named as complicit if the friend sends the doctored video and gets caught. None of those have good outcomes for OP, so the reasonable course of action is to tell a trusted adult and let them sort it out. In this case, that would be the music instructor.
I agree OP did the right thing. To know blatant cheating and say nothing would have been worse. I applaud OP, not only for feeling the need to stand up, but also for finding a clever solution that doesn’t leave the friend stranded (ie., there’s still time for her to make a true recording and to ask for more recommendations) and even left an “out” in case the recital was considered badly mangled by her teacher and the recording reflected her true playing.