<p>Several months after graduating from an undergrad b-school, I was still unemployed. In my panicked state, I applied to a small, local graduate school for an obscure engineering program (based on the logic that engineering major = jobs). I hated being in the program and was very bored with my classes, but did surprisingly well academically. After the semester ended, I took an internship related to my original major, and then somehow ended up at my current full-time job.</p>
<p>Do I need to disclose to grad schools and future employers that I was a grad school dropout? I don't want to seem like an industry-hopper because my current job is unrelated to my education or internship experiences. Accounting is unrelated to anything in my background as well. I currently work with a lot of pricing, so I'm hoping to spin that into something accounting-related. I've had one pointless finance internship and several marketing internships in random industries. It's going to be hard explaining why I didn't major in finance or accounting, then dabbled in marketing, finance, engineering, etc. but now want to go into accounting.</p>
<p>Can a potential employer's background check uncover my grad school stint? (I was employed by the school doing research while I was enrolled.)</p>
<p>I would not lok at it as dropping out but rather as supplementing your undergrad education with more schooling. Be positive- you added courses in a tough job market instead of doing nothing. A glass half empty/half full situation. You currently have a job and reporting the extra credits will account for a time period in your recent life. Report it.</p>
<p>You cannot apply for any graduate school without reporting transcripts from all previous institutions you enrolled at. Just explain that you found the program wasn’t for you.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses. Will this really follow me forever to every job I apply to in the future? I’ve heard of many job candidates omitting degrees and work experience in order to not appear unfocused or overexperienced. In my case, I only completed 9 credit hours. How will the admissions office be able to dig this info up if I leave it off my application?</p>
<p>I think the situation is different for applying to jobs versus applying to graduate schools. Many graduate schools state on the application that any school you spent more than X amount of time at or took more than Y credits at must be submitted with the application. At the end you will sign a statement saying your application is complete and accurate to the best of your knowledge, so although I doubt they would dig up the information that you spent a semester in school you would technically be lying about your application, which in my opinion might be bad in the future. In my experience with applying to jobs, this type of information is not always required and it’s often up to your discretion which qualifications you submit. Once you have established yourself in your new field this grad school experience will become less and less relevant.</p>
<p>In any case I’m not sure you should want to hide this information given you did well in the program. People enter and leave graduate school for all sorts of reasons. Even if you left primarily because you were bored with it doesn’t mean you need to say that in your statement. Perhaps some small aspect of engineering made it clear to you that you wanted to get back into a finance related position.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the replies! Sorry for bumping up this old thread, but I have one last question.</p>
<p>From my brief stint in graduate school, I have a left over balance/bill of more than $1000 in miscellaneous fees. I can’t request an official transcript until I pay off the balance. What should I do in this case? Pay $1000+ to get a shot at grad school? Or omit my semester in grad school from my application?</p>
<p>(My tuition was paid for, and later the fees were tacked on. There’s no way to get around paying the balance off if I want my transcript.)</p>
<p>$1000 in misc fees sounds pretty crazy. You really should call the school to fix the situation. I’m surprised they haven’t put you in collection. Perhaps they can work out a payment plan to pay off your debt.</p>
<p>That being said, you need to disclose ANY previous institution you attended (undergrad and grad school) in order to truthfully and ethically fill out an application at another school. If you fail to disclose it and the school finds out later, it could be cause for your dismissal.</p>
<p>I agree with the above poster that you must disclose the information, but on many applications it might be possible to do this through a supplementary form or essay rather than through an official transcript. I would probably include a list of all the grades, dates attended, etc, and explain that you cannot provide a transcript for this institution given that you have a dispute with the school over fees. At some point it might become necessary for you to pay off the debt and provide a real transcript, but I personally wouldn’t want to do it simply to be able to apply to schools. Given that it’s not your undergrad institution and the study was in a different field than you are pursuing in grad school, I doubt it would be a major road block to admission.</p>
<p>I don’t think the new university will view this kindly.</p>
<p>Pay the fees – you owe them after all, and it’s your obligation to pay your bills. If you think these fees were in error, then find out how to correct them. </p>
<p>Even if you didn’t need the transcripts, you should settle your outstanding bills.</p>
<p>Not going to work. How would they know the applicant didn’t get dismissed for cheating, other than taking their word for it?</p>
<p>Not providing full and accurate transcripts would likely get your application denied before it even reached an admissions committee. Your application would be considered incomplete without that information.</p>
<p>My suggestion was based on the assumption that the fees are bogus and you may not have time to resolve the situation before applying. Having been in the situation of having unfair fees applied many times, I can attest to the fact that it can be very difficult to negotiate in such a situation.</p>
<p>With that said, the above comments are correct in that there is a large amount of risk associated with my suggestion. I’m not 100% convinced they would simply throw out your application without the transcript, unless they consider you an otherwise mediocre candidate, but that’s just my opinion, I’m not an admissions counselor or anything.</p>
<p>In my experience applying this cycle, my applications have not been considered complete and transmitted to departments for review until all my undergraduate transcripts were received by the graduate admissions office. It’s a pass/fail check and I’m assuming they would treat previous graduate transcripts similarly.</p>
<p>The previous commenter is correct, if you add the grad school information in the usual way to the ‘schools attended’ field on the app (or whatever it may be called) your application will be incomplete until they receive it. However, grad transcripts are only expected by the admissions committee if you add them in this manner. If you were to enter your previous graduate information into another field, such as the supplemental materials section, I don’t think it would hold up your app. However, I do see the earlier points about the pitfalls of self-reporting, and it might not be viewed favorably if a reader gets to the end of your application and realizes they are missing a transcript. I could see it going either way, depending how much they like the rest of your app. </p>
<p>If you really want an informed opinion, just call or email the administrative contact person for the schools you are most interested in and explain your situation. They are often quite helpful and insightful about admissions. For example, one school I was interested in said on the website that they absolutely required a GRE subject test, but when I emailed they put me touch with a prof who said it wasn’t necessary because I have a master’s degree and research experience in the field. Wait a few weeks before contacting them though, this is their busiest time of year. </p>
<p>And if you really do owe the $1000, just pay it already!</p>
<p>If you were to enter your previous graduate information into another field, such as the supplemental materials section, I don’t think it would hold up your app</p>
<p>I disagree; I think it would. Your application might be marked as ‘complete’ on the online application but once they got to reviewing it and realized that you did a stint in grad school but omitted the transcripts, they would want them. Remember that real people review these applications.</p>
<p>If you want to go to grad school, pay the $1000 you owe so you can get your transcripts. You’ll have to pay them sooner or later anyway.</p>
<p>Not only would they want the transcripts, they’d probably want a very good explanation as to why you ignored the application’s explicit instructions to list and provide transcripts for all previous collegiate enrollment. That’s if they didn’t just trash it offhand for dishonesty. There are likely plenty of qualified applicants who followed the instructions - why waste time on someone who either can’t read or has something to hide?</p>
<p>I don’t disagree that the fees should just be paid if they are legitimate. Does everyone else really think that the original poster should just pay the fees if they are not really owed? Personally, I would not let some institution bully me into paying a large debt that was not actually owed. If you think a school would never assess a bogus fee and expect the student to pay it, clearly you have not attended all the schools that I have.</p>
<p>All I’m saying with regard to submitting apps w/o the official transcript is that, from my point of view, it’s at least worth investigating ahead of applying how the schools of interest will view this omission. It is not unheard of for schools to make allowances during the admissions process, especially if the school is not among the most nationally recognized. The worst they can do is a) not respond or b) tell the applicant to submit the transcript.</p>
<p>The suggestion was to contact the school before applying. The school cannot throw out an app that has not yet been submitted. If the school does not respond or just tells the applicant to submit the transcript, then I guess the applicant is stuck, but I don’t see any harm in trying.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the helpful replies. This was pure carelessness on my part, but I finally looked closely at the fees and realized I was billed $800 for a student health insurance plan. :eek: The remainder of the amount was mostly late fees.</p>
<p>I neither needed nor requested the student health plan, but it’s probably a lost cause trying to get it waived at this point.</p>
Sorry for bumping up this old thread, but I have one last question.</p>