<p>No one can see the future, but we can advise you to look at other colleges. It’s quite possible that despite your transcript and your leadership in extracurriculars you still might not get into Harvard or Yale, but those are hardly the only good schools in the United States or even just the northeast region. Princeton, Moody Bible Institute, or even Virginia Tech might be better fits. You can always transfer in to Harvard from those other colleges later on after you’ve distanced yourself from these infractions.</p>
<p>My honest opinion, OP: you are a bright student who takes shortcuts. Perhaps from laziness, perhaps out of a presumption that you can game the system successfully. If you were applying for B-school, your actions would not stand out. As a HS grad trying to get into an Ivy, I suspect you are an outlier, and not in a good way.</p>
<p>“nd time: for a GROUP lab report, my friends divided the lab report into three parts and did them accordingly. the requirements said to write “authors” on the top of the lab report so i wrote my name down and their names and they did the same. teacher said it was unacceptable that our lab reports were identical and accused us of “plagiarizing”.”</p>
<p>Am I correct in assuming that yours was the only group that was charged with plagiarizing? If so, it’s very hard for me to believe that everyone in the class did what your group did, but the teacher only singled out your group for punishment. If yours was the only group that did things incorrectly, then I don’t understand why all of the other students did the assignment the correct way.</p>
<p><<“nd time: for a GROUP lab report, my friends divided the lab report into three parts and did them accordingly. the requirements said to write “authors” on the top of the lab report so i wrote my name down and their names and they did the same. teacher said it was unacceptable that our lab reports were identical and accused us of “plagiarizing”.”>></p>
<p>My teacher tells everyone to write their own reports so that no one’s paper would look identical.</p>
<p>So it may be that your techer’s directions had some holes in them that you fell into. And your teachers are probably too blind to see them.</p>
<p>If the disciplinary suspension was for something academically unrelated but the punishment was extremely large in magnitude (15 days suspension for disobedience towards school staff: no violence, no verbal harassment, just inaction when asked to go to the office), what will admissions officers think? That’s pretty much the only thing on my record too.</p>
<p>well it sounds like you did somthing minor… my best advice would be to try to schedule an interview with an admissions person from the school you want to go to. You then need to give the admissions person a TRUE AND UNBIASED account of what happened, you can not point fingers and can not accuse anyone of wrong doing. it WILL affect their choice about you, but if you meet with them and tell them truthfully about it and say that you are sorry and tell them that you didnt know it was wrong, then it shouldnt hurt you.</p>
<p>“what will admissions officers think?”
That you were rebelling against authority.
With good reason, or because you are a typical teenager, or because you are an arrogant poor excuse for an aristocrat ?</p>
<p>You tell us.</p>
<p>In reading through your comments and explanations I get a very strong impression that there is a definite lack of contrition in the events that lead to your suspension. If your letter to the admissions committees has similar explanations and a similar voice in taking responsibility, it will do you a great deal of damage. My sense is that this would be the case even for your match schools.</p>
<p>My sense is that you need to rethink what happened and why it was taken so seriously by your school. Further, if at all possible, you need to convince your teachers and guidance counselor that your contrition is genuine. How would you do that? Well, words aren’t enough. But what actions could be convincing. Think that through – maybe a essay for your school paper about what happened and why it was inexcusable, or some sort of community service as a form of penance. I’m sure that you can come up with deeper ideas. Somehow in doing this you’ve got to understand your behavior as others do, and then you’ve got to convince everyone around you that there is no way it would happen again.</p>
<p>In the end the letters of explanation and the recommendation to the admission committees to accept you because you’ve truly reformed needs to come from your teachers and your guidance counselors. Talk to them, not so much with the intent of “convincing” them that the infractions weren’t serious or a matter of misunderstanding, but with the intent of hearing from them what actions that you need to take that will make them accept that you’ve reformed.</p>
<p>Whatever happens you’ve been given an opportunity to learn an invaluable life lesson.</p>
<p>I agree with Fogcity.</p>
<p>I know someone with a non-academic honesty related event. He handled it as a learning event and how he applied his learning etc.
He was one of top students at his school with excellent test scores and got into several Ivy and many top schools. However, he did not get into Harvard & Yale and I was told that these schools take these things very seriously. It is all about their brand management so they do not want to risk taking a student that may impact their image which they carefully cultivate and invest in. Some schools focus more on test scores and grades and others care also about character of the students.
I know another student with a academic dishonesty issues in his Senior year and he got into a State University and no other place.
Apply to those schools where grades and test scores matter more.
Good luck.</p>
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<p>I knew my username would cause problems. Damn. </p>
<p>I was rebelling for good reason (being denied access due to race and they couldn’t stand me asking them why), but it’s not like I can explain everything on the application so they would understand. </p>
<p>“First impression: 15 suspension days? SHRED PRONTO!”</p>
<p>Nice reassuring words there rocket6louise lol</p>
<p>I think that one incident would be taken very seriously, and two even more so. I also feel that the original poster hasn’t learned much, and is not contrite: the philosophy that many kids have that just about anything is moral as long as you are not caught, may apply.</p>
<p>Regardless, the way that the OP’s posts are written (grammatically, and in terms of spelling, perhaps also in content) would seem to indicate a lack of qualifications in the first place. </p>
<p>I would also ask what schools who are not in the top tier will do about these incidents. </p>
<p>Kids take cheating very lightly (I see this in our own schools) but colleges don’t.</p>
<p>“maybe cornell had already decided about him and thought that a BJ wasn’t grounds for rescinding”</p>
<p>Having sex on a school trip – even with a person of the same gender – would be gossip fodder for high school students and a punishable offense in high school. However, colleges (except for the very conservative) stay out of their students’ sex lives as long as the students aren’t doing something like rape or pedophilia, so I can understand why the student’s admission wasn’t rescinded.</p>
<p>Cheating, plagiarism, theft, drug and violence-related disciplinary problems would be of concern to colleges. They don’t want cheaters on their campusesnor students who’ll steal or be violent or who may end up causing problems due to their alcohol/drug abuse.</p>
<p>understandable, Northstarmom. i get why that wouldn’t be grounds for rescinding/rejection, necessarily.</p>
<p>explain the situation! i know two people who got into Duke after being suspended. one of them was suspended for TWO days, and the other cheated on his IB extended essay. but they’re both at Duke…</p>
<p>then again, they both live in North Carolina, and Duke does has a preference for people in NC anyway…</p>
<p>but definitely write a letter or something and tell the admin offices what really happened.</p>
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<p>They probably weren’t the only two applicants in North Carolina though. They must have had a really good explanation, or their parents must have endowed several chairs, or maybe their transcript and essays were really good.</p>
<p>@Jahaba: right. but they were also from a really good high school in NC, one of the top in the country. their parents aren’t wealthy, but their transcripts WERE really good. but then again, so is the OP’s. so that’s what i’m trying to compare.</p>
<p>And think about the kids without such blemishes on their records that they are denying or waitlisting? Is that fair? Kids are taught and told about plagiarism throughout high school. This OP had a prior warning. Life is not fair, but it is what it is. </p>
<p>However, explain yourself and be honest and genuine and show some contrition and a learning experience. </p>
<p>FWiW, I once spoke with a High School Principal about the problem of cheating. My D1 had overheard some kids bragging about it in the hallway and all were top 10 percent kids who got into UNC, one on a baseball scholarship. The principal told me in her 30 plus years of teaching and being an administrator she found that the gravest examples and highest frequency of cheating and plagiarizing came at the TOP of the class. All that stress and pressure put on by parents to be perfect and beat out some other kid. And the facebook entries are even uglier.</p>
<p>Frankly, I would much prefer to admit a HARD WORKING, HIGHLY ETHICAL student from the top 25%, perhaps one who volunteered at a cancer ward, or humane society, or hospice helper…quietly. Not one of these “toot my horn” types who wins awards for playing a clarinet all by themselves. </p>
<p>I have seen some of these kids (many in public and private schools) at the top of the class and many of them are kids I would NOT want in my college if I were on the committee. But that is just me.</p>
<p>I will never forget the interview at Vanderbilt we had 4 years ago: the interviewer point blank said, “all your awards are lovely. Now what are you going to do for Vanderbilt when you are here?” In other words, how are you going to give back to the community?</p>
<p>Selfish, narcissistic, stats obsessed, rank obsessed kids are not the answer.</p>
<p>To put it very bluntly, if it was actually cheating or plagiarism, you are practically toast. If it was something light like sharing a group report, it probably won’t kill you. You can’t do much now, except send a letter explaining what happened from your perspective.</p>
<p>In the eyes of directors, I’m guessing that academic integrity is the most important, because after all, you are going to the college to learn. Thus, giving blow jobs and alcohol/drugs will look bad, but will not be as offensive because you can do those things and still be really smart and get good grades. </p>
<p>This happened one time in our school. we had group labs, and one group, with two boys, turned in identical labs and worked together. our teacher called the group out, and gave them zeros. Then again, those two boys happened to be the clueless airheads in the class. To be honest, if you were foolish enough to perform those two acts without realize when you were doing so was wrong, it just shows that your judgement kind of sucks.
admission into Harvard and Yale are extremely competitive in the first place. even if you wrote a really sincere essay explaining, you’ll probably need to look for other options as well. </p>
<p>And it wasn’t this suspension that ruined you. It is your actions that did.</p>