Hi all. I am in quite a precarious predicament. A couple months ago, I made some poor decisions which resulted in me getting suspended from the ivy league university that I attended. The reasons for suspensions are centered around the sending of inappropriate emails to certain faculty members. I ultimately decided to withdraw and attend a smaller private liberal arts college the following spring, which I hoped to quell the possibility of being expelled. My GPA at the current school that I am at is significantly higher, it is a 3.5, compared to the 2.6 that I made at the Ivy League school. My question is will my disciplinary record greatly impede my application to ivy league schools for graduate school? Since I have to submit transcripts of all undergraduate colleges attended it will state that there was a judiciary matter on my transcript from the ivy league school. How will this adversely effect my prospects as a potential ivy league graduate school student?
If you want to go to grad school you need to stop thinking that your only or best option is at an Ivy- that ship may very well have sailed.
So -What you need to do is get top grades and great LORs from your profs at your current college. And nail your GRE or other grad school exams. And find other grads schools to apply to - there are HUNDREDS of choices besides the 7 Ivy’s.
Any graduate admissions committee would be concerned – I’m not sure why Ivy league admissions committees would be any different.
By the way, I have a documented disability-a mental illness. Would this mean anything to the admissions committee?
grad schools are a lot less forgiving of students with any issues than colleges.
They can pick and choose whom ever they want to admit.
For what ever reasons.
There is no magic answer on what will happen, but there are things you can do to improve your odds of admission to graduate school. You may need to talk about how you grew and changed and are more stable now. If there are new medications or other transformative experiences you had, speak to those. Enlist staff at your current school to speak/write about how you have been doing at your new school. If you have no major incidents at your new school, you may be able to make the case that you have transformed yourself into someone who would not be risky to admit. At any rate, don’t allow the transcript’s reference to your disciplinary matter to be the sole word on it; beat the story by addressing it yourself, so that you can define it in your own way. And be humble in acknowledging your mistakes and problems and how you’ve grown past them.
Maybe. It depends on the nature of the inappropriate emails and how close you still are to the incidents. If you apply to start right after undergrad, that might be deemed too close; if you waited 2-3 years and then wrote a short essay about how you’ve grown and put it behind you, it might not matter as much.
Most likely not, unless the mental illness has an impact on your impulse control and was uncontrolled or undiagnosed at the time. And even then, it might make your case worse - you’d have to make the argument both that the mental illness caused the behavior AND that it’s currently controlled and you wouldn’t do it again. A very delicate balance.