What are my options now?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I'm in a really difficult situation right now and would really appreciate some advice. Before you judge me, please read everything that has led me to make the wrong choices.</p>

<p>My entire life, I've had a passion for learning and was always a high-achieving student. I never found school ''challenging enough'' and would always earn A's. When I started high school, my family faced many struggles that kept me from going to school for a while. I ended up with inadequate grades and was to be sent to a remedial high school.</p>

<p>I had the chance to spend the rest of the year at another public high school, so I took the opportunity. I finished up the year very strong because although I was not getting into college, my love for learning had not faltered. </p>

<p>At the end of the year, I went to my GCs office to discuss transferring over to the remedial school to repeat my courses. He had no idea what I was talking about. He showed me my transcript, and my previous school's grades had been changed to grades superior to those I had earned. I was in shock, but I told him the truth. "Those aren't my grades. I had various classes I had to retake.'' He responded, ''Well this is what it shows on your transcript.'' I replied ''But those aren't my grades.'' He said ''Isn't that your name right there? Isn't that you?''</p>

<p>I was stupefied. I walked out of that office lost and confused. I considered getting my real transcript re-sent to my school, but I had a hold on my record because of money I owed. I couldn't find anyone to lend it to me and had difficulty finding a job to pay for it. By the time I had finally payed back my debt the next year, I knew it was too late to enroll in the remedial school and graduate on time.</p>

<p>And here's my mistake: I left my transcript as it was.</p>

<p>I was convinced that this was a second chance, a blessing. I was finally getting a break from all of the turmoil I had encountered. I told myself that had I been placed in the right situation, I would have earned even better grades than those that now appeared on my transcript. I know for a fact I would have, but the fact is that I didn't. But now I could take challenging courses, and not only the very basic ones the remedial high school would provide. I rose to the top of all of my classes, and this year have over a 4.8W GPA. This, along with high test scores, good ECs, and peers and teachers telling me I should apply to schools like HYP, convinced me to apply to college and for scholarships.</p>

<p>My initial plan was to attend a community college. After taking classes there, however, I realized that it didn't have the rigor or intellectual environment I yearn for. Also, I wouldn't have anywhere to live so I would have to get a job full-time to support myself until I could go back to school. This was another reason I made the decision to apply.</p>

<p>But now I realize how wrong I was to do all of this. I made a horrible mistake and now I have to suffer the consequences. Tomorrow, I am going to withdraw all applications, confront my GC, and apologize to all of my teachers who wrote my letters of recommendation. I genuinely regret doing something so dishonorable.</p>

<p>Once I do this, what will my options be? Should I get a GED and work for a few years and save up to go back to school? Do I have any other options?</p>

<p>I realize what I did was very wrong, and am trying to make up for my poor choices. Can anyone give me some guidance as to where I can go from here?</p>

2

<p>I wouldn’t withdraw your applications. It’s possible that the school has some sort of agreement with the other school with regard to grades or there was some sort of “conversion” based on percentages. </p>

3

<p>Didn’t your GC have the transcript the school sent? Whose to say the next one won’t reflect the same grades? While I am not going to pipe in on what you should do morally (since that is your own personal call), I don’t see where you jump from doing well now and applying to college to getting a GED and working. Won’t you have a high school diploma no matter what grades are on your transcript? So why is a GED an option on the table?</p>

<p>If you think that morally you can’t apply to HYP (where the chances of getting in are slim anyway), then apply to schools that you know your real grades will get you into. You can go to a lot of colleges and be happy. I personally would not spend a lot of time trying to get your old school to lower your grades or waste time trying to figure out why.</p>

<p>You said that you were doing well at the other school before family issues intervened. Maybe your teachers, rightly or wrongly, took that into consideration when giving you your grades. In that scenario, you did earn them.</p>

<p>Anyway, I would say move on, apply to college and continue on the good path you now appear to be on.</p>

4

<p>@MichiganGeorgia‌ While I wish that was true, it is not a possibility. Even some of the courses are different. No conversion could equate to such a significant difference.</p>

<p>@Tperry1982‌ My previous grades would prevent me from getting into any college and also from graduating. I wasn’t applying to HYP, just a few state schools and a couple privates.</p>

5

<p>Isw907, so the grades that are awful are from freshman year? There were mitigating circumstances? Since then, you’ve turned it around and gotten excellent grades for the past 2 years? And you’ve set your sights on schools that make sense for you as you stand now? I want to make sure I understand the situation before I weigh in. </p>

6

<p>@EllieMom‌ Yes, they were from my freshman year and part of sophomore year, when I transferred over to my current school. I had pure A’s junior year and am continuing that trend this year. I have my sights set on schools where I feel I’ll get the intellectual environment I’m looking for and will still be successful, but I also don’t want to take anyone’s spot who truly deserves to go there.</p>

7

<p>Okay, here are my thoughts. You will feel better if you fess up and make sure your transcript tells the whole story. That says a lot for the kind of young adult you’re becoming. You have a very compelling story and you express yourself extremely well in your writing. I think that you will actually be a better and more memorable candidate if you see this experience as part of your journey and relate that. </p>

<p>Do you have a good relationship with your current guidance counselor or is there some other adult you can work with to create an admissions application that shows how far you’ve come? I know that if I were reading your application, with the whole story in it, I would want to get to know you better. I think you’ll be a great addition to the college class of '19 somewhere…and I’m pretty sure that there are people sitting on admissions committees at the right colleges that will think so, too. But you may need some assistance to make sure you find the right fit. </p>

<p>I’m rooting for you! </p>

8

<p>@EllieMom‌ Thank you very much for such encouragement. I definitely do plan on confessing, but I know that when I do, my hopes of attending college are going to be completely gone, at least for a few years. When I say my grades were inadequate, that is an understatement. I will no longer meet any entrance requirements and I will not have sufficient credits to graduate. My course sequence from the previous two years do not correlate with my real freshman year courses because I have been basing them off the incorrect courses. There is no possibility of any college accepting me. That is the reason I am looking at the GED/community college path. I would absolutely detest taking any time off from school because I passionately love every aspect of learning, but I realize that education is a privilege, and one that I may have lost for a while because of my amoral decisions.</p>

<p>Is there any hope that I can return to school and transfer to a 4-year university? Is there anything else I can do that may allow me to continue my education without interruption?</p>

9

<p>I think you are being overly dramatic. And you can’t worry about other students and where they may get in or not, that is not something in your control. Forget trying to bring up every little drama like taking a spot from other kids–that is needless distraction. Focus, focus on your situation only. </p>

<p>I do not see why you have to make a huge drama out of it. Just discuss the situation with one person who has some relationship with you and authority to help you. Your writing and clarity here are really poor and the drama is very high with a lot of assumptions made that you don’t really know are true. I’d start by writing down all the classes you took at the previous school and the grades and taking that paper with you.</p>

10

<p>Please be clear that I was not telling you to be dishonest. It was my understanding that your grades were good at the other school, you hit some bumps in the road and strayed and now you are back on the right path. Even if your GPA is somewhere in the 2.5 range, there are good schools that will admit you. Maybe I’m missing something, but I am still not sure what you are “confessing” to.</p>

11

<p>I am so confused.</p>

<p>You are not the only kid in America who switched schools at some point and whose transcript may or may not be accurate.</p>

<p>Forget worrying about other kids. That’s not your problem.</p>

<p>Make an appointment with your guidance counselor- tell him/her that you are worried about the discrepancies in your transcript. Review the transcript while sitting there- and say, “this shows I got an A in Freshman year Spanish and if memory serves, I actually got a C”. Either the GC will get on the phone with your previous school and request the transcript, or the GC will tell you “Princeton explicitly states that it doesn’t look at Freshman grades but nobody else does either so stop worrying about it”.</p>

<p>Then stop.</p>

<p>you are torturing yourself needlessly. </p>

12

<p>lsw907 -</p>

<p>If the college/university believes that you are ready, they can admit you whether or not you have graduated from high school, and whether or not you have ugly old grades on a transcript. Leave that decision up to them. What does matter for financial aid purposes is whether or not you have graduated (or completed the GED). You need one of those to be able to file the FAFSA and receive federal financial aid.</p>

<p>It is up to the administration of your current high school to determine how they apply the credits from any previous high schools toward your graduation requirements and for your GPA. They really do have a lot of leeway in this. It is entirely possible that they will come up with enough credits of one kind or another to put on your transcript so that you can graduate on time. If you are attending a public high school, you are entitled to continue your education until you do graduate, or until the end of the year in which you turn 21. If you need to stay a semester or two longer to get all of the courses sorted out in order to graduate with a decent GPA, that is perfectly fine. Get a copy of your old transcript, and go sit down with the guidance office, and find out what does and doesn’t need to be fixed.</p>

13

<p>I apologize for making my statements unclear and for being ‘‘overdramatic.’’ I’m the type of student who tells teachers when they give me a higher grade by mistake and make sure it is corrected, so you can imagine how much this is bothering me. I am not making assumptions; I am certain I would not graduate or get accepted anywhere. It wasn’t a "C’’ changed to an "A,’’ it was much more severe than that. I can’t think of any adult I could talk to about this. I am confessing to there being a major error in my transcript and not taking care of the situation before.</p>

14

<p>What I don’t understand is why you couldn’t get a copy of your transcript from the “remedial school”. Is it private? </p>

<p>In any case, now that you have access to that transcript, get two sealed copies. One for you, and one for your guidance counselor. Then go sit down and talk about this. It wasn’t your job to fix this. It was the adults’ job. All you can do is give them the information that you believe will help them get their job done.</p>

<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>

15

<p>Forget taking care of the situation before. Nothing you can do about it. Do you want to let this prevent you from getting an education? of course not. So forget about what you did or didn’t do. Sit down with your guidance counselor and say “I’m not sure my transcript is accurate” (which is your only obligation here) and allow the guidance counselor to decide if you’ve got enough credits to graduate (which is their problem.) Taking an old transcript isn’t like converting inches into centimeters where there is a globally accepted conversion rate. Nor is it like converting Euro’s into dollars where the rate fluctuates daily. It requires professional judgement from the administration and teachers at your current school. Once they state that you’ve got enough credits to graduate- and can produce a transcript showing that-- it’s not your job to explain that they gave you credit for pre-algebra which you took in 8th grade, or that they are counting the French class from 7th grade as a year of HS foreign language.</p>

<p>Let them help you graduate. If they change your grades- so be it. And if they don’t- then go forward and don’t look back.</p>

16

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<p>I don’t understand what this means.</p>

<p>It sounds as if you are talking about going backwards and retaking lower level courses when you have already completed more advanced work with excellent grades? For example, repeating Algebra I because you think you failed it, when you have As in Geometry, Algebra II, and Precalc? Repeating French I because you think you failed it when you have As in French II, III, and IV? This makes no sense at all. </p>

<p>Not only that, but you say that you “finished out the year very strong[ly]”: was that freshman year, or sophomore year? If freshman year, you are talking about one bad SEMESTER. </p>

<p>I also don’t understand exactly what happened when you say that a transcript was in fact sent to your new school, but then say that your transcript was on hold because of money you owed: which was it? Did your GC receive a transcript prepared by your first school, or did s/he receive a fake transcript prepared by a friend of yours or something?</p>

<p>Unless you or a friend altered your grades, the school you attended freshman year apparently awarded you the grades on the transcript they sent. Did the transcript they sent reflect the courses you actually took? But with better final grades than you were expecting? It beggars belief that ALL of your teachers made an error in recording your grades, and moreover that the errors were all upwards. There must have been some kind of curving or other policy in play that you were unaware of. You did the right thing initially by bringing it to the GC’s attention. You would seem to have nothing to “confess” to.</p>

<p>Now, if the actual COURSES listed were not the courses you took, it is possible that they mixed up your records with someone else’s, and in that case you should have said to the GC, “But I didn’t even TAKE this course.” But it does not sound as if that is what you saw on the transcript.</p>

<p>This entire story seems very strange to me. Are you sure you are not conducting some kind of ethics experiment?</p>

<p>If the transcript viewed by the GC really was sent from your first school, and really did reflect the actual courses you took, I think you should move on and apply to colleges. Many colleges do not require a HS diploma to matriculate, BTW. </p>

17

<p>What is so wrong here that you would change your college app plans? Some hs DO convert grades from other schools. Sometimes, rather than take the former letter grade (especially when there is an imbalance in the rigor of the two hs,) they go on comments that may accompany the paperwork or as said, percentages. </p>

<p>Maybe you need to be more specific. Confess to us, so we can advise. And make it clear- so these were below C grades magically changed to A’s?</p>

<p>If there truly was a family situation but you clearly have improved, then that is your picture. What’s the problem? That freshman grades aren’t honest and will over-represent your record? So have the GC re-request with an explanation and move forward. Use Addl Info in the Common App to briefly explain the freshman year circumstances that led to grade drops.</p>

18

<p>Okay I think I should try to clarify a few things:

  1. I have 1 bad semester, 2 extremely bad semesters.
  2. When I say ‘‘I finished the year strongly’’ I was talking about sophomore year.
  3. I never actually attended the remedial school, I was going to be sent there junior and senior year.
  4. I went to three schools my first semester of freshman year, let’s call them A, B, and C. My grades earned/reflected on my transcript are from school C. However, my courses seem to reflect those from schools A and B.
  5. What I mean by "I based my courses off of the incorrect transcript’’:
    -My new transcript shows ‘‘French I’’ in 9th grade, so I took French II and French III, even though I didn’t actually complete French I.
    -My new transcript shows ‘‘Biology’’ freshman year even though I took Earth Science. Therefore, I didn’t continue to take Biology.
    -These are classes(Biology and French I) I was taking at schools A and B, NOT school C, where I finished the semester.
  6. When my GC showed me the transcript, I’ll be honest, I was not paying attention to the courses. I was completely in shock. When I did get a good look at it, I realized that those were the classes I had initially enrolled in when I first started high school, so I thought maybe something was done with that, but it wouldn’t make sense.
  7. NOBODY touched my transcript. Not me, not my friends. I was completely unaware of this entire grade change.
  8. I honestly don’t know which transcripts my GC received. The previous school did not put a hold on my record until AFTER the new school received my transcripts.
    9.This is not an experiment.</p>
19

<p>OP- relax. You’ve done nothing wrong. You don’t need to actually complete French 1 in order to get credit for it- your current school has determined that since you’ve completed French 11 and 111 you have in essence, completed what you would have learned in French 1.</p>

<p>You are not the only kid in America whose paperwork isn’t a 100% reflection of reality from Freshman year. But- given three schools in one year, your current HS is giving you the benefit of the doubt.</p>

<p>As long as you haven’t lied or cheated or altered your transcript, you need to proceed with confidence on your current track. Good luck to you.</p>

20

<p>You have to deal with the GC, to understand what happened. Maybe show him/her post 17. I agree French isn’t the issue. You continued to take it and did well. But you didn’t take bio in 9th. Did you still get 3 years of lab science (for college apps?) Does your current hs require bio to grad? And, are French and Bio the only examples of this problem?</p>