<p>I know you all say I’ve done nothing wrong, but I suppose the reason I feel guilty about all of this is that I really do think the switch was a mistake. Nothing seems to line up. For clarification, my new transcript shows that I only attended School A freshman year, as if I never transferred schools. Say the schools do contact my GC regarding my previous transcripts, and he has no idea why the grades were changed. Could disciplinary action be taken against me for not getting the grades changed back to the real ones?</p>
<p>@ItsJustSchool I really like your idea of letting the colleges know of the entire predicament before I actually enroll. If I do gain acceptance somewhere I will definitely follow your advice to make sure everything is completely cleared up. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that if you list high schools on a college application where you cannot obtain, a colleges may insist. I personally would stick to keeping things consistent with your official educational records. In the real world people do not list jobs they had for a week or a hotel they lived at for a week in between the selling and purchasing of a home. Applications to colleges require a lot of information and their questions and your responses are open to interpretation. Furthermore, I believe the common application only allows you to enter four high schools.</p>
<p>“Enter all high schools you have attended, regardless of how long you attended, whether courses were completed or whether you believe your record will affect your chances for admission. Providing incomplete or incorrect information may jeopardize your admission or enrollment.” – Where is this from?</p>
<p>If disciplinary action can be taken it will be against those that can alter the transcript, and there is plenty of time to discuss this after being accepted. Look at it this way, your job is to go to school and do your best. The institution has the job of tracking and recording your progress. You have no control over what the institutions put on the transcript. You have alerted your GC when you thought there may be a discrepancy. That is all you can do at this stage. You can tell university admissions, but they are busy just now reading applications and can’t really deal with it. It is a waste of time for admissions to deal with this if they will not eventually accept you. The proper thing to do is address this after you have been accepted (if at all).</p>
<p>During your college career, you may encounter obstacles that bring you to dark places of self-doubt. Therefore, you should clear your conscience prior to beginning, so you can traverses those fields of self-doubt. Other than that, everyone else here can see there is no problem. You are capable and will do great things.</p>
<p>The common app does only allow 4. So I would list my current high school, the two others from sophomore year, and School A that appears on my transcript as freshman year that would make it exactly 4? Or would I include a complete list on the Additional Info section?</p>
<p>“Enter all high schools you have attended, regardless of how long you attended, whether courses were completed or whether you believe your record will affect your chances for admission. Providing incomplete or incorrect information may jeopardize your admission or enrollment.”- This is from the state university system application. This application does have enough space to list every school, but then I have to list what grades I received from each. So in this case would it be best to just include those schools on my official transcript?</p>
<p>I agree that I should clear my conscience. I don’t want this to haunt me for the rest of my life and feel like I earned my degree through dishonesty.</p>
<p>I would put the complete list on the add’l info. But I wouldn’t bother to try to sort out the dates, just by year, perhaps. That is the best way to go, no omissions, although if you omitted one you didn’t actually attend at all that would also make sense. </p>
<p>I really don’t think that there is anything to do but move forward. Freshman grades and classes mean very little. The important classes are Jr and Sr classes as they are the culmination that is built on. No one gives a rat’s butt if you took French 1 or an early math class when you complete later ones. You are making a mountain out of a molehill. No one cares. It is handled by the schools to submitted and received on your transcripts, you have voiced uncertainty about transferred classes and been overruled, there is nothing further to do or think on the subject. You are not lying about what is on your current transcript. Case closed. If you feel this will haunt you for the rest of your life, then get some therapy, learn to stop living life looking in the rear view mirror, and just start at community college if it makes you feel better.</p>
<p>Just remember that classmates telling you where to apply is the blind leading the blind. They have no idea. Your teachers you can listen too, but often they are not up to date on this either.</p>
<p>In his recommendation, the GC can say there were several prior schools, that records came through incomplete or inaccurate, primarily due to xx family situation, and that your final hs did the best it could to piece this together and follow district guidelines for what credits they applied and how they recorded. That heads the issue off. (And it seems to be what you are telling us, right?) That’s your GC speaking on your behalf, as one educator to others. Settle with the GC which hs get listed. I don’t see why it’s mandatory to list a hs you never physically attended. </p>
<p>There has been a question on the Common App: explain any interruptions in your education. You can CYA by using Addl Info to briefly state family circumstances that led to this. It happens. There are more kids than you realize who suffer things beyond their control and adcoms then adjust their perspective. As said by several here, the main focus will be on how ready you are today and how your academic and EC experiences now add up. BrownParent is right, the issue isn’t the stumbles, it’s the triumphs you achieved. </p>
<p>Chose colleges where you can succeed and grow over the four years. That’s based on you, your strengths, interests and goals. Not someone else’s idea that all good students should automatically apply to some particular schools. Get a Fiske or other college guide, read through. Check the colleges’ course offering and other programs. Check the Net Price Calculators, know what you can afford. </p>
<p>I’m not applying to colleges that my peers/teachers recommended me to apply to. I don’t even think I would want to attend HYP, or any colleges in the top 20 for that matter.</p>
<p>@lookingforward The problem is that I don’t think my GC realizes that those aren’t my grades. If I ask him to write that he pieced together my transcripts he won’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not saying that the grades were converted, I’m saying that the school made an error when inputting my grades.</p>
<p>Do yourself a favor and go speak with your counselor about this and come up with a plan with him or her as to how to proceed so that you feel better and can move on. It sounds like you are not going to be at peace until you sort this out and your counselor is the best person to sort this out with. I guess my point is there is no absolute answer for your situation so as long as your counselor is on board with you, you will be fine.</p>
<p>A.) It appears you may have the potential and the demonstrated ability to legitimately apply to and be seriously considered at any school that you wish to attend, and
B.) It appears that your issues surrounding fairness, ethics, and everything else that twists you around the axle are in your own head, and no one else is bothered by them. Whether you deal with them with your GC, with a therapist, or by “coming clean” to the admissions department of a school to which you are admitted isn’t most important right now.</p>
<p>Right now, what is important is researching and applying to schools that would be a good fit for you- that would provide the proper challenge to allow you to make the transition from student of the world to contributor to it in the most efficacious manner possible.</p>
<p>Yes, you need to sort through your own issues in order to live a fulfilled life, but really, get some acceptances first! Don’t overthink this. Do your best, and if you need to later, dialog to clear up any misconceptions or inaccuracies.</p>
<p>Are you saying that your peers and teachers are recommending that you apply to top schools? If so, why aren’t you interested? You seem to want a high level of intellectual stimulation. </p>
<p>Don’t forget that those are the schools with the best FA. I don’t know what your financial situation is, but if you need substantial FA you should be casting a wide net, including applying to a the schools that have it to give, since it sounds as if you are a realistic candidate. </p>
<p>Have you considered whether you are suffering from some degree of impostor syndrome? That your possibly overblown concern with your early transcripts could be part of this?</p>
<p>I just want to add that I am not a medical professional and I didn’t mean my mention of impostor syndrome to be anything even faintly like a diagnosis. I also don’t mean to medicalize your situation. It’s more of a general sense I’ve gotten about your feeling unworthy in a way that doesn’t seem deserved.</p>
<p>So what you’re all saying is that even if those grades were a mistake I should still apply? I’m sorry I’m a little unclear as to what you’re suggesting, it seems like you are under the impression that I did earn those grades but I need to make it clear that it was most likely an error.</p>
<p>@Consolation I’m not limiting myself from those schools, the schools on my list just happen to be outside the top 20. I think I can be intellectually stimulated at many schools.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why you all think I’m over-obsessing about this. You realize that my grades were completely switched from ALL Fs to almost ALL As? I didn’t earn those grades, I don’t know why you think I’m in denial about my ‘‘achievements.’’ I missed more than half of freshman year, it is extremely unlikely that I earned those grades. I also don’t see why you don’t see this as unfair to other applicants. What if a student just messed around throughout his high school career, earned mediocre grades, the grades were magically switched to As, and he got into your child’s dream school and your child did not. That seems pretty unfair to me, so I don’t think I’m over thinking this.</p>
<p>Anyway, I brought up the issue to my counselor about my transcript only listing my first high school instead of all four. I asked him why they weren’t listed and if I should still list them all when applying to colleges.</p>
<p>His answer to my first question was similar to what you all said. He said something along the lines that because of my situation, they probably fixed it up/ combined them into the first school I attended since that was the only school in the same district and for cohesive purposes.</p>
<p>To my second question, he said he thinks I should base it off of my transcript but that he is going to have a meeting about that tomorrow with the adviser and the chancellor of the state universities to get a definite answer.</p>
<p>Everyone is saying that if <em>poof</em> you appeared today, that your PRESENT grades show you to be capable, not only in new subject matter, but also in continuing subject matter like French. So much time (more than a year) has gone by since you took those classes that the grades you earned in them do not define your capability. How they are recorded is a matter for the various school administrations.</p>
<p>Therefore, your actions moving forward would be to set yourself up to succeed in the world. One way to do that is to get into the college that is the best fit for you.</p>
<p>By obsessing about something you have no control over (your past grades sealed in transcripts by successive administrators), you are avoiding doing the work you need to do. You need to trust the system and do your part in it. The past is the past. Just take what you have now and present it the best way you can and move forward.</p>
<p>What you think you earned and what you think is fair is what is messing you up. It is not your job to judge what is fair or what you earned. Others may have a different context or metric for assessment. Besides, people with mediocre records are promoted all the time. Look at President Bush- he was re-elected (showing the majority thought he did a good job) and his grades in college were “C” average. No one begrudges them that.</p>
<p>You are the only one with an issue here. No one else thinks you should handicap yourself. And you are the one with the least context and most myopic worldview (by virtue of your age and life experiences). You really need to trust at this juncture. Figure this all out after mid-January, when all applications are in, or after getting your acceptances.</p>
<p>This list omits the ivy’s & MIT, which meet the financial needs of students. Also, there are some great scholarships, such as Alabama (and NMF scholarships, if you qualified).</p>
<p>If I recall from your earlier posts on this thread you stated you attended numerous schools your freshman year and the last school you attended required you to meet all of their class requirement in only just a few weeks, hence, you failed. I just wanted to point out that if they did that to you it would be completely unfair and undeserved. No one is responsible for 9 or 18 weeks of work in a matter of a few weeks. Try thinking about it that way.</p>
<p>@ItsJustSchool, the list does include those schools if you keep scrolling down.</p>
<p>Honestly, @lw9070, I think you probably need some help with putting your list together. That is something that we are very good at. Let us help you.</p>
<p>Look, everyone but you seems to recognize that saying you “earned” a string of Fs when you started out with almost all As and then were yanked out of school after school and plonked into a new ones, apparently after only a month or so of enrollment–and one of them a school you actually were unable to attend at all–is nonsensical. Your consistently excellent performance before and most especially after that debacle shows that the failing “grades”–I hesitate to even call them that, for what on earth could they have been based on?–you think you should have in no way reflect you as a student. One or more of your prior schools seems to have figured this out, and adjusted your transcript to reflect it. </p>
<p>And frankly, if a school decided to take you, with what you’ve achieved after what you went through, “instead of”–and it is rarely that direct–my kid, I would applaud their decision.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for helping me see this from a different perspective. This is what I’ll do: I’ll talk to my counselor tomorrow to see whether or not I should list all schools. Either way, I’ll ask him to mention why they are not listed on my transcript. I’ll go ahead and apply to colleges. If I gain acceptance, I’ll make sure the school is aware of my previous transcripts. If a school rescinds my admission/ doesn’t accept me, I’ll get a job and go to community college part-time and transfer after a few years, but I’ll think more about this later if this does turn out to be the case. </p>
<p>@Consolation The schools on that list are extremely selective, I don’t expect school to be completely free, just affordable in a way that makes it possible to attend. The original schools on my list were a few state schools and three liberal arts colleges as my dream schools (Reed, St. Olaf, and Smith).</p>
<p>I really would appreciate some help expanding my list a bit, if you guys wouldn’t mind.</p>
<p>Do you have a preferred major? You really are competitive at any school. Smith and Reed certainly are not slacker schools. I am glad to see them on there. There is a current thread about which seven sisters schools gives the best financial aid (i.e. calculates most generous “demonstrated need” of the applicant). I am less worried now.</p>