<p>Throughout high school I always put forth my best effort and enjoyed doing it. At the end of my junior year, I began making a few personal mistakes that evidently lead to me getting caught cheating on a test. At first I thought nothing of it, but every night I went to bed with extreme guilt hanging over my head. Eventually, I had to come clean just a couple days after and my principal was extremely nice about it. I mean, obviously he was disappointed, but he genuinely felt bad for me and even started to cry. Now, I'm not going to explain how I'm innocent and what not, but let's be frank. A lot of people have cheated. I'm not happy that I cheated, but I'm happy about how that made me grow as a person, because after that, I moved to an entirely new school in an entirely new state and basically started my life over again, without the comfort of my friends. Since I'm young and I skipped a grade in elementary school, I repeated my junior year so that I was on the right age track to college. It opened amazing new opportunities that I never thought would be possible, and I took them immediately. I joined a state choir, I'm doing a Spanish immersion trip in Costa Rica, and I finally feel like I'm living up to my family's expectations (because they all went to Ivys). Even through all this hard work, the cheating is still hanging on my transcript, and at a few points in time, I get extremely discouraged and think that all this work is for nothing because colleges will just overlook me because I cheated. Am I right for feeling this or no? My ideal school is Northeastern University.</p>
<p>Although it’ll certainly hurt that you cheated, if you’re downright honest about it and show to some degree that you’re regretful and have learned your lesson and will never ever do it again in college and beyond, I think you can mitigate it quite a bit. </p>
<p>I know a person just a grade below me in my high school that I know is in your situation, except I don’t know if he’s remorseful or not. He snuck onto a teacher’s laptop and e-mailed himself all the answers to a Quarter test, and offered them to everyone in his class, which is how he got caught. He was suspended for 10 days, I think. There’s a couple of people in our grade who have access to a “network” of people ranging to people who have already graduated giving them previous tests, answers, and stuff. This may not seem serious, but it kills the curve at times and is just artificially boosting your grade. They literally memorize the entire multiple choice answers to English midterms, etc, and somehow finish 80 questions in 5-10 minutes. And the teachers don’t seem to do anything about it. But yeah, just be honest. I just wish these cutthroat bastards eventually pay for just how far they’re willing to go to get those straight-As that will hardly matter in the final decision for their Harvard decisions.</p>
<p>lulling @ “cutthroat bastards”</p>
<p>I think your sincerity will ring through to a school like Northeastern – as it did in your posting. I’ve read multiple postings from kids about prior “disciplinary problems” and many lack what I would call true remorse. I think it is important to find out if this issue (from your prior school) is documented in your academic record. If it is, then I believe honesty is your best friend, and save the posting you made above… you can edit it and use it in the “Additional Comments” section of the Common App…</p>