<p>It's a long story, but I'll try to be concise. Three years ago, I got accepted to and attended Duke UG for a year, but had certain medical issues which affected my academic and social life, so I decided to withdraw. I came back home, and after a couple years at the local community college (with a 4.0 GPA), I am finally transferring to a US News top 25 school (not Duke).</p>
<p>I know I'll excel at the school I'm transferring to, but when I apply to law school, I'll have to report all grades (inc the low grades earned at duke).</p>
<p>My question: how would law schools even know I attended duke if I didn't list it? How would the bar find out that I attended that school for a year, if I don't report it? I know you should never omit info like that, but I'm just curious. Does it happen often?</p>
<p>ER: should you take a bar exam, as part of application for bar membership you will be required to submit a statement that will include many aspects of your background, including all schools attended. You need to be scrupulously thorough in filling it out; otherwise, should it later be discovered, you could be disbarred for lying on your application. So don't even consider starting out that way.</p>
<p>Honestly, the law school would be suspicious anyway. If you don't have grades from when you are 18, they'll want to know why. Some of the applications are pretty thorough. </p>
<p>I agree with DadofSam - you should report it. I also think that it will not hurt you very much - it's been years since that happened. The student you were at age 18 with medical issues is not the student you are, stronger and healthier, at age 25. Explain it properly, get great grades at your new school, and you'll be fine.</p>
<p>If I did report that , the GPA would be pulled down from (so far) a 4.0 to less than a 3.5, a number that will not help my chances of admission at HLS or YLS, even with a near perfect lsat.</p>
<p>I've heard so much about how ls admission is all about numbers. Would they even notice and count the dramatic upward turn?</p>
<p>I wonder if people actually get away with not reporting stuff like this? Thanks.</p>
<p>Just me, but I would rather "settle" for Columbia (with a stellar next few years, it's possible - depending) or some other top 10 school, forgetting about H, and knowing that I won't get nailed on the bar. </p>
<p>One of the parents talked about someone who couldn't sit for the bar, because a friend had borrowed his ID to drink in another state, was caught, and there was an outstanding warrant for this kid's arrest. </p>
<p>Yes, law school admissions is all about the numbers... but, once you factor in a few more semesters of college, the influence of your bad grades at Duke won't matter as much.</p>
<p>Your question is another way of asking whether you can get away with fraud. Some people do get away with fraud for their entire lives. Some people have their frauds revealed in short order. Others find their frauds exposed years after the fact. There was a slew of stories in the sports pages a few years ago about football coaches with phantom degrees, and varsity playing experience that hadn't actually occurred.</p>
<p>There was a guy a few years ago who had failed a course in his last semester of law school at Michigan, and didn't want to admit it to his employer. He couldn't sit for the bar, but told everyone he had passed. His fraud was uncovered only after he had made partner.</p>
<p>There was another guy who had failed the New York bar, and had posed as a lawyer anyway. After he was caught, he moved to California, and practiced law for a while using the bar number of a guy with the same first and last name.</p>
<p>There was a professor at Stanford Medical School a few years ago who had two wives, and two sets of children, that knew nothing about each other until he died of an early heart attack.</p>
<p>Do you want to be one of those guys? </p>
<p>Dirty Harry: "I know what you're thinking. 'His gun holds eight bullets, but I'm not sure if he fired seven times or eight times.' To tell you the truth, I'm not so sure myself. So you need to ask yourself - 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?"</p>
<p>You didn't just happen to "forget about" the year at Duke when you applied to transfer did you? </p>
<p>You might want to take a look at Jean Fetters' book. She was the dean of admissions for Stanford undergrad years ago. Through a total fluke, she learned that a student who had transferred to Stanford from a community college had omitted the fact that she'd flunked out of a top college before enrolling in community college. After several successful semesters at Stanford, she was expelled with a transcript that says something like "Expelled for dishonesty." Of course, she received NO academic credit for the courses she'd taken at Stanford. The only info Stanford would give out is that she had attended it for such and such a period of time and was expelled for dishonesty. (BTW, even if you make it through, that's grounds to revoke your degree.)</p>
<p>So, if you've already lied...and I hope you haven't....'fess up to it now. At some point, it will come out.</p>
<p>Good advice given. Gaps in your life must be explained (at least in California when applying for bar admission). I also know for a fact that they do follow up with background checks -- I had friends say they were "visited."</p>
<p>I would contact Duke and see if there is anything you can do, since it was a medical condition. If you stopped going, maybe the grades that semester can be changed to W's or NC if you have medical documentation. I had several grades of "NC" on my transcript when I applied to law school. Anyway, I addressed the issue in my essay, why I flunked out. I didn't apply to TT (top twenty) law schools but I did get into the ones I applied to, mostly second tier.</p>
<p>I don't know if they'd catch you or not. I do know that if they did, they'd make an example out of you. Lawyers are trained to be heartless; it's their best selling point.</p>