How to Write About an Academic Suspension and Cheating?

Session 102

Do you have an institutional action? Maybe an academic suspension? Or a dismissal from a class or program? How do I write about this on my application?

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[00:29] Question of the Day

“A little over a year and a half ago, I was done an institutional action for cheating in a Physics 2 class. I and a group of students were basically cheating on online assignments. And when things came to light, I first wasn’t very honest about it. And then I told them everything I knew. And then the consequence was that I received an academic suspension and I was dismissed from that science program.

But I’ve transferred to an institution, and that was my senior year. And I’ve tried to pick up the pieces as best I can. I retook Physics 2. I made sure to do things the right way and got an A that way. And I just took my MCAT.

But as I’m trying to prepare to submit my application for the next cycle that opens in 2021, I guess my biggest hang-up is I always feel like I’ve changed a lot but I don’t know how to really put that onto paper and put that in my application.”

[01:31] Own Your Story

On the AMCAS application, you have to talk about, “do you have any sort of academic institutional actions” and so you’re gonna have to put everything that happened. Unfortunately, you don’t get a lot of character spaces on the AMCAS application.

The biggest thing that schools need to see is growth. What did you learn from it? What happened? What did you learn from it and how did you move forward? Did you own it? How is it not going to be an issue moving forward and in medical school?

It’s very common when you feel you’re a weak student where Physics wasn’t your strong suit. And when you have this mindset of getting a B is a failure, then that would complicate things for you. You’d do everything to get an A and that includes cheating. And that’s how you fell into that trap.

There are going to be schools that are just going to outright reject you. They don’t want to deal with any students who have any sort of institutional actions, especially cheating and getting kicked out. But you will find schools that will give you a chance.

“Institutional actions, especially for teenagers and college kids are very common. It's not as uncommon as you may think. It's just kids doing stupid things.”Click To Tweet

So just focus on telling your story and completely owning your mistake. Tell them what you learned from it and how you’ve grown from that situation.

As long as you own it, as long as everything else still looks solid, regardless of institutional action or not, you still need a strong application, and maybe a little bit stronger. And your reflection in that institutional action is going to be huge for you.

[05:39] Will Time Fix Your Application?

Q: “I’ve been to different places like SDN and Reddit and posted and, and a lot of the time, I get this similar reply that only time will fix my application. And I guess I wanted to see what your perspective was on that because I’ve been thinking about maybe joining Peace Corps and doing the two-year stint and whether you think that would be helpful or beneficial in my application at all?”

A: Well, I agree that time fixes a lot of things. If you look at a DUI, having a DUI a month before you apply is different than having a DUI in your freshman year of college. And so time has shown that you hopefully have grown or maybe just have gotten better getting away with it. But the same thought process works with this as well.

Having caught cheating in your senior year is an issue. Do you have more academic proof that you’re getting A’s without cheating? They would assume that you got caught in physics, but you are cheating everywhere else. So you need to have more academic proof in terms of time – more grades, more courses that you’ve taken, where, hopefully, you don’t get caught cheating again, and you aren’t cheating. That is where the time comes into play. And running off to something like the Peace Corps may not help because that is not the academic stuff that got you in trouble in the first place.

'At the end of the day, the whole point of this exercise is showing growth, whether you have an institutional action or not.'Click To Tweet

When you have an institutional action, it’s even more important to show growth around that infraction. So work through that whole process and rebuild those relationships. Be open and honest with them and be transparent with them to show the growth in yourself. Hopefully, your contacts will come around and write you that letter of recommendation.

[09:32] Reaching Out to Schools

Q: “Do I need to call schools and talk about what happened with an admissions counselor to see if that would automatically reject me?”

A: I’m always a fan of reaching out to schools and asking those types of questions. I don’t think it hurts. I don’t think many schools are going to give you an answer. I think the default answer around something like that is that they review all applicants holistically. I wish all schools were transparent about what those cut-offs were. But for something like an institutional action, you’ll probably get a very generic “we review everyone holistically” type of response. But again, I don’t think it hurts to do it. So try it with a few schools and see what their response is.

Ultimately, when there’s no clear path, you’ve just got to do the next right thing. Just keep pushing forward and keep doing the next right thing. And hopefully, you’ll get into medical school one day.