on the big application to go to med school, the AMCAS or whatever its called, what happens if you dont disclose all the colleges you went to? can they find out? the reason i ask is because when i was very young i went to a CC for one semester and i got 3 F’s. i would really not like to include those on the application.
I can’t tell you whether they can tell if you’re lying or not… but I do believe it’s illegal to lie on your application (or fail to disclose information).
Someone can probably clarify this for me.
Many of us have grades that we’d rather not allow to be on our applications… but we disclose them anyway…
First & foremost - not to sound judgemental or anything - the profession of medicine is vested with a massive amount of responsibility mandating a strong sense of professionlism to manage this burden. Critical to professionalism is honesty…if you cannot be honest, then you might wish to seek another career…I would certainly prefer that anyone stooping to dishonesty would do just that. If you cannot get into medical school w/o being dishonest, then you should not be admitted to medical school. I apologize if my comments seem harsh, but I take massive pride in my chosen profession. Part of that is policing who gets in to maintain the level of professionalism, character & maturity that SHOULD be inherent…
Now, I sincerely hope that you are/were not intending to intentionally deceive the AdComs and made this inquiry purely out of concern over summary elimination due to old transgressions. I will assume that this was the real intent of your question…
My own case proves that you can be admitted with severe academic transgressions w/i your transcript. Yes, it will be much more difficult, but it can be done. You cannot change the past, esp by hiding it. So, what do you do? You accept responsibility for your mistakes, avoid repeating them and them academically prove beyond any shadow of doubt that you are capable of thriving under the rigors of med school, residency & as a licensed practitioner. You do this by excelling in your recent college coursework, pre-requisites & scoring solidly on the MCAT. There are NO shortcuts. Work hard to make your application shine. Use your old mistakes to highlight the level of quality of your new grades.
When doling out seats in a med school class, it is in the school’s best interest to evaluate each applicant as a whole to ensure that they admit the best that they can muster. This means that there are few things that will guarantee acceptance or rejection. Lying on your application will most definitely get you summarily rejected & reported to AMCAS/AACOMAS. This will place you on a “black list” distributed to all programs you apply to & get you barred from reapplying. If you read the small print, I am almost positive lying on your med school app constitutes fraud in a legal definition.
Pragmatically, the immense application pile has to be paired down to a manageable size. Therefore, there will be programs who simply toss your app into the round file simply for those 3 'F’s - sad, but it is a fact. Solution - research & network with programs & learn which ones are more apt to invest time reviewing your app & not just looking for excuses to toss yours out. And, cast a broad net by applying to more programs.
Again, my intent was not to offend you. However, dishonesty is not to be taken lightly & it was my intent to make that point in a succinct & blunt manner. My comments are not solely directed at you, but also apply to anyone actually considering doing this. Getting caught is academic suicide…even if your intentions were not malicious, which I trust yours are not.
I wish you the best of luck & success.
I responded to this thread in the “Applying to Medical School” forum. I whole-heartedly agree that you should not lie on your application. I think 2ndDave makes a great point about doing extra legwork to find schools/make schools know you for more than your application…it might take a lot of work and rejection, but you have a better chance than lying about it and you can feel better about in the end.
don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. There’s the practical implications - if you’re found out, you’re screwed. And then there’s the ethical implications: if you’ll misrepresent one thing, might you misrepresent others? If I am your senior resident and you’re the third year med student on my team, I need to be able to know that you really did check the latest blood work on Mrs. M. If you’re the junior resident and you order the wrong drug for someone and they have a bad reaction, you have to be able to suck it up and admit it. If you’re the attending surgeon and you encounter a problem during a difficult surgery that results in a patient’s death, you are going to stand up before your peers at the weekly morbidity and mortality conference, and describe exactly what you did, why, and why you think there was a bad outcome. You don’t hide from your mistakes in medicine. In my area a few years ago, a physician lied about meds he gave to a teenager who unexpectedly arrested during minor surgery. He won’t practice again (and IFIRC got a dishonorable discharge from the military to boot). Had he TOLD THE TRUTH, he still would’ve been liable but would probably still have a license.
Like Dave, I don’t want to come across all pompous but there is NOTHING more valuable than your honesty/integrity. Far better to suck it up and admit those old Fs even though you think they’re meaningless. In many ways, they ARE meaningless but your bringing them out into the open is actually meaningFUL in a good way.
I’ll jump into this as well (somewhere there is a comment that I wrote about writing your own rec letters which can have similar results)…
Lying on the application. Don’t even think it. You’d be surprised at what a small world med admissions really is when you don’t want it to be. For more than 99% of the time, med schools are too busy to worry about what’s going on with other med schools and their admissions processes (before May 15th, that is)…unless there is an outrageous appplicant who is discovered doing something unethical. And then the world gets very small indeed. Admissions folks meet at a national meeting every autumn, and all the regional groups meet every spring. They know each other. They are friends. They share stories. More than likely, you don’t want to be the subject of the story. Additionally, unethical as it may seem, applicants squeal on each other. Your “friend” who is also applying to med school, and knows of a transgression, suddenly may develop loose lips.
So, keep everything pristine.
Cheers,
Judy
You have gotten some great advice here. I hope you heed the words said here. It is rough when something from when you are young comes back to haunt you, but use in to your favor. Write a short amount in your personal essay about how much you have matured since that time and how much you have improved your grades since then.
Good luck
I think what everyone has said is great…
Just to expound on what Amy B just said… it sucks when something bad from the past comes back to haunt you… but we all hope that we can learn from past mistakes and not act accordingly so that something that we do now comes to haunt us in the future.
I have a different situation. I completed my pre req’s at a CC this past semester. Made the deans list, straight A’s good for me?! When I sent these final grades, I notice on the transcript two courses I took approximately 10 years ago; conversational japanese, and psych. One class I withdrew, the other I thought I withdrew from, but it shows as an F. Ok, the school has the transcript, I have about two weeks left to be invited for an interview. Should I just let dogs lay where they are, or should I shot a quick email, explaining I honestly did not recall these classes, which is the truth, and that I mishandled the withdraw process for the psych class??? My tendency is to just let the transcript lay where it be???
David
I would do two things: Write about the grades, and go to the transcript office and see if it was, in fact, a mistake. I once got an “F” in an audited swing dance class (apparently you can get an F in an audited class if you never show up) even though I got a letter from the bursar showing I had been dropped. (I decided to take Scottish Country Dancing instead). I didn’t worry about it at the time, thinking I’d never, ever go to “real” school again.
The “F” magically converted to a “W” when the University converted to a new system, as I enrolled in my pre-med classes, but you can bet I’d have been in the Enrollment Services office explaining their error if it hadn’t. I only hope a dropped swing dance class is the worst thing I have to explain on my med school application.
Quote:
on the big application to go to med school, the AMCAS or whatever its called, what happens if you dont disclose all the colleges you went to? can they find out? the reason i ask is because when i was very young i went to a CC for one semester and i got 3 F’s. i would really not like to include those on the application.
Hi there,
Consider this scenario: You “leave out” a some grades from a community college on your AMCAS application. You get invited to interview at Medical College of X and you get accepted. You are busting your rearend in Gross Anatomy, Biochemistry, Practice of Medicine etc. after going through the orientation (where they tell you how great you are to be a medical student) and bonding with your fellow-sufferers. One day you get a message from the Dean of Students. You appear in the Deans office and you are dismissed there; on the spot. You little short jacket stays in the closet. You never get to second year and worst of all, you owe money for this year because it’s after the official drop date. No career and more debt to add to your undergradate/graduate debt and no hope of getting into a medical school in this country.
Even if you get through school, they can dismiss you at any time or negate your degree based on your falsifing of data. Do you know how many times I have to send notarized letters to the Dean of Students at Howard for residency certification purposes? Your medical school can simply refuse to submit a certification of your degree at any time and you are sunk. “Slam dunk”
Put every grade on that AMCAS and keep careful records of where you attended and when. Also keep track of financial aid transcripts too.
Natalie
Quote:
I have a different situation. I completed my pre req’s at a CC this past semester. Made the deans list, straight A’s good for me?! When I sent these final grades, I notice on the transcript two courses I took approximately 10 years ago; conversational japanese, and psych. One class I withdrew, the other I thought I withdrew from, but it shows as an F. Ok, the school has the transcript, I have about two weeks left to be invited for an interview. Should I just let dogs lay where they are, or should I shot a quick email, explaining I honestly did not recall these classes, which is the truth, and that I mishandled the withdraw process for the psych class??? My tendency is to just let the transcript lay where it be???
David
David, I don’t think I would let the transcript lay where it be, but I wouldn’t (at this point) approach the medical school you’re trying to get into to fix it. I’m an attorney and one thing I’ve learned is that these things can be fixed if you talk to the right person and say the right things.
1. I would set up an emergency appointment with the registrar. Explain your situation and that you firmly remember that you dropped both of those clases. After all, why would you drop one and just take an F in the other? Explain to them that you’re trying to get into medical school and you really cannot afford an F on your transcript, particularly one due to a clerical error. If the registrar, doesn’t help you, go to the next person. Email all the powers that be in the CC. They can fix it, but you just need to talk to the right person. Don’t go in overly-combative, just reasonably explain your point and ask them how you can go about getting it fixed. If the registrar says you can’t, ask them who you can speak to has the discretion to fix the clerical error. And if worse comes to worse, have any family/friend attorney or yourself write up letter. Putting in writing that dropped the class, but it is reflected as an F. You understand that it is a large university with _______ students enrolling, getting grades each year and that clerical errors are a natural occurence, but that you will be applying to medical shcool and cannot afford to be burdened with an F resulting from a clerical error. CC the president of the university and anyone else in the chain of command. If you don’t give up, they will change it and then send an explanation to the school with a new transcript showing the W. If they don’t change it,I would send the medical school a courtesy copy of your letter to the community college explaining the grade dispute.
P.S. Don’t let them convince you that this a grade dispute and that you need make your case/appeal your grade before a committee. You are not disputing this grade in its substance - you’re disputing that you received a grade at all…and that this is a clerical error, not a grade dispute.
You think you are the only one with F’s on your transcript?
Over 10 years ago I went to college and decided it was stupid and I would not need it. I didn’t drop out, I just stoped going and now I have 2 F’s on my transcript from that (OVER 10 YEARS AGO!!).
I am 30 years old now and what I have done is pretty much make straight A’s and have brought my GPA up substantionally (from a 2.1 to a 3.2 currently), I expect in 2-3 years from now when I apply to med school I will have a 3.5 GPA or so.
Don’t be dishonest about it, just face the facts and go on.
Marilyn
Hey all. I read your post and I can only echo what others have said, don’t withhold anything or lie. You will be surprised, even what you may think is a disaster in your past could very well be worked around. If you lie or withold information, there is no turning back and it will always be there to bite you in the future. If there is something that is not so favorable, I would say attach a long letter of explanation if you can explaining what happened, what the result was and how you learned form your experience.
John M
Thanks!
Well, the class was, general psych I, which I’ve taken other psych course and scored A’s. I just dropped since I didn’t have the time 10 years ago. The school has indicated their policy allows a 2 yr period for grade changes, but they are discussing, in light of my circumstance, if they could help me. Oh, well, the grade my intended school was looking for was a psych and orgo chem from this past semester, which are both A’s. I hope that smooths out the 10 y/o grade if it isn’t changed in time…thanks!
If they’re helping you out, there’s no need to argue. But if in the end, they do try to institute the 2-year grade chance policy, I would definitely argue that you do not want a grade change. A grade change is when a teacher gives you a C and you think you deserve a B. This is that you dropped the class by the deadline and should have received no grade at all, bc you weren’t registered for the class at the time grades were given out. It is simply a clerical error- mishandling drop/withdrawal papers. Good luck!
While many on this board and elsewhere are prime examples that even F’s can be overcome with hard work, I do not think that you should not take on the burden of the F willy-nilly bc it was 10 years ago and you have received A’s since. Although it’s distance and your recent academic history lessen the blow of the F, obviously, it is far better not to have the F at all.
Here is another example (not about lying but about F´s on transcripts). I took a class during my undergraduate years in Rhetoric - (latin and greek terminology). It was an easy class and I did very well - I think I got 100% (or nearly so) on all the exams. Appealing to my (admittedly stupid) ego, at midterm the professor asked if I would like to do an additional seminar with a paper for the course and get graduate credit for it instead of undergraduate, to make the course more interesting/ challenging. Stupid me, at first I agreed to do this, but then later realized I didn´t have time to do the extra work due to other committments. But I forgot that the course registration number had been changed to the grad course number (even though I was still in the same class). So even though I had the highest grades in the class (all or nearly all 100% on exams including the final) I got an incomplete on my transcript which later converted to an F. I didn´t notice this until years later when I applied to grad school and needed a copy for my application. I didn´t try to do anything about it because I just thought it was too late to try to track down the professor and do anything about it then. During my grad school interviews everyone commented on it and it was really embarassing (and distracting) to explain. And I´m not even sure if people believed me - it sounded so ridiculous.
Is it worth trying to do something about this F on my transcript (that should have been an A). Or is it even possible to do something so long afterwards. I can´t even remember the name of the professor.