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AegonTargaryenVI said:
I fully intend on receiving a committee letter from my institution and would rather be honest about it if my university deems it an IA (have not confirmed yet).
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Good. You definitely SHOULD report it even if it is internal records only. Specifically if you have some professor that states "Aegon Targaryen VI, Lord of the Andols and rightful heir to the Iron Throne has been a superb student ever since the incident..."

I cannot speak directly to how ADCOMs would perceive this, however given your application I cannot imagine it will be viewed with much of a negative light.
 
AegonTargaryenVI said:
I appreciate the reference! And thank you for your thoughts as well. I do not intend to ask this particular professor for a LOR as I did not have a relationship with them, I have others in mind at the moment.
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Coming from a guy that @Goro told he needed to report having a cat in university housing....I would think yours is more severe and should be reported lol
 
MemeLord said:
Coming from a guy that @Goro told he needed to report having a cat in university housing....I would think yours is more severe and should be reported lol
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I should have clarified, I did not mean that for that reason I don't intend to report it because I do intend to. My mistake, just stating as an aside that I do not intend to ask that professor for a letter!
 
IF this is the whole story and you're being honest:

First thing I would do is go to your institution and confirm whether this is an IA or not. If it is not an IA, the next step would be to talk to the committee that writes letters and be very direct in asking whether this would be included in the letter or not. If both of those are a no, then I would NOT mention this in your application at all. If you talk to the committee, be clear that you are not trying to be dishonest or manipulate, but that you feel this was a genuine mistake and that you don't want something like this to potentially be misconstrued by ADCOMs. This seems like a misunderstanding and not actual cheating, but many med schools would look at it as the latter and possibly auto-reject you.

If it counts as an IA or if the committee is going to mention it in the letter then you'll have to explain what happened. You would need to explain what happened and take responsibility as well as talk about what you learned and how you'd prevent it from happening again. In this case there will be schools that may auto-reject you based on an IA (though given the nature of this one hopefully most wouldn't) and there will likely be many that scrutinize your application more closely because of it. I say this as someone who worked with admissions and got to discuss topics like this with members of the ADCOM at my school. Any IA or incident reported is taken seriously, and any time an applicants honesty or integrity is questioned it will impact their ability to be accepted.
 
AMCAS defines an IA as: "any institutional action resulting from unacceptable academic performance or a conduct violation, even if such action did not interrupt your enrollment, require you to withdraw, or does not appear on your official transcripts due to institutional policy or personal petition." So this is something that should be reported, since the institution did take action, namely, give you a 0 for that assignment. Now if your institution is clearly stating that this is not an institutional action, then that's another story, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

As you know, 'open notes' does not mean anything goes (including plagiarism). You're still being tested on your knowledge and understanding of the material. It's clear that this was not done with malicious intent (the one saving grace); however, regardless of how benign this may seem, it still is a significant lapse in judgement that many adcoms (particularly the more old school ones) would look negatively on, especially given how recent this occurred.

My advice would be to explain it as you do here, take responsibility as you have done, see if the committee letter can advocate and vouch on your behalf, but also apply broadly with the understanding that this would likely shut you out of some schools. Sorry to be a bummer. Would be curious to see how other schools deal with this.
 
Moko said:
AMCAS defines an IA as: "any institutional action resulting from unacceptable academic performance or a conduct violation, even if such action did not interrupt your enrollment, require you to withdraw, or does not appear on your official transcripts due to institutional policy or personal petition." So this is something that should be reported, since the institution did take action, namely, give you a 0 for that assignment.
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This is true, and this is also the kind of stuff that makes it hard for me to take AMCAS and some ADCOMs seriously. It's completely ridiculous that incidents that are legitimate mistakes, aren't cheating, and may not even be an applicants fault can bar them from an acceptance at multiple schools. Some ADCOMs are reasonable about these situations, but many are not and I find it quite disappointing when applicants are simply tossed aside because they are honest and report something that should never even need to be discussed.

I realize that there are plenty of instances where the whole story is hidden and applicants are dishonest. I just find it to be another point of the institutions being nit-picky over incidental issues and creating more hoops to jump through when it's completely unnecessary. Sorry to derail your thread OP. I just feel for you if you're being honest.
 
@Stagg737 @Moko Thank you for your responses. I am indeed giving the whole story as I would like the most realistic responses from others regarding my situation. If it is an IA per my institution I will absolutely report it. There definitely was no malicious intent and it was an episode of carelessness but I take total responsibility for it. I do plan to apply broadly (roughly 20-23 with a few top 20 schools).
 
Stagg737 said:
This is true, and this is also the kind of stuff that makes it hard for me to take AMCAS and some ADCOMs seriously. It's completely ridiculous that incidents that are legitimate mistakes, aren't cheating, and may not even be an applicants fault can bar them from an acceptance at multiple schools. Some ADCOMs are reasonable about these situations, but many are not and I find it quite disappointing when applicants are simply tossed aside because they are honest and report something that should never even need to be discussed.

I realize that there are plenty of instances where the whole story is hidden and applicants are dishonest. I just find it to be another point of the institutions being nit-picky over incidental issues and creating more hoops to jump through when it's completely unnecessary. Sorry to derail your thread OP. I just feel for you if you're being honest.
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I completely agree 110% with this. Whenever I see situations like this, it honestly could have been any of us in these situations -- one wrong move when we're not thinking straight is unfortunately all it takes (though many would argue that the same is true as an attending -- except then there is much more on the line). @AegonTargaryenVI , please let us know in two years time how things turn out. Hopefully you'll have good news to report. Good luck.
 
@Moko Thank you for the good wishes! I'm hoping this mistake won't make me an auto-reject from all the schools I apply to. I don't know how they'll consider this but I'm trying to remain optimistic as it's really nerve-wracking.
 
AegonTargaryenVI said:
@Moko Thank you for the good wishes! I'm hoping this mistake won't make me an auto-reject from all the schools I apply to. I don't know how they'll consider this but I'm trying to remain optimistic as it's really nerve-wracking.
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I hope so as well. Best case scenario is for either the school to say that this was not an institutional action (unlikely), or for your letter committee to vouch on your behalf and convince adcoms that this was highly out of character, etc. Reach out to both administration and the letter committee to see where you stand -- if you don't already know the committee letter writer, now would be a good time to be on their radar (to allow for more convincing arguments come letter writing time). Good luck
 
Good luck to you, sounds like some good advice above. Think the takeaway from your unfortunate incident is that schools DO NOT have our backs. As you go through your careers DO NOT trust them. Stay wary out there friends...
 
@Medic741 Yeah I will say I wish there was a bit more support from schools 😒

@LizzyM @gyngyn would either of you have any thoughts on this IA as well? I'd appreciate any insight
 
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Sometimes a school will negotiate a "plea bargain" that the professor gives a zero (the professor's action, not the institution's) and the student agrees to forego the right to appeal the decision and the school saves itself the trouble of of convening a review panel. Some schools send students who are drunk to the infirmary rather than "write them up" for violating bans on under age drinking, again saving the student an IA. Some schools do have students' backs.

My approach to IAs has always been to ask, "would we want someone who does this in our campus community?" Erasing and changing answers and resubmitting a test for regrading: No. Copying and pasting an entire paper, changing two words and submitting it as one's own? No way. Minor use of other's written material without proper citation? Maybe not so bad.
 
@LizzyM Thank you for the insight. What you described in the first paragraph is exactly what happened to me in reference to the "plea bargain" you described. This gives me a better idea of how my situation would be considered, I appreciate it!
 
Just wanted to provide an update to everyone who was kind enough to advise me on this. My school's office of conduct has indicated that this does not technically fall under an institutional action because the institution itself did not have to nor need to provide me any sanctions since it was informally resolved between the professor and student, so good news! Nonetheless I will continue to learn from this situation and take responsibility to be more careful and proactive about these kinds of things from here on. Thank you to everyone!
 
AegonTargaryenVI said:
Just wanted to provide an update to everyone who was kind enough to advise me on this. My school's office of conduct has indicated that this does not technically fall under an institutional action because the institution itself did not have to nor need to provide me any sanctions since it was informally resolved between the professor and student, so good news! Nonetheless I will continue to learn from this situation and take responsibility to be more careful and proactive about these kinds of things from here on. Thank you to everyone!
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Wonderful news!!
 
MemeLord said:
Does this mean that OP should NOT list it?
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Well, doesn't seem like the institution ever acted according to their office, so technically would not be an IA. This would fall under the plea bargain scenario that @LizzyM mentioned earlier. Happy to be wrong with my initial thoughts.
 
@MemeLord @Moko I know different institutions constitute different things under the category of institutional action, my school in this case does not consider my scenario an IA, rather it is like the "plea bargain" LizzyM described, which spares the student of an IA
 
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