How bad is it? Academic IA

[OhGreatOne]

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[Moko]

Hi all,

I’m looking for some advice on how bad my academic IA might impact my med school application.

My freshman year, I was in a remote intro compsci course (COVID). I was having issues with my code, and my roommate offered to help. We ended up referencing his code to debug mine, and used parts to troubleshoot. This got flagged resulting in an investigation. I took full responsibility, got a zero on the assignment and a very small course grade reduction. No further disciplinary action was taken by the university, and there's no notation apart from the internal record.

It's been 4 years. I've gone ahead and written up an explanation taking accountability for the AMCAS box. Otherwise have high stats (52x, 3.9x), how bad will this affect my odds?

This likely won't be a major issue. The small punishment also supports that this isn't a major IA. Just my thoughts

 

[LunaOri]

It’s relatively minor; shouldn’t have a big impact

 

[OhGreatOne]

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[Mr.Smile12]

Thanks for the input. As far as reporting, I've drafted with the following structure:

1. Brief synopsis of what happened
2. The sanction applied
3. What I learned
4. How I've grown, with a couple examples

Does this sound like a reasonable approach? I understand overexplaining can be detrimental, but I want to give a complete answer to the prompt. It came out to around 900 / 1325 characters.

Would be curious on what @Goro and @LizzyM think?

Structurally that's fine. Accepting responsibility and expressing contrition are also very important.

 

[Goro]

What Mr.Smile12 said. Own the transgression.

This will be a nothingburger.