IA not on AMCAS, what to do now?

[awycecujo]

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TLDR: IA was unreported on AMCAS as a big oversight on my part, now trying to navigate how best to proceed.

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Context: I am a non-trad and my freshman year 10+ years ago I was caught drinking in the dorms. Nothing crazy, but poor judgment/bad luck. No underage ticket/legal concerns. Talked about it with my RA, went to a class, resolved the issue within a week, never happened again—typical stuff.

I made a mistake by selecting no IA’s on my primary AMCAS application, thinking this was not considered as such. After so many years I didn’t think much of it. At the time, I attempted to do my due diligence and called my university registrar to check and see if there was anything on my record or transcript that could be considered disciplinary action or misconduct of any sort. No written responses like emails, but they said no. Sent in AMCAS and was verified.

After the fact, seeing some other posts online about similar situations with housing misconduct, I realized that this may have actually been considered a formal sanction. Sure enough, called the student affairs office this time & did an open records request and got ahold of official documents from this incident discussing the housing misconduct and subsequent discipline.

Now, normally I would not be neurotic about a minor, one-time underage drinking incident from over 10 years ago, but I am unsure how to proceed with notifying schools, if at all. AAMC said that they can’t do anything about my primary since it’s been verified.
- Is it best to email each school to explain the incident, plus my oversight in not recording it initially? Then I can offer to provide a verification letter, etc., from the registrar dean.
- Is this school specific? I.e., should I open up a line of communication with each adcom and see what they want me to do?
- I am in the midst of secondary essays and some schools have an option to fill out an essay for misconduct/IAs, which I have started using if it’s available. If not, should I explain this in an “anything else?” essay or upload a document/update in the secondary portal?

Hoping for some idea on the best course of action given that what’s done is done. I want to be forthright and transparent, though it’s an uncomfortable position to be in after all the work to get to this point. Thanks in advance for any advice or help.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

First of all, welcome to the forums.

It's too bad you didn't read our general advice about reporting IA's before you began this process.

Legal Matters: Institutional Action Basics | Student Doctor Network | SDN

Updated December 20, 2021. The article was updated to correct minor grammatical errors. The Student Doctor Network gets several questions to

www.studentdoctor.net

Reporting an Institutional Action | Student Doctor Network | SDN

Last month, we discussed what constitutes an Institutional Action in the eyes of the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC). If you have one of

www.studentdoctor.net

Second, your citation was over 10 years ago, so the question is how your student conduct office will report it when asked in a post-offer verification dean's letter. If you have not finished your secondaries, you should disclose the citation, when it occurred, and what you have done since for any secondary essay prompt that requests you to disclose. I don't think you need to reach out to any schools beyond this until you finish your secondaries.

For the rest of the schools whose secondaries you already submitted, if they have an essay box asking you to disclose prior citations, you can reach out to them by email stating that you must update your answer given the new information about your records.

Keep your answer focused on the citation, when it occurred, and what you have done since. Be precise with what the exact citation was by using the language your student conduct office used to describe how you broke residential life rules.

I assure you that a 10-year old "alcohol in the dorm room" is trivial. Approach this process with integrity and contrition, and this won't become an obstacle.

 

[PickaGodnPray]

You should check your schools policy first and foremost. Most schools expunge these issues after a set amount of years. The current AMCAS rules state you do not need to report if it has been expunged. From my knowledge, this sounds like it was removed after x amount of years, is no longer on your transcript, and does not need to be reported on your primary.

There are some schools with secondaries that require reporting and explicitly ask about it even if it was removed/expunged, to which I would answer those honestly. Otherwise, I see no issues here.

 

[awycecujo]

First of all, welcome to the forums.

It's too bad you didn't read our general advice about reporting IA's before you began this process.

Legal Matters: Institutional Action Basics | Student Doctor Network | SDN

Updated December 20, 2021. The article was updated to correct minor grammatical errors. The Student Doctor Network gets several questions to

www.studentdoctor.net

Reporting an Institutional Action | Student Doctor Network | SDN

Last month, we discussed what constitutes an Institutional Action in the eyes of the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC). If you have one of

www.studentdoctor.net

Second, your citation was over 10 years ago, so the question is how your student conduct office will report it when asked in a post-offer verification dean's letter. If you have not finished your secondaries, you should disclose the citation, when it occurred, and what you have done since for any secondary essay prompt that requests you to disclose. I don't think you need to reach out to any schools beyond this until you finish your secondaries.

For the rest of the schools whose secondaries you already submitted, if they have an essay box asking you to disclose prior citations, you can reach out to them by email stating that you must update your answer given the new information about your records.

Keep your answer focused on the citation, when it occurred, and what you have done since. Be precise with what the exact citation was by using the language your student conduct office used to describe how you broke residential life rules.

I assure you that a 10-year old "alcohol in the dorm room" is trivial. Approach this process with integrity and contrition, and this won't become an obstacle.

Thanks for the response. I will reach out again to my undergrad institution to see what they say. Does every medical school request a post offer verification dean’s letter? I guess my other question is for schools that do not have any option to discuss this issue on secondaries, if you recommend that I do not reach out to them, at what point do I bring this up?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Thanks for the response. I will reach out again to my undergrad institution to see what they say. Does every medical school request a post offer verification dean’s letter? I guess my other question is for schools that do not have any option to discuss this issue on secondaries, if you recommend that I do not reach out to them, at what point do I bring this up?

Some schools may just ask, "is there anything else you wish to bring up?" Otherwise, I'd wait until I got invited to interview.

 

[awycecujo]

You should check your schools policy first and foremost. Most schools expunge these issues after a set amount of years. The current AMCAS rules state you do not need to report if it has been expunged. From my knowledge, this sounds like it was removed after x amount of years, is no longer on your transcript, and does not need to be reported on your primary.

There are some schools with secondaries that require reporting and explicitly ask about it even if it was removed/expunged, to which I would answer those honestly. Otherwise, I see no issues here.

Thanks! Good point. I am looking into the policy from my undergrad institution and seeing what they suggest I do or if it has even fallen off of my record due to the length of time. My initial conversation with the registrar’s office said they never include any disciplinary action on their transcripts, so that’s likely why it doesn’t show up there and why I stopped looking into it in the first place.

ETA: this was very, very good advice—thankfully at my school, 7+ years is the cutoff for any resolved non-academic misconduct so they fully removed it from my file. So answering “no” on AMCAS for IA’s ended up being accurate. Thanks so much for the words of wisdom.