Even if it wasn't the OP's first time cheating, you can't treat every first time offense (first time they're caught, anyway) as if there's a documented record of cheating just because you assume it's a patterned behavior. If you're caught for the first time, it's a first time offense unless you can prove otherwise. If you deviate from that and start punishing based on assumed previous behavior, you end up with a ridiculous no-tolerance (for anything) society that delivers maximum punishment for sincere one-time only mistakes. Considering we all mess up something at some point, I wouldn't want to live in that kind of society. Better to give the opportunity to learn from a mistake a move on, but fool me twice and it's over.
Join date + user name + randomly picking my post in this thread, which pretty much just re-states what a majority of the other posts have said...
I don't think so. Most of us care about our profession and don't want people with a history of lying, cheating, stealing, and disrespect as a part of it. If you have any experience with dismissals you should know that they're not taken lightly at US MD/DO schools. There's no benefit to the school when dismissing a student -- each one of us is a big investment for the school. I feel bad for the OP if they were indeed dismissed for a small thing, but that would indicate that reinstatement could be argued due to a single slip of discretion.
Or maybe its because the cases we hear about here are outliers. In my years in medical school, no one got kicked out for conduct at my school. A few on grades, but that's a different area. I bet there are countless people here who could tell the same story - 4 years and no one kicked out for conduct. It just isn't that common.
Probably because he cheated?
As far as we know, it IS a first time offense. My first post was in response to people justifying the extreme punishment for cheating on a quiz by assuming there was previous cheating, even though OP stated that his/her record was otherwise clean. You don't get to assume guilt beyond what there is evidence for.
If you want to assume guilt on SDN then okay, because you can't act on your assumptions here. But to advocate that medical schools should punish students based on assumed guilt which they have no evidence for is ridiculous. It's one thing to doubt the OP's story (which you have done) but it's something else entirely to assume the OP's story is true and justify expulsion over cheating on a quiz because ''cheating is a patterned behavior'' (which another poster did, and that's who I responded to).
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you... but there is usually a long, documented trail (or deep, dark iceberg, if you prefer) of misdeeds that come up in dismissal cases. I've seen some cases where there are pages of independent notes and evaluations from standardized patients, professors, staff, preceptors, DMEs, and even community members that have been involved in dismissals... people do some ridiculous things and get away with it. The school always has ample, documented evidence of multiple infractions with actions they took to help the student. "One strike" dismissals are saved for pretty egregious offenses. Of course, I can only speak to my school, and I only hope other schools are so thorough and understanding.
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
You're misunderstanding me. My first post here was a direct reply to another poster (who I quoted) who was stating that if the school did expel someone over this, it was justified because cheating is always a patterned behavior. My stance has always been that you can't punish based on assumed guilt that you lack evidence for.
But #realtalk most of SDN (faculty and pre-meds, anyway) would be fine with chopping off someone's right hand for suspected cheating on a non-graded homework assignment. We'll always be in the minority here lol.
But not all dishonest students (and there's a spectrum here, which is important) become dishonest doctors. Assuming otherwise is a slippery slope.
Last time I'll weigh in here, I'm not entirely sure how any of these nitpicky comments help the OP. Let's all remember that this is an advice thread, not a thread to discuss the morality of students and faculty or what we perceive as inherent flaws in the way students are adjudicated following transgressions...
My experience is most people cheat on online quizzes. Groups of people take the quiz at the same time or share answers.
maybe because i went to a pretty big med school, but this was not my experience at all. I was a middle of the road, average student and I doubt any of the faculty at my school could pick me out of a lineup, let alone come up with pages and pages of documented misdeeds if I was caught cheating on an exam for the first time as an MS4.
That's because you were a middle of the road, average student. Our dean likes to say he hopes to only see us twice -- convocation and graduation. The vast majority of students will not have any issues and, likely, will hardly be known to faculty. My point is that the kind of students who get dismissed are often throwing off red flags from the beginning of their time in medical school and make themselves known in a bad way.
