Hello, I was told that it would be more helpful for me to post my story on the Pre-med forum for more inputs from adcoms. so heres my story.
I understand there are a lot of posts like mine, but it would be extremely appreciated if you guys are willing to help me out and give me some advice as to what to do
So a little background story about myself, I am a student at a Top-tear University, with GPA above 3.85, who has not taken DAT yet, but in practice DAT am getting around 23 (high 90 percentile). I have a lot of leadership, volunteering, and research and felt comfortable with my status as an applicant until recently.
Recently, while I was applying for a volunteering program through my school and was accepted, I ran in to some trouble. I was ,first, accepted to the program, and after being accepted, they sent me bunch of forms which My parents and I had to sign and turn in. However, on the day that i was supposed to turn in all the papers, I was told that one of the forms didn't have my parent's signatures on it. Thus, because my parents lived close to school, I told them I would call home and ask my parents to come and sign the documents. However, upon calling, I realized that my parents were busy, so instead, I asked for their permission to sign the document, and signed it myself.
Now, a little back ground info about myself is that I'm from an Asian country, and where I am from, as long as a third party asks for permission prior to signing something on behalf of someone else, it is perfectly legal and accepted. Also, based on what I thought to have remembered about the laws of forgery, it was also legal for me to sign the document on behalf of my parents as long as I had permission to do so.
Now, because of all the information I had mentioned, I thought what I had done was perfectly fine and essentially interchangeable with my parents signing it. And thus, when I went back ( I know this is stupid), I just told the lady that my parents signed it, because well.. I thought it was the same thing.
However, the lady started to then accuse me of signing the document my self, and started to tell me that this action will be reported to Office of student conduct if I am lying. It was only at this point, I realized that what I had done was not acceptable according to my Institution's laws but because I was scared of being reported and getting this thing on my permanent record, I kept lying to the lady that it was my parents. ( I know it was stupid, but I was just scared of the possible retribution).
Now, after that happened, they filed report to student conduct, who sent me a letter of investigation. (One thing to note, here, is that after the meeting with the lady who accused me, I immediately went to one of Disciplinary advisors and tried to give my self up to student conduct office saying i never meant to deceive anyone or try to gain advantage by lying, i was just sacred and was not thinking straight. However, I was told you should not do that yet as Investigation (at this point) had not even began, so I waited a bit for the official investigation to start on my case and then completely confessed, expressed my sincere apologies to everyone).
Now, I am on Disciplinary Probation ( not on my academic record, but on my disciplinary record) on the charge of Academic Dishonesty (lying) and Fraud. Apparently, I am charged with academic dishonesty since the program I was applying/ accepted to was an academic/ volunteering program. (to clarify for some of you who may be confused, I was not charged with forgery since I did have the permission of my parents, but because I did lie and say that my parents came and signed it, even if I had the permission to do so, it is still fraud in that sense).
I am currently a Junior who planned on not doing gap year, but now, Should I do gap year to show that some time has passed since the incident, and how does this affect my chances of getting in to top dental schools?
I know what i did was soooo stupid, and I can guarantee something like this will never ever happen again, but it did happen and I'm taking full responsibility. Please help me. I know this is long, but thank you to anyone in advance who helps!!!!!!!
I take full responsibility and I really do wish that my fear didn't get the best of me at that moment, but I was weak and made a really really foolish decision. I know that what I did is completely wrong. How will this affect me? what which steps do I take from here? Should I do a gap year first?
