VA onboarding forms - mention prior probation?

[Luna25]

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I am a first-year medical student and am filling out onboarding forms from the VA right now. Part of the process is filling out forms, the other part is getting fingerprinted.

I have a sealed record of a misdemeanor charge, for which I was on probation and got a deferred adjudication 7 years ago. This happened in a different state than I am currently in.

The VA forms ask "During the last 7 years, have you been convicted, been imprisoned, been on probation, or been on parole? (Includes felonies, firearms or explosives violations, misdemeanors, and all other offenses.) *If "YES," use item 16 to provide the date, explanation of the violation, place of occurrence, and the name and address of the police department or court involved."

At my medical school, the secondary application did not ask about criminal charges so I have never had to explain to the school that I received this charge. The AMCAS application also indicates omitting any sealed charges, so the school has no idea this ever happened. It didn't come up on my background check for med school either.

Should I put this sealed charge on the VA application? Could the school find out about the information I put on these VA forms and use them as grounds for dismissal?

I'm nervous about this so any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Dral]

Similar questions come up here a decent amount. I would say it depends on the wording. Does it ask if you were on probation in the last seven years? Yes. Were you on probation during the last seven years? Yes. I'd probably take it as being implied that the question might also say "...regardless of whether the incident was dropped, sealed, etc.".

I'd say just answer it honestly. The general idea on these is that ramifications from the chance of it being found out and you didn't document it is worse than actually documenting it. I'm not sure that the school would really find out about it (unless it was bad enough that might be denied VA privileges?) so I wouldn't worry about that too much. It sounds like you answered the school and AMCAS questions appropriately. The VA, being a government agency, has much more stringent/strict processes.

There's a chance you'll have to go through this again later since some residencies also have their trainees work at VAs.

Since we don't work in the realm of background check processes/programs, it's hard to say for sure if it would be 'missed' or not come up on the VA/gov't check. However, do you want to take a chance on that? Again, the government is going to be about the most stringent when it comes to these things.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Why not just ask whoever your contact at your school about whether this includes sealed misdemeanor charges that you were never convicted of? This seems important enough that you should get the actual answer to your question rather than just guessing and hoping your interpretation is correct.

Regardless, you answered all your questions truthfully throughout the admissions process. This was a misdemeanor, and you were never convicted, and it was 7 years ago, and the charge was sealed--there are a lot of mitigating factors here, and this is likely why your school did not ask pointed enough questions to make you reveal this charge during the admissions process. I think it is very unlikely that you're going to get dismissed even if you wind up needing to reveal this charge to your school.