Need serious advice--forgot to disclose disciplinary action Forum

[Yogi2012]

deleted

[Johann]

ignore it. youre fine.

[mvp99]

I don't know the exact steps but if it was up to me, I would disclose candidly what happened, amend the application, include a statement that I would like my application to be considered anew, and say that I understand if this time the app is rejected. The event itself shouldn't be a big deal but hiding could be.

[ballcaps]

what i've gleaned from reading way, way too much TLS:

contact the school immediately and explain. email should suffice.

since the actual law wasn't involved, and you weren't even formally disciplined, i bet you'll be fine.

[trvr]

No formal proceedings = you are good.

[JFO1833]

I would call the schools where you have been accepted or are still pending and explain what happened. See how they suggest you handle it. Make sure though that you have all the required details. If you were caught by a local government you might need to get some court records and if you got written up by a school you might need to get a dean's certification.

[jakee2622]

I had the same type of incident as you. Most schools I applied to asked if I had any disciplinary action taken against me by the school.

I also wrote an essay. However, this isn't considered disciplinary action. Because I wasn't suspended, put on probation or anything of such sort. The record of the incident doesn't exist in university records because I wrote the essay and the matter was dealt with because it really wasn't that big of a deal. At least thats how its considered at my school.

Before you tell the law schools, it would be smart to ask your own university first if writing an essay was considered disciplinary action.

[MarkfromWI]

Yea definitely contact your UG school where this happened first. If you start asking them questions and all they can say is, "Uhh I have no idea what you're talking about, we don't have any record, etc." then you're fine. Don't worry about it.

If they do have a record of it, send an email to all the schools you have been accepted to or are still pending and explain what the offense was and that you honestly forgot about it. In all honesty, unless you're dead-set on going to BYU or something, drinking incidents/tickets are pretty much par for the course. If your numbers were good enough to get you in, I doubt they'll ding you simply because you forgot to disclose a dorm infraction from a few years back.

[ChemEng1642]

I had the same type of incident as you. Most schools I applied to asked if I had any disciplinary action taken against me by the school.

I also wrote an essay. However, this isn't considered disciplinary action. Because I wasn't suspended, put on probation or anything of such sort. The record of the incident doesn't exist in university records because I wrote the essay and the matter was dealt with because it really wasn't that big of a deal. At least thats how its considered at my school.

Before you tell the law schools, it would be smart to ask your own university first if writing an essay was considered disciplinary action.

Suspension and probation and the like are not the only forms of disciplinary action. I was asked to do community service for my small thing and it was still on my disciplinary record and was considered a disciplinary action. I also had no formal meeting or hearing or anything of the sort. I would consider the school telling you to write an essay a "disciplinary action".

But OP the last sentence of this post is TCR. Go one step further and ask your school for your disciplinary record (which is what they would be sending to law schools anyway). You can see yourself whether it is on paper or not. I would disclose regardless.

[JFO1833]

The OP doesn't specify who it was who caught you, if a local police force (at some state schools campus security are cops, I think) then you need to check with the local court straight away.

This advice may disagree with some further up in the thread, but for schools where your app is still pending (or you are on a waitlist) I'd contact them now and let them know and not wait for your undergrad/the court to get back to you. It's likely best, to the extent possible, to avoid having to go back to schools after already being accepted. You may have to contact all of them but I would hurry most for the ones where you haven't been admitted.