chwu60

Hi, I am a student in an American International School and I am a junior. Everything went well until I received an one day in-school suspension. The situation is that I helped a friend with homework and so we discussed it, and so our answers were very similar. We submitted our work to our online class teacher which is in the States, and she thought we copied the answers off of each other. We already explained that we collaborated our work, so our answers were similar, but she said that it would be considered as cheating. She already forgave us and will not expel us from the online class; but we will definitely receive punishments from our school. So our high school principal decided to give us an one day in-school suspension because it would be considered as cheating; but he also said that it won't show up in our college application/transcript unless we did it again; but I am still worried that it will affect my chance of getting into a descent college as I am not exactly a top A student (a B- to B+ student I would say), and I did some research on the internet that colleges will ask you if you had any suspensions and it might affect the chance of getting into a good college. So I am really worried right now, because I really didn't consider my action as cheating.
Thank you for reading my problem, and I apologize with any grammar mistakes I made.

nysmile

"...So our high school principal decided to give us an one day in-school suspension because it would be considered as cheating; but he also said that it won't show up in our college application/transcript unless we did it again"

^This statement is key. Confirm the statement with your high school principal and ask to see a copy of your transcript. If the statement is true and there isn't any notation on your transcript, don't worry--it's as though the incident never happened.

As long as your guidance counselor doesn't refer to the incident when she describes your character/integrity in her recommendation, you don't have anything to worry about.

chwu60

Yeah, I confirmed with him twice before I left his office that it won't show up in our transcript unless the same thing happens again in the future; but I am still kind of worried because after reading a few posts on the internet, I realize that some college administration will actually ask you if you were ever suspended. So even if the principal said it won't show up, I am still wondering if I will need to answer that question; and since it's quite a big issue since it's an academic dishonesty issue, which I had no idea it was when I did it, so I am really worried about this.

nysmile

In-school suspensions are minor. Don't worry about this. If your Principal has confirmed to you that there isn't any permanent record of the incident, it's as though it never happened--no need to mention it. However, I would talk with your GC and ask if he/she is going to rate your character/integrity in the GC recommendation based on the incident.