In late November I used a teacher’s school email to register for a dating website. I just thought it would be fun to have that confirmation email send to him and I did not want to use it in anyway. It was supposed to be a prank–a very stupid one. Then I got sent into the Principal’s office… I was not expelled but had to transfer to another school. I am a senior and just finished my First Trimester. I really regret doing it.
stats:
sat: 1530 (math790 English740)
sat2: USH670 (not gonna use this) math2 750
Ap Euro and Ap Calc in junior year
Ap Psych AP stat Calc BC in my previous school (before December)
AP Lit APUSH Calc BC in my current school (after December)
Weighted GPA: 4.2 unweighted: XX
Toefl: 110 (Im an international student)
not a lot of activities:
Honor Council member
some community work in panama
varsity tennis second singles
tutored a middleschool student
history bee team member
NHS member
I am going for history major and economics minor if possible
I have applied to ucla ucsb ucdavis and ucsd before this thing happened–so they should not take this into consideration for application I guess
I have applied to UVA, Emory, and Gettysburg after this happened and they can see it in my commonapp.
I figured that I probably will get rejected from UVA and Emory so I am thinking about ED2 either Colgate or Wesleyan University
Anyway my list is:
colgate
wesleyan
Wisconsin-Madision
University of Maryland college park
Brandeis
University of North carolina chapelhill
Indiana bloomington
All history major
The school councilors told me to get rid of some of the more competitive ones like Brandeis and replace them with schools like Pittsburgh and some other safety schools that have rankings outside of top60
I feel really sour. I feel like all my work is ruined by the one stupid mistake I made.
What should I do? What are my chances in getting into Emory and UVA (they are my dream schools kinda)? Should I ED2 Colgate or Wesleyan? Should I apply to more safety schools? I do feel like at least Maryland, Wisconsin, Indiana, and at least one UC should want me… right?
Generally colleges will overlook minor transgressions, provided your behavior did little-to-no harm to others and a sufficient amount of remorse is demonstrated in the application. You, however, violated someone’s trust and privacy, and privacy is a hot button issue right now. The fact you had to transfer schools demonstrates that the adults in your life took this more seriously than you did. The fact that this happened recently - in your senior year - throws a lot of red flags on your character and maturity, as well as your college social readiness. Hopefully your letters of recommendation were already sent, because staff talk to each other and who knows what the other teachers would say about you now.
International students have to meet higher standards. Your best hope is that the UCs come through, or to apply to less selective schools.
Have you written a letter of apology to the teacher in question? If you have hopes of becoming a better person, you owe it to them.
I did. I wrote a letter of apology to him but I was not allowed to meet with him during the time when the decision was made. So i emailed my letter to the principal and don’t know if he showed it to the teacher. I am not like this. I have never done anything like this before. I was stupid at that moment. I pretty much had depression after this incident and had to work with a mental therapist. I regret doing it greatly.
At the time I was really just getting the confirmation email to be sent to the teacher. I thought he’d be confused and it would be funny. I did not want to harm him in any possible way. This is not an excuse for my wrongdoing but I just want to make it clear.
I’m probably in the minority here, but I don’t see this as that big of a deal and I’m surprised you were made to switch schools over this. I assume the teacher’s email was public, not private. The ones for my kids’ school were. To me it was just a silly prank but maybe I’m missing something.
OP, I don’t know if this will impact admissions but either way I assume you have some safeties, correct?
That was a harmless prank. The response was extreme by the school - that’s just utterly ridiculous. Anyhow, don’t get too caught up in it. I know kids who’ve done much worse than you and have gotten into UGA and Georgia Tech, which are both pretty great schools. You’re what? 17, 18 years old? What kid doesn’t love to pull a prank? As long as you didn’t hurt anyone, which you didn’t by your description, then I think you’re fine.
Not a typical harmless prank. Or a mistake in how to quote a source. Or defending someone being bullied and getting caught up in school rules.
This was a severe lack of judgment. Of course, OP now regrets it. But the nature of this one speaks poorly to thinking and decision making. And there you have a list of colleges that consider how one thinks and acts. Where was the maturity and restraint?
My first reaction to this was: gap year, to grow up, do some good deeds that show better.
I think people are too stuffy. Was it stupid? Yes, but I doubt it’ll derail his college decisions. One of my friends who got into UGA EA got ISS for 2 weeks his Junior year for what the school called “cyber terrorism”. Granted, he was in-state, and his scores were above the 50th percentile, but he wasn’t a Val or Sal.
And it matters what the high school thought, not anecdotes from who knows where. A college like UVA, heavily into an honor system, will not like this. The former hs may report it. OP will not graduate from the high school he applied from. He will need to explain that. His final grades will come from a different hs. They may explain his transfer.
Why does anyone minimize it? This incident didn’t just happen- it took some time, even if minutes, to execute. Many chances to stop himself. And the explanation here isn’t enough.
The best thing you can do at this stage is to take ownership of your actions. Explain that you learned from this mistake and accept responsibility. Don’t try to hide from this, as the admissions people will find out anyway. Include an essay focused on this.
You will probably also need to notify the admissions offices at the UC schools that you applied. Your former school counsellor probably has already notified them.
“I’m probably in the minority here, but I don’t see this as that big of a deal and I’m surprised you were made to switch schools over this. I assume the teacher’s email was public, not private. The ones for my kids’ school were. To me it was just a silly prank but maybe I’m missing something.”
A few years ago when I was serving as Treasurer on the board of a nonprofit organization, there were some serious financial and structural issues that had to be tackled. After a particularly contentious board meeting where we had to make some big changes to avoid bankruptcy all the board members who voted for the changes were personally targeted, including me. One of the ways I was targeted was someone signed “me” up on a porn website, using my real name, contact information - address, phone, email, and picture (fully clothed). You cannot imagine the continued fallout from this, even years later, even though my personal information has been removed from the site. Once your name is on the internet associated with something, it’s almost impossible to undo, you can only try to control the damage.
I can see many ways that signing someone else up for a dating website could be a problem. Especially if the target was married. And especially if the dating site was for seeking matches that employers like schools would find morally objectionable - such as sites for married people looking to cheat, people seeking fringe fetishes, pedophiles, etc. Even if the site was as mainstream as Match.com, there would still likely be fallout if a married teacher was having match.com emails coming through his school email.
This was not harmless.
And I’ll readily admit my experience with this biases my reaction, but I’m not hearing much in the way of regret from the OP regarding the problems or embarrassment he caused the teacher. All I’m seeing is OP upset because of how this impacts himself. Hopefully OP will have AOs reading his file who haven’t experienced this like me, because if he does and if he doesn’t show at least a glimmer of understanding of the issues he’s caused and how this could hurt the teacher, then his app will go right in the reject pile.
OK, I get it, but to get to where this went for you, we have to extrapolate quite a bit from the OP’s post. If that’s what happened, then I totally get it and am with you, @milee30. But I’m not sure we are there from the limited info the OP has provided.
The UC schools and University of Wisconsin don’t ask about discipline so you don’t need to disclose it to anyone who doesn’t ask. I wouldn’t hold my breath for Wesleyan but it’s worth a try.