Dismissed from grad school

cosmicfish
Mon, 30 Dec 2013 12:00:40 +0000

Would I be able to apply at another grad school and do I need to tell them about this school?

Yes, and yes.

No one can stop you from applying at another school, but every school that I have heard of requires transcripts from ALL other schools attended, in part because they are looking for this exact kind of thing. If they ask, and you do not provide it, you are setting yourself up for immediate dismissal when they find out you lied.

So the real question should be “can I get into another school with this over my head”, and that is a lot trickier. You seem to have a lot of things going on here that would cause a new program concern.



I was going through an illness and for 2 semesters my grades suffered.

Can you show that this health issue has been addressed and will not be a problem going forward? How was your performance when healthy? If you were a marginal student prior to the illness, then it will still be a hard sell.



The final blow was in my capstone class, for the group project 2 of my team members were flagged for copying (we had to submit a spreadsheet of who worked on what). As a result we all failed and were not granted a do over of the project. I appealed the F and lost. I asked for an incomplete and was denied.

I was told I would be retaliated against because I questioned a well known teacher’s grade. I just wanted what was fair.

So in this group project, 2 of your teammates were found to have copied someone else’s work (From where? Online? A journal? Another classmate?) and it was decided that you all knew about (or should reasonably have known about) the copying and were therefore guilty of knowingly submitting work against the academic integrity code of your department/school?

New departments don’t like academic integrity problems in prospective students, so this is a big problem. In theory, they could investigate the situation and re-adjudicate it themselves, but realistically that is not going to happen - unless you are a superstar, something you have not indicated, it is not worth the time and effort especially considering that they are almost certain to come to the same conclusion as the dismissing department!

If your previous department was very highly regarded, it may still be possible to get in somewhere much lower ranked - mention the illness, mention that you were unknowingly and unwillingly involved in an academic integrity violation, and then try to convince them that neither issue will repeat. It will be a very tough sell, and the realistic better option would probably be to get into the workforce and put some distance between you and this department before trying again.