Hi
I am an international student. I completed my undergrad back from my country(indian sub continent). I came to usa to do undergrad again. however after completing 2 semesters here, i decided to apply for grad school with my home country degree. I did very bad in these 2 semesters due to unavoidable situation. I had to submit usa college unofficial transcript too. since my grad here is very very bad, i was afraid those grade might affect my chance for acceptance. in my lazy mind, i was photoshopping my grade, just playing, i didnt intend to submit that at all. by mistake i submitted that transcript instead of the actual one to my applicaiton. I got accepted. now they are asking for official transcript in 3 months time. what should i do now? will they check if the official transcript and the one i gave match?
please help. I am really helpless and very very tensed.
Thank you
Btw, i was in contact with an admission officer from the beginning and he knows about my situation and was aware of my grades in both semester before i submitted my unofficial transcript
I’ve never been in a situation like this before but it seems like the reasonable thing to do is be completely upfront. Say you made the doctored transcript as a joke or to fool a friend etc (any reason besides trying to fool admissions officers) and when you were accepted, you went back over your application and saw that the wrong transcript was sent and if this changes your decision you understand.
If you don’t seriously plan on attending, just decline.
Yes. They will check your unofficial transaction against the official transcript.
I agree you should be forthright and include copies of the communications between you and the admissions officer proving you were upfront about your grades before decisions were made.
should i contact the admission officer about this i was in contact with from the beginning( who knew about my grades before receiving acceptance letter) or someone else? also should i talk to that professor in person or in email? i have orientation in couple of weeks. i guess i can go to the university and talk to him in person. what do you think?
I don’t quite understand what you did. Are you saying you photoshopped your transcript with inflated grades so that your GPA is much higher than your real one? Or did you just photoshopped your transcripts aesthetically to make it look more presentable. If it is the latter, then you have nothing to worry about. However, if it is the former and you inflated your grades, then that would be considered fraud. This might cause you to be in more trouble if they find out themselves. If that is the case, I would just be honest and let the school know what happened, instead of just taking your chances and hoping they wouldn’t notice. Ethically it is wrong if you eventually are able to enroll with the false grades and they just didn’t catch the mistake.
I find it very, very hard to believe that you were “just playing with photoshop” using your transcript as a joke or prank, and did not intend to submit the transcript to the school (especially since you explicitly stated that you were afraid your grades would decrease your chances of getting accepted). I think that admissions officers/professors will probably find it difficult to believe as well.
Nevertheless, the only thing that you can do is come clean and see what happens. Tell them that you erroneously submitted an inaccurate unofficial transcript and you will be shortly sending along an accurate official one directly from the school. Then do that.
I’m not sure I would give a reason right away. Obviously saying that you shopped the grades because you wanted to be admitted would probably get your acceptance rescinded. But the other story - even if it is true - sounds fake.