High school senior Miaija Jawara thought long and hard. Should she reveal a 10th-grade schoolyard fight on her college application? Would the disclosure keep her from being accepted?
Stolen quiz answers, locker room squabbles—all forgotten, right? Not so fast. Problems from the past have a way of cropping up. Many of today’s college admissions forms ask whether a student ever got into trouble in high school. But some people want to take run-ins at school or with the law out of the college equation.
"I'm definitely not the same person I was," Jawara insists. "They shouldn't judge me on something I did when I was so naive and so immature."
Jawara did admit her one-day suspension. But she also pleaded her case. She explained how she used the experience to work toward in-school restoration in her New York City school.
Even so, "It made me feel like I'm lessening my chances of being admitted," said Jawara.
Others share Jawara’s concern. Many believe youthful mistakes shouldn’t haunt students into adulthood.
Some groups want the Common Application to remove discipline questions from the form. Yet almost three-quarters of all U.S. colleges and universities collect high school discipline information. Of those, 89 percent use it for admission decisions.
That’s because admissions officials are more worried than ever about campus violence. They say questions about discipline are a necessary piece of a much larger picture.
"After the Virginia Tech shooting, colleges really started to look closely at the responsibility the admissions office had in seeing whether there's some warning signs," says Kent Rinehart, dean of admission at New York’s Marist College.
At Marist, discipline questions turn up everything from private school students suspended for not pulling up their socks to cheating, cyberbullying, and felony convictions.
New York University is asking Common Application officials to review whether the questions truly make campuses safer.
There’s another big concern: Do the discipline questions discourage minority applicants?
Federal statistics show minorities get suspended and arrested at much higher rates than their white peers. Therefore, many people believe minority students are hurt more by the discipline questions.
Jawara worried for weeks. Eventually acceptance letters from Iona College and others arrived. But she still wonders whether her candor led to two rejections.
The issue of discipline questions is a good reminder. Mistakes can lead to important life lessons, and that’s good. It's also good to remember that God’s grace completely covers believers who repent. But even so, actions have consequences. Our own plans may not always come out the way we want because of those consequences.
