Academic Violation - Can I avoid mentioning it to grad schools?

Question

In my second semester senior year, I was being proctored via zoom for an exam and our professor had asked us to turn on both audio and video for it. I accidentally had my mic muted during the exam. My professor reported me and failed me in the class. My transcript shows a grade of NC (during covid all Fs counted as NC) but other than that it does not show anything else on my transcript indicating the academic violation. If I were to apply to masters programs without reporting this, would they be able to find out?

Answer 1

This might depend on place, but in the US it would be unlikely. It is remotely possible if there were private communication (improper, actually) with that professor.

Your university has handled the situation with its own processes and posted its results as it deems proper. For this reason you don't need to explain. That is the university's job.

If NC has an alternation meaning than "Failed during Covid" you can point to that. But if that is its only meaning then you might be asked why you failed. I would find this unlikely as there was a lot of disruption under Covid and a lot of reasons for failure of courses.

The underlying idea here is that people aren't perfect and often do the wrong thing. But once the infraction is handled it needn't, with some exceptions, haunt a person for life. And, for those rare but exceptionally severe infractions, people are expelled. Let it go, but be prepared to answer questions.

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I'm wondering, though, how an "accident" resulted in failure. That seems odd in itself.