Can academic records be expunged for graduate school applications?

[Jimbone]

I realize that this may be far fetched, but I was wondering if anyone knew if this may be a possibility. Consider my situation. I attended Ohio University out of high school for four quarters from fall of 2003 to fall of 2004 when I was dismissed for academic reasons. I rarely went to class and had little or no motivation. I had no clue how my actions would effect my future unknown goals. I had something like a 1.7 GPA. Today (7 years later) I'm 4 credit hours away from a B.S. in physics with an 3.9 GPA (at a different institution) and have been accepted to my current universities M.S. of Physics program. Sometime in the next year or so I will be applying to Physics Phd programs and realize that my poor performance in 03/04 will be very detrimental to that cause. Since I'm only using maybe 12 credit hours from Ohio University towards my degree and it was so long ago (I was much different student, obviously) I feel that this transcript has no place in my academic life. Would it be possible to appeal to Ohio University and ask to have my academic records expunged so that I would not have to include the transcript in future applications? I could easily, in a summer, retake those courses which I am using from Ohio University. If not is there any positive action otherwise I could take to alleviate the effects of my ignorant past self(aside from including explanations for my past actions and how I've changed since in applications)?

Any thoughts are appreciated, I'm just trying to do anything and everything in my power to increase my chances of furthering my Physics education and I feel that certain parts of my past academic performance have little or no bearing on my abilities or weaknesses as a student.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I have never heard of such a thing, particularly in a case like yours where the rationale is that you just don't like the outcome.

I'll tell you something else - I would not consider bad grades 8 years ago as a major obstacle to grad school. I would, however, not want to accept (nor take them on in my lab) someone whose reaction to a poor outcome was to hide it, nor someone who would attempt to bamboozle me into admitting him by hiding facts that I have a right to know.

Having no scruples in doing "anything and everything in my power to increase my chances of furthering my Physics education" is a very strong negative, inconsistent with the character of a scientist.

 

[Jimbone]

I appreciate your input, somewhat expected a reaction of this nature. I understand what you're saying and realize that I should just put all the cards on the table. However, students do appeal for grade changes after the fact - and I'm sure that my past institution would not have agreed to make any dishonest changes. But you point about hiding a poor outcome is well taken. I'm just looking for any positive actions I can take whether it be retaking courses of which I did poorly at other institutions or appealing to have F's changed to withdrawals for courses I didn't attend and didn't have the presence of mind to simply drop. Again your points are well taken and have given me a lot of thinking to do.

Thanks for being so painfully honest

 

[AlephZero]

I would agree with V50. Here's a true strory that I was involved with, though in industry not in academia. We wanted to hire some contractors for a short-term project (12 to 18 months). One guy said on his application form that his age was 60. We interviewed him and were all set to hire him, except when we ran the usual checks on him his age came up as 63 not 60.

The fact that his age was 63 was no consequence at all to the hiring decision. When we went back to him to sort out the diiscrepancy (at that stage, we didn't know which number was right or why they were different) he admitted he had lied on the application form because he thought we wouldn't want to hire somebody so close to retirement age.

We didn't hire him. Not because of his age, but because we don't knowingly hire liars.

Of course you can argue your case as forcibly as you want that your attitude to life has now changed. That's an entirely different thing to trying to hide the facts.

 

[Chunkysalsa]

Since you have such a high GPA compared to before I wouldn't think it'd be a problem. In fact such an improvement shows some real dedication and interest.

Just make sure to address the issue in your personal statement. Attack the problem head on.

 

[Pengwuino]

As is the common view in this thread, I say don't bother. There seems to be this idea that I think somehow gets carried over from undergraduate admissions that graduate admission committees are full of stupid people. Pretend you're on the admissions committee. You have your application with a near perfect GPA and (assuming) progress towards a Masters degree. You then also see that a decade ago, the applicant had a pretty bad couple of years. 10 years ago! Does it make any sense to give any weight to something that happened so long ago which is obviously not reflective of how you are today?

Think of it the other way around and say you had a 4.0 a decade ago and a 1.7 now. Exact same reasoning; they would throw your application out in a millisecond.

 

[Jimbone]

Thanks everyone, I was misinformed and apparently also a little misguided with this. I appreciate your thoughts. Would this be something to talk about on a "statement of purpose" document or simply leave it to a personal comments section on the application itself?