Does suspension hurt college chances?

By Jocelyn Melin
St. Albans High School

Suspension is assigned to students as a punishment for misbehavior. Suspensions can last from one day to several weeks, depending on the severity of the situation.

For obvious reasons, educators don’t usually look too kindly on suspended students. They assume that if these students did something to get themselves suspended, then they either aren’t very concerned with their education or are troublemakers.

This is an opinion that their classmates and others may share. But how do colleges view the situation?

If you’ve ever been suspended, it is recorded on your school transcript, which is sent to any college to which you apply. Also, many colleges ask on their applications whether you have ever been suspended. How heavily does this information weigh on a school’s decision to admit you?

“I’m sure they would ask on the application if you had been suspended, and they would want to know why,” said St. Albans High School guidance counselor Sandi Mariani.

“But having been suspended would not necessarily stop you from getting into college,” she continued. “It would depend more on why it happened.”

“They know that they were teenagers [once] and that teenagers make mistakes,” said Kathryn Casdorph, another counselor at the school. “If the suspension didn’t involve anything serious, like drugs or alcohol, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal as if it had been something like that.”

Besides the reason for suspension, colleges might also look at the frequency in which a student was suspended.

“If they were basically a good student, and they weren’t suspended frequently and had decent grades, it wouldn’t be much of a problem,” said Mariani.

According to her, the bottom line is the overall image an applicant presents. “Colleges usually make a determination of the student as a whole.”

So it seems that if you make a small mistake while in high school, you won’t have to sacrifice your dream school as punishment. However, it still pays to stay out of trouble.