Posts by pyrito

pyrito

Dec 17, 2016

Undergraduate / Taking Down the School Website - Caltech Supplemental Essay - Ethics and Honor System [6]

Members of the Caltech community live, learn, and work within an Honor System with one simple guideline; 'No member shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community.' While seemingly simple, questions of ethics, honesty and integrity are sometimes puzzling. Share a difficult situation that has challenged you. What was your response, and how did you arrive at a solution? (200 word max)

"Oops."

This was the first thought that went through my 14 year old brain as I scanned through the serial log on the bright Dell screen. The realization? I had just taken down the school website. (It was unintentional, I swear!)

I had originally intended to test the integrity of my personal website by sending a large amount of internet packets to my home server. Yet rather than typing my own IP address in the terminal prompt, I copied and pasted my school's instead! Questions floated in my mind as I stared at the 504 gateway error: do I turn myself in or just act innocent? After all, my masked IP was untraceable.

Seeing my classmates upset at the district for the school website's down time convinced me that I should cough up the truth; even though I had made a genuine mistake, it felt unethical to let the blame be put on someone else. As a result, I confessed my crime to my technology club advisor with a mere: "I did it."

The consequences weren't so pleasant: I received my first detention and an earful from my parents. But exposing a blatant security flaw within the school network and doing the right thing? Worth it.

I haven't tried a stunt like that ever since.
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I was just wondering if this essay really answered the prompt. Sure, I do have some stories of cheating in school and on computer science projects/assessments but I was wondering if this would make the cut for Caltech. Thank you so much!

pyrito

Dec 17, 2016

Undergraduate / Taking Down the School Website - Caltech Supplemental Essay - Ethics and Honor System [6]

@Holt

Thank you so much for your response. I thought the same thing as well just last night. I wrote this draft a couple weeks ago and only last night did I realize that all Caltech was looking for in this essay was a secure standing in following the honor code. I decided to write this draft instead. Yes it is cliche but I think it gets the job done. And you're right, although I did take the school website down by accident (seriously was), I was given small consequences and it would almost sound sarcastic if I tried to talk about the guilt I faced (because there wasn't really much). I decided to rewrite it to this please tell me what you think:

Our IB Chemistry class was notorious in my school for its brutality in tests, labs, internal assessments, and exams. By the end of the first semester of my junior year, I was sitting with an 87 in the class, for what would be my first "B" on my transcript ever. It didn't bother me too much, but I decided to work hard to at least make sure I understood concepts.

While I began to study for the exam weeks in advance, many of my friends had found the test bank to the questions and began to inform the rest of the class, including me, about the "treasure" they'd found online.

"I'll send you the link to the questions", one of my friends said.

"No, I don't want them", I responded. My grade was important to some degree, but I knew that learning the content was far more important in helping me gain both my IB diploma and a secure standing of the core concepts.

"Fine, your loss", he said.

Come test day, and I had breezed through the exam without much difficulty, receiving a high score to improve my average. The others? Not so well. It seemed that our teacher had changed up the questions!

I guess it wasn't my loss.