Worried about background check

I would personally bring it to their attention with supporting documentation that it was an honest mistake.
Put yourself at the place of the AdCom or alumnus at the interview...
It is the ethical thing to do.

Damn,...i really don't know what to do. I guess if they bring it up I can put them in contact w/ the employee who nominated me for the award. He can explain the situation cause he's privy to the details,...not sure documentation can be provided (possibly proprietary info that the company won't provide).

One of my recommenders is my manager,.....if they do a recommender check,..i wonder if they'll broach the subject w/ him.

If I were you I would not mention anything unless asked about it, assuming your school doesn't do background checks. It is possible that they may have verified your app already, so then I guess things are moot. If your school did such checks, then I would ask about the issue. Most schools that require a background check of some sort will probably have to be up front with you now on that process, and it wouldn't be exactly ethical that they try to hide it now anyway.

I actually found out that the school does not do a check through Kroll or similar services. And they don't ask admits to sign waivers for background checks. Nobody seems to know whether they do their own back end checks or not.

I think I'll speak to my manager about this,...let him know that I put down the award for an application (without being too specific about what the app was for) and if he gets called about it ask him to explain that it was approved on manager level but then rescinded at a higher level. I hope that will satisfy them.

Nothing to worry about here. They are looking for serious breaches - "I graduated from Harvard" when Harvard has no record of you attending, "I have a 4.0" when in fact you have a 1.9 gpa.... that kind of thing. Either that or items that would perhaps suggest students / staff would be at risk or gross ethics questions ; previous convictions for felony battery, fraud, etc. It's not a witchhunt for minor discrepancies. I wouldn't loose one pico second of sleep here....

Well, my problem is much smaller. My College notified me today that there were some technical errors in my transcript's translation (some misspellings, mistake in document number and incorrect use of english they are gladly improved for a hard-copy now) My grades etc are the same

I got a question here. I started a small business some years before as stated in the resume but never registered it from start till end.

So should I discuss with the admission office on that issue? I did bring some products to show them in the interview. How should I handle this?

Thanks all!

Man, I really hope you're right.

Provided your description of the issue is accurate, I'd comfortably put $10,000 in escrow tomorrow and bet you that I am.

haha, ok you seem confident. Are you confident because you don't think they'll dig that deep or you just don't think they'll care about that discrepancy? I know the school doesn't use a professional verification service. So if their admissions office is doing all the checking, does it mean they don't delve as deep? Either way,..the situation was basically as I described. My salary info, dates employed, companies worked for,...education history are all accurate.

Four reasons really.
One, as your surmised... they simply dont have the time to validate every last little claim made, could you imagine how long it would take to check every one of an applicants items - every grade, every title, every salary, every extracurricular, every award, hours volunteered, money donated, roles obtained, responsibilities, etc? You could easily spend a week on each student and still have dozens on unverifiable items left over.
Two, there's almost no way to find out about this gap anyway. Who would tell them exactly? Its rather unlikely that HR has a list of who has received what award by whom
Third, even if they do discover this potential gap (which, again, I dont see how) there's a simple and entirely verifiable explanation for the discrepancy anyway; so its a non-issue
Fourth, by and large, most of this stuff goes through HR; and, at least in the US, what HR can legally disclose is very narrow. Even if they were AWARE of your receiving an award, which they likely would not be, they in all likelihood cant say much more than your salary, title and dates of employment.

Yeah, I never really thought that HR would disclose that,..I was worried because my manager is also one of my recommenders,.....so in my worst fears I thought they might call him up and ask "Did you recommend pze? And oh,..did he receive this award?".

you worry too much.

I too am kind of worried. In one of my apps (very first one) I listed the wrong start date. I was off by around 6 months! I had inadvertantly included the time when I was interning there part time. Should I contact Adcom now and let them know (even before the background check starts)?

Did you get accepted to this school? If so, then if that school does the checks, then I think you should consider telling them but it doesn't appear to be an instance when you're trying to deceive the Adcom so you could let the background guys find out what they find. It's possible that HR may just say you started from when you interned and will just say that you still work there now, assuming you stayed at that same company. Generally HR will just say when you started, when you quit, and if asked, they may disclose your wage rate.

If you didn't get in the school yet and you know they do background checks, I'd wait it out and see what their first decision is. I wouldn't want to put attention to myself and at my app before a decision comes back.

I've actually been admitted already. Just started to worry about this. I still work there and I am quite concerned if they will rescind the offer. My job titles are all correct and my salary info is also correct.

I think you're fine either way. At the end of the day, every school you apply to has the right to do a reference check whenever they want to.

It's very rare that an admit will get his or her admission revoked unless the background check company finds out you blatantly lied all over your app. Also, most HR departments will only give you a neutral reference check, if you worked at more than one company pre-MBA. I think you just gave an honest mistake at worst.