Your post-"test" admissions will not have helped you, but it would seem that your polygrapher did not deem them to be obviously disqualifying.

If your application is with either the CIA or NSA, note that with these agencies, it is common practice for applicants to initially "fail to pass," to be grilled for admissions, and then, provided no disqualifying admission has been made, to be brought back for one or more "re-tests."

Hey everyone, I applied for a position at an agency a few months ago and up until my polygraph, everything was going  well. The BI was started up basically the day after my SF-86 was submitted and revised, and my contacts were beginning to get calls from investigators within a week. I was truthful with everything on the forms and in my personal interview with the background investigator. When it came time for the poly, I was feeling fine until the examiner started drilling me on the ‘serious crimes’ question. I had answered no because I had obviously not committed any serious offenses other than the minor transgression that I could think of before we ran charts. (I told him about a few instances of skipping scanning items in a Walmart as a teenager before I was hooked up). During the test and after he said I had tripped up on that question, I was thinking of anything that could be misconstrued as a serious crime and started telling him about any and all of my misdeeds as a young man - like underage drinking, getting into bars underage, and other instances of shoplifting in my teenage dumb ass years - memories that came rushing back during my examination. (And you don’t have to tell me how stupid that is… I know. Especially when my parents would have paid for basically anything for me.). In the end, he said that my poly was inconclusive and that I would need to come in for a second one, but he wasn't able to fit me in for another go within the week. I left feeling pretty down in the dump - like I should have sat and thought longer and tried to think of and tell him everything BEFORE I was hooked up. Instead, I feel like it looked to him like I was intentionally withholding things from him.

It has been almost two weeks since the poly and in the mean time I have completed my Psych eval with no hiccups. I still haven’t received a date to come in and re-test unfortunately.

Do you think I screwed myself by admitting to illegal things after the poly was administered?  It's now my understanding that it's the cardinal sin of polygraphs lol.