Hi, my father passed away in the middle of my freshmen year of college and it impacted me greatly socially and academically. I was wondering how I could address this in the additional section. I presented a more factual and serious essay and is ~400 words. Should I shorten it or present it in a more different way?
So sorry to hear about your father. As for what you should do, is this for the Common App, and are you trying to transfer (since you’re talking about college)?
I’ve heard from other forums that it’s not good practice to put a whole essay in the Additional Information section, or to mention anything like that, because as honest as it is, it may just come off as you trying to make excuses for your grades. The recommendation for most high schoolers with circumstances that affected their GPA is to speak to their guidance counselors. So if you have an advisor that you’re close to, and you still need letters of recommendation, maybe he/she could mention the circumstances and how hard you’ve worked despite that.
Otherwise, sure, you should mention it, but I still think you should shorten it.
@OnMyWay2013 hi, thanks for your response. I am transferring and this is for the common app. I have one professor who knows of my situation and wrote my letter of rec., not sure if he mentioned it. But I’ll make sure to shorten my info, I just wanted to demonstrate how I improved greatly from my first year, maybe thats unnecessary. I was also unsure how specific I should be. Should I just say, this happened and resulted in academic struggle, etc. I don’t want it to come off as an essay for pity that’s why I wanted to mention my improvement but idk. I’ll post this in the transfer forum I guess, too. Thanks!
@roarx1 No problem! As for specifics, it depends on what details you’re referring to. There’s a kind of descriptiveness that happens when you want to tell a very dramatic story to evoke sympathy from your readers, like describing the depths of your grief or your family’s. I think you should avoid that.
But it would be fine, IMO, to say that your father was close to you, and then give details like if you missed X classes for Y days to be with your family, and then what specifically caused you to fall behind (not being able to concentrate, grief, the missed classes, etc.). Other details would be how long this lasted, what steps you took to get yourself back on track, and then some indicator that your assignment / exam grades now are more reflective of your academic ability (maybe your assignment grades went from Cs to As, or you got a B+ on your final despite everything).
IDK much about things like this, though. Good idea posting it on the transfer forum, and best of luck!
@OnMyWay2013 Yeah, I did what you said to do, it still came out a bit long, 350 words, but I tried to condense it as much as possible without making it a pity party. I also conveyed how much better I did the following school year and so on. Should I attach a link to my father’s obituary? Or is that unnecessary?
I don’t think it’s necessary. You don’t really need any proof, and while it would be nice for adcoms to get a sense of who your father was, that’s not really the point of the essay, you know? And if that’s as short as you can make it, don’t worry about it.