CA Prompt 1/Background Story Questions

College Essays
1

<p>I had some unfortunate stuff go down in my sophomore and junior years and it effected my GPA more than I'd have liked — basically, I have a lot of explaining to do if I want to get into the schools I'm looking at. Prompt 1 seems perfect for this, so I was planning on doing it for the Common App, but I've read that it's actually not regarded highly by admissions offices, no matter what the essay is like, and that it would be better to choose one of the others. </p>

<p>Anyone know more about this? </p>

<p>I want/need to start writing soon and I have ideas for all the prompts but don't know which one to pick. Thank you in advance, wonderful people of CC.</p>

2

<p>Did you hear that from a credible source? Like an admissions officer or your GC?</p>

3

<p>No, this was just based on articles read on various college advice sites/blogs, I remember one in particular on Huffington Post…</p>

4

<p>Usually your guidance counselor would write about your situation in his/her recommendation for you. Try making an appointment with him/her to make sure that he/she writes about what went on during those two years of high school. Then you will be able to write about a different topic for your essay so that the admission teams for the colleges you’re applying to know more about you. If for some odd reason your counselor does not write about your situation in their recommendation letter then it would be your job to explain your situation to the admission office.</p>

5

<p>The problem is that our counselor for senior year (who is the only one allowed to write our recs) is a different person than our counselor for fresh-junior years, so she doesn’t know me or what the situation was.</p>

6

<p>I don’t see anything wrong with responding to the first prompt, especially if you learned and became a stronger person from the unfortunate situations you faced. I recommend just briefly explaining your situation and writing more about how it affected you as a person. You can also discuss your circumstances with your new counselor so she can include it in her recommendation and you can focus more on your qualities in your essay. I wish you the best of luck:)</p>

7

<p>I don’t think the first prompt is the place to provide reasons for low GPA. Essay is the place to showcase your qualities. It’s not “this bad thing happend to me, so my GPA is down”, but “this bad thing happend to me, I handled it, or learnt something, although my GPA is still down.”</p>