I was treated for bone cancer for nearly a year. I missed most of the freshman year and started out in special ed classes and then worked my way up to AP and honors classes.
I want to go to NYU and be on a pre-med track.
I have a 3.56 GPA. About 1200 on the SAT. I will have only taken AP bio and AP physics senior year. I started taking honors science classes junior year and then took all honors and AP senior, (besides pre-cal)
I wrote my essay on my struggles with cancer and how I overcame the mental aspects.
To be honest: you’re only 2 years out… I think I would hesitate.
But I did want to congratulate you… I’ve been on that road and it’s brutally hard. Congrats on beating both the physical and the mental aspects of the monster.
Yes, I think they will be. You have to be careful to focus on what you learned from the experience, not on its effect on your grades. They’ll get it. It is also something your guidance or college counselor should write about for you.
Don’t specifically write about the grades but how it has shaped you. My child wrote an essay about an activity that she loved and how it made her feel when she was feeling at her worst. Basically it freed her from the misery while her mind was elsewhere. It was not about her being sick but between the lines you would know. Her counselor knew the situation and surely gave more details. It seemed to work.
Yes, you can write about your experience, being sure to focus on something that shows something positive about your personality. Your experience was huge, so writing about it makes sense. Not that you are not entitled to sympathy, but you want your essay to be about your personality and what you learned about either yourself or others or the world through the experience… and implicit in that, how it will help you contribute to the college community.
The other option is to let your guidance counselor discuss the cancer and your progress from special ed to AP classes, while you write about something else altogether. It is up to you.
Your story is inspirational, and I would think that a lot of colleges will be mightily impressed.
Best of luck to you with both health and college applications!