<p>How or where do you explain extraordinary circumstances like a chronic illness on the common app. I have done as much as possible to keep up with classes, including online courses and homebound programs while visiting doctors and hospitals. On paper it looks like I am an A student with no extra curriculars and low to moderate community service. How do I show I have perservered through this difficult time. I am hopeful to come out the other side of this illness and still attend a great college.</p>
<p>Have a look at page 5 of the Common App. (<a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Docs/DownloadForms/2012/2012AppFY_download.pdf[/url]”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Docs/DownloadForms/2012/2012AppFY_download.pdf</a>)</p>
<p>Halfway down the page is a line that says, “Additional Information Please attach a separate sheet if you wish to provide details of circumstances or qualifications not reflected in the application.” </p>
<p>So that’s what you do: you attach a separate sheet that provides details of your chronic illness and its effect on your schooling to date. But when you do this, you’ll also want to give colleges as much assurance as you reasonably can that your illness won’t keep you from being able to succeed in college. In other words, your goal here isn’t to explain away what you might see as deficiencies (or at least, areas of relative weakness) in your application; rather, your goal is, as it is in the rest of your application, to make the case that you are a student who can succeed in college, and whom these colleges or universities want to enroll.</p>
<p>Another approach is to have your medical problems mentioned by your HS GC in the SSR. Provide them with information from yourself and your Dr. so that they can relate how you have persevered through this illness.</p>
<p>Of course.</p>
<p>Somehow I had taken it into my head that the OP’s illness had caused him or her to withdraw from school in order to be home schooled. (Now I remember. That’s what happened to my kid!)</p>
<p>Entomom’s advice is better. Make an appointment with your guidance counselor to discuss whether (and how) he or she will address your illness in the Secondary School Report. That should do the trick, but if you’re not happy with the outcome of that meeting, you can always write a statement of your own.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>