<p>Scenario: My D will apply by Nov 30 to UCs and she has a story about herself in her essay.
She has pretty decent SAT scores and her UC GPA is 3.76 with surgery and medical issues in her Sophomore year pulling her grades down details of which she is providing in her essay.</p>
<p>My worry is whether the admissions officers will look at her story in a holistic way rather than writing her off based on her GPA. How can one b sure that a holistic decision will happen? Do any of you know if such students or their parents get called for an interview to help the officials understand more regarding what’s been written in the essay ? </p>
<p>And about the essay organization:
her first paragraph starts her story. 2nd paragraph talks about her disorder and its symptoms and the remaining 2-3 paras discuss how she worked through these issues of hers and describes the positive things that came out of her handling her disorder.
Now she is getting worried thinking that her 2nd paragraph is probably too much info but her counselor and I feel that she has to explain what her disorder is about since not many people (in fact, we did not know about this disease until she was born) may know what it is and what its symptoms are. So I too am getting jittery now that she is worried about “how much to write”, “is this too much”, “is this too less” kind of questions.</p>
<p>If any of you parents have gone through such a situation, could you kindly share how you think the essay was organized in your child’s case?</p>
<p>Also, if any admissions officers are reading this, could you please provide an advice on how you would view such an essay – how much info are the decision makers expecting or not expecting?</p>
<p>greatly appreciate your inputs…</p>