<p>Oh Saturnine, </p>
<p>My heart goes out to you for what you have had to go through. </p>
<p>Besides being an excellent student, you have incredible grit! You have survived a nearly unimaginable betrayal, and pulled yourself together. I am impressed. Any college would be lucky to have you. I hope your attacker is in jail!</p>
<p>From a "strategic" point of view-- I understand the advice to ditch the current essay. (I would also be happy to proofread a new essay for you.) On the other hand, I emphatically feel that there is nothing that you should have to hide here!!! You were victimized by a predator; this does not and should not taint <em>you</em>!</p>
<p>Maybe there is a different way to write this essay with a survivor's strength as the overriding tone? I have seen essays on parental suicide and anorexia in the "Essays that Worked" book; certainly these topics are as potentially loaded and would send up the same sorts of "red flags" on student stability (however unfair). Maybe there was someone or something during your recovery process that was especially helpful or meaningful that could be the focus of the essay?</p>
<p>Say you do change your essay topic entirely (and as I said, I can fully appreciate the strategy) and you still want to 'explain ' the drop in grades-- clearly your GC is an imbecile; I would not trust him to handle any explanatory note. Could your principal or a trusted teacher could take this on? If not, do it yourself in a supplementary note (very brief, just exactly what was mentioned by interesteddad.) In fact, your class rank and grades are so good you might not even need it.</p>
<p>Re: schools shying away from kids they percieve as 'troubled.' My D is actually my stepD; she was abandoned by her mother as a toddler and she had therapy, to deal with this as well as the ongoing difficulty of her erratic mother, during ages 10-13. Recently during the college search process, many very strong emotions (stemming from impending loss, change; leaving home and making this transition) have come up and she has had a few sessions with her old therapist to "tune up"... </p>
<p>Her therapist told me that he considers it VERY healthy that she's facing these feelings NOW rather than wait till September when she's away from her support systems and when it could blindside her and spoil the joy of going away to school. He said the patients he's seen as kids due to childhood traumas often have 'recurrences' of stress when major life passages occur-- like going to college-- because they mimic childhood developmental passages-- i.e. seperation anxiety-- that were going on when the traumas occured. </p>
<p>These grown kids either face the feelings in advance, like my D is doing, or later-- and the ones who wait tend to get hit harder. How preposterous that a kid dealing with her sorrows or fears head on would be tainted but one suppressing everything would be seen as even keel! It just makes me angry!</p>
<p>I will make one more suggestion: you might want to talk to an Educational Consultant in your area who could give you some perspectives on schools that are less discriminatory in the area of a student with a psychological 'history.' Not to equate the two but to illustrate: one kid we know had overcome a drug problem and a local educational consultant was able to guide her towards schools that had some openness to kids with a drug abuse history, plus services to help, substance free dorms, etc. </p>
<p>If you think you'd rather be fully open about your circumstances there may be a way to handle that. If you'd rather just skirt the whole thing that should be possible too. Obviously this event does not define you and yet it has been significant. The choice is yours and you should do what feels right for you. </p>
<p>If you think there will be an ongoing need for psychological support once you are in school, you should also check out the sorts of services the various colleges have. Many also have womens' centers that are very active regarding rape prevention or recovery that would probably be great resources for you. In fact, thinking about it, maybe a womens college (Smith, wellesley, etc) would have another whole take on the application of a woman who had been raped. It would not surprise me if there was more institutional empathy.</p>
<p>I wish you all the best with your search and I hope you will keep us posted. I wish I could just give you a hug. Good Luck!!</p>
<p>SBmom</p>