You have one bad grade and you want to tell colleges why – should you write your essay about the teacher who wronged you? “The Dean” weighs in.
https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/do-bad-teachers-make-good-essays/
I agree with The Dean 100% on this.
Even when my son, his close classmates and I have all thought that this particular high school teacher’s pattern of grading my son’s essays (and his older brother’s before him) was based on his bias or racism, we just swallowed our bitterness in silence and moved on in spite of the fact that this particular teacher’s consistent actions damaged my son’s perfect academic performance that he had built with diligent hard work since elementary school. The fact that, upon learning that my son was admitted to Princeton, this teacher actually voiced his doubt on the veracity of my son’s Princeton admission in front of the whole class, had basically served us as a confirmation of what we had all along feared. No matter. We moved on, and this incident is the first time I’ve ever mentioned it here on CC.
The point is, regardless of how “bad” a particular teacher is, regardless of how he/she may have damaged the perfect GPA and what not, it’s not something to fill the college application essay spaces with. Might make the applicant feel good as a form of self-therapy of sort, but such essays can only backfire with negative consequences. Never be whiny and no excuses. Even certain hardships in life need to be tread very carefully.
I agree, @TiggerDad . I guess every high school has its share of good, bad, and sometimes really awful teachers, and somehow the kids have to navigate that. I am curious, did your son write anything in the common app additional information about it, or maybe did his guidance counselor mention it?
No, he never mentioned it anywhere in his application, and I’d have strongly objected to it if he had tried to. As usual with cases like this where third parties are less inclined to believe you, the thought of going to his guidance counselor about it didn’t even cross our minds as a good move. There were basically two reasons why: 1) my son had more to lose by complaining to the guidance counselor about it, and 2) he was going to finish his high school with a highly competitive GPA, anyway. In hindsight, I believe I was right.
Yeah, at some point, as much as we parents may agonize, perhaps we need to give the adcoms more credit. They too went through high school…and college…and they must know that sometimes you get one of “those” teachers. We have all had them. Your son’s record obviously spoke for itself…and he kept it classy! Win-win. I can’t imagine wasting the personal statement on a teacher like that.
Such an essay might work, if the student focuses on what they learned from the experience, and ultimately accepts responsibility for the bad grade, and for not learning how to adapt. But such an essay wouldn’t really be about the bad teacher, it would be about learning a life lesson.