<p>So I've been thinking a lot about colleges and got more interested in Harvard. Some of you may have seen my last post here asking about my chances, but I wanted to ask a rather essay specific question this time. My extra-curriculars are quite good, and I'm almost certain that if Harvard admitted only based on that I could get in. The problem is my grades are sub-par, at least for an Ivy. My GPA is 93.42 weighted, and my SAT is only 2170. My SAT IIs, however, are French 770, Lit 710, and Spanish 750, so that's the best part stat wise.</p>
<p>Anyway, there's a reason for my low GPA: I really had trouble learning in a traditional classroom setting. Throughout high school I would struggle to understand concepts that the teacher was teaching. However, I learned at one point that I could understand everything if I just read it once in the textbook. The way I learn best is autodidacticaly. Finding this out didn't totally alleviate my problems though: after going through a long day of school and coming home to a large amount of homework and extra-curricular work I never had the time to read through every single chapter again. In the end it became quite depressing, as I would spend hours each day in class listening to a teacher, realizing that I was completely wasting my time, and then realizing again that even though I'm interested in learning this material I won't be able to very well. </p>
<p>Because of this, my grades don't portray my academic ability accurately at all, but I'm not sure if this would be a good point to bring up. Actually, right after I realized I learn best by myself my grades had a big spike (I ended up with a very very high average that year), but then the next year I got discouraged because I felt like I was going through torture: I'd sit in my physics class for an hour and a half thinking how much I wanted to go home and study this because it's so interesting, but I just couldn't learn from the teacher. It ended up totally draining the energy out of me and I couldn't put in the extra effort anymore, so my grades fell again.</p>
<p>Do you think this could be good to use somewhere? Maybe the extra information section? I want to let Harvard know that there's a real reason that I didn't do that well, and that it wasn't laziness or lack of ability. The main problem I see with talking about this is that there will be classes in Harvard, obviously, so the adcoms could say that I won't be able to keep up. I know that wouldn't happen though because in well structured lectures I've always been able to get everything, it was mainly that the way my teachers taught didn't mesh with how I learn, primarily in the sciences and math. </p>
<p>At some point you have to deal with reality, which is that if you don’t have a degree your chances of success in life are greatly reduced. All colleges will have classes, and to me it seems like Harvard would have the environment that best suits me. I love the course offerings and I like the serious atmosphere. Also, in my last paragraph I mentioned that lectures are fine, it was mainly a problem with the teaching style of my teachers - they taught in a very “high school” way - not sure how to describe that right now, I’m pretty worn out. When I watch online lectures from Harvard, Yale, and MIT I enjoy them thoroughly. I actually think it’s a lot of fun to watch them.</p>
<p>Ehhh…I don’t know if i would write that to be honest. It seems to not be a legitimate reason for not getting higher grades, sometimes it is just best to take the grades you have like a man. LOL. It just seems as though you are whining about how you realized that reading the book actually helps you at school (Big shock huh?) Maybe if you worded it differently, or found a different reason for your grades. Otherwise, i think this essay would do more harm than good. Just a bit of advice…if it helps.</p>
<p>Well, I’d say it’s a little different than just realizing reading the book helps. I was basically depressed that we moved so slowly, that there needed to be so much explanation for such simple things that I could learn in twenty minutes from a textbook. I ended up feeling like school was completely pointless, and I really did feel very depressed about it. I was moving through the motions, and my interest in subjects I previously loved was completely sucked out of me. I ended up coming home from school having no willpower to do anything at all. In the end though, I was able to put this negative energy towards something constructive, so it worked out alright. The grades are still there though.</p>
<p>An example of why this all effected me so much: one summer I decided to start teaching myself Physics for fun. I was going through a college Physics book (Resnick and Halliday), but when I got into my Physics class the next year we were doing the most basic things, and I found myself sitting in a class for hours, absolutely wasting my time. For most of my classes, I was already going above and beyond the curriculum that we were being taught, but the teachers stifled that. Instead of going ahead with Resnick and Halliday, I now had to relearn everything I had already learned, except slower, with more work, every day. This year I was reading and watching lectures on Don Quixote in both English and Spanish, and studying Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Beyond Good and Evil. Due to the workload (that isn’t half as challenging) in my English class currently, I’ve had to drop all my other studies. To me, that’s depressing. Same thing with Calculus. I taught myself the first half of the Calculus curriculum for fun, but now I’m forced to relearn it in class, just slower, instead of being able to move on.</p>
<p>It is helpful though, I was expecting that it could be an iffy topic, that’s why I posted it here :). Reading this over it doesn’t seem like this would make much sense to any adcom. It’s a very complicated thing, I don’t think I can explain it in so few words. I’m sure a lot of you are wondering why I still got very average marks if I’m saying I had already taught myself so much…it’s really complicated, and I’m starting to realize it’s not something I really want to explain in depth here.</p>
<p>Fair, but you’d better be able to explain it well if you choose to write about it in your college essay. Based on the information you’ve given here it seems to reflect on you more negatively than positively.</p>
<p>Well, I never said I had a lack of passion. I said I had a lack of energy to keep going above and beyond because my teachers kept stifling my interests and I had to use most of my energy to fight against that. I didn’t stop studying by myself, in fact I taught myself three languages to fluency and started studying a bunch of others. Most of my humanities classes I did well in, with the exception of one, but I can’t teach myself Physics and Calculus if I’m already teaching myself other subjects ontop of all my other commitments. </p>
<p>Like I said, it’s more complicated than I can explain on here (or would want to), so I’m not going to use it. I don’t think it would really change anything either way, even if I explained it well.</p>
<p>With the Michio Kaku example, remember that that says nothing about his grades. I continued following most of my passions as best as I could, but that doesn’t mean I got good grades in the class. Knowing a lot doesn’t mean you’ll perform well in school. In one of my Spanish classes a native Spanish speaker consistently gets lower grades than a lot of people in the class, and the same thing happens with a native French speaker.</p>
<p>I understand what you mean, I’m just saying it’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about why my grades fell. The story about Michio Kaku doesn’t relate to grades. Plus, there are a lot of different things you can take out of that - there’s not only one point that you’re making with that, but in fact a few. Just because at first I may have picked up on a different aspect of it doesn’t mean I don’t understand.</p>
<p>Norge, those scores and GPA are not so low as to prevent you from being accepted. You obviously feel very strongly that you’re not performing to the best of your ability because of the way the teachers approach course content in the classroom, and this is, I think, something that’s perfect to talk about with your guidance counselor or school psychologist, who know you better, have more experience with college admissions, and can better advise you on how to approach this in an application. </p>
<p>If schoolwork is not challenging you enough, perhaps seek out a good summer program or some harder college courses? Self study and take AP exams to get credit for college? </p>
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<p>I think everyone will, at some point in their life, experience the same thing, but it’s a life skill to learn to tolerate and be patient when there are people who need to go at a slower pace. You can use that time to review the material to do more practice problems, or to make sure that there’s nothing you’ve missed in your self study. Even if this is how you genuinely feel, there are more subtle and elegant ways of expressing the same feeling.</p>
<p>Hope you’ll find more interesting classes that’ll make you happier :)</p>
<p>Yeah I get that haha. Trust me, I’m not a jerk who thinks that people who do want more time should get left behind - there are always subjects that I’ll be slower with as well. I tried to use the time productively by working on practice problems, but the teachers didn’t like that all. Even if I finished a problem we were doing together as a class early and while I waited for others to finish I worked on a different problem my teacher would get furious.</p>
<p>I’m sorry my posts weren’t very well composed…I wrote this thread after not sleeping much for a few days and having a lot of decisions to make about college. Not the best mindset to write in XD.</p>
<p>I don’t quite understand why, if you were able to self-study so many things in advance, you weren’t able to get better grades in those classes? For example, if you were a semester ahead in calculus, shouldn’t that have meant that you could get very high grades? Maybe I misunderstood what you meant, but it seems like those two statements are contradictory. And I think VirginianRobin’s point about Michio Kaku was that if you are able to learn much better by yourself, why didn’t you pursue homeschooling or something along those lines so you could get the best education possible for yourself? In general, I agree with the others that this essay topic could do you more harm than good. Good luck with coming up with others, and with the college application process as well!</p>
<p>Well, for example, I had self studied Calculus before I started pre-calculus. Calculus didn’t help me with that class, but now that I am in Calculus this year I’m getting great grades with ease. The problem really came into play in that I hadn’t always self studied the classes I was currently taking in advance, and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to learn by being in the class. Like I said, it’s complicated, there’s more to it, and I’m not sure if I’m getting it across well. I actually did think about homeschooling for a while, but my father was really against it, and I didn’t want to end up with no social life, so I decided against it. I thought that I’d try and make the best with what I had and I’d end up at the right place. I do regret the decision sometimes, but I also think overall my high school experience was great.</p>
<p>Thanks, I think I’m pretty much done with essays though (finally). This was just going to be for the additional information part of the supplement, but I think I might not add anything to that.</p>