<p>Like, a unique and hard home situation.</p>
<p>Are you talking about a persistently low GPA, or a temporary dip from a higher average?</p>
<p>How are you defining “low,” “unique,” or “hard”? How competitive are admissions to the colleges in question? </p>
<p>Colleges do look at trends in grades. If a student had a bad semester because of illness or death in the family, that’s one thing. However, if you are talking about excusing an overall persistent low level of achievement, a “sob story” is not likely to help. If a student has never had a high level of academic achievement, then colleges cannot tell whether it’s just the applicant, or whether the family situation is so dysfunctional/unfortunate that it hampered the applicant; either way, the applicant hasn’t shown evidence of ability to compete academically at the institution.</p>
<p>If there are factors affecting a student’s performance, the guidance counselor will discuss that in his or her recommendation letter for that student.</p>