<p>When I say I have ADHD, I'm not saying it like I'm trying to make it into an advantage for me to get into colleges. I actually have a really hard time concentrating on my homework and focusing in school and due to that, my GPA is not as high as it could be. I'm under the 504 Plan but it can only help me with so much. Should I mention that me having ADHD gives me a harder time getting good grades in school in my college essays? Because if it won't help, then I might as well not include it because it will only look like I'm making an excuse for my grades. I have a 3.6ish UW GPA and a 4.4 W GPA (which seems good, I know, but I'm trying to get into lower-tier competitive schools like UC Berkeley, UCLA, JHU and WUniveristy in St. Louis). Some feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!</p>
<p>I think it could help a bit. You still managed to get good grades so it’s not an excuse. But for very selective schools your gpa is not very competitive so your ADHD puts it in context. You can work it into an essay as something you had to overcome/manage.</p>
<p>If there’s a benefit to discussing your ADHD with colleges, I can’t see it.</p>
<p>Sometimes, an applicant’s chance of admission at a particular college or university is helped because the applicant has some quality that fills an institutional want or need. If the college needs players for the women’s volleyball team or a tuba player for the marching band, and you play either voleyball or tuba, that could help. If the chemistry labs need renovating, and your family would write a large check, that definitely helps. A lot of colleges like to enroll celebrities, so if you’ve just won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, or you’re Malia Obama, that’ll help, too. But I am not aware of any college or university that feels a particular need or desire to enroll more students with ADHD and a 504 Plan.</p>
<p>Sometimes, revealing this kind of information can be helpful if you can explain that there were circumstances that interfered with your academic performance, but now those circumstances have changed. God forbid this should happen to you, but if you were distracted by your studies because you had to care for your mother during her chemo, but her cancer is now in remission, that could be helpful to your case. (More precisely, it wouldn’t really give you an advantage over most of the competition, but it would undo the damage done by the lower grades you got during the time when your mother was ill.) Or, if your ADHD had been undiagnosed during part of the time you were in high school, but after you got diagnosed and treated, you did much better in school, telling a college your story would be helpful insofar as it would cause them to weigh your post-diagnosis grades more heavily than your pre-diagnosis grades.</p>
<p>But I don’t see how either of those situations applies to your case. If you plan to manage your ADHD in college the same way you were managing it while you were earning your high-school grades, then I can’t see any possible benefit to you in discussing your diagnosis with colleges. When you get to college, you’ll still be substantially the same student who earned the grades on your high-school transcript, right?</p>
<p>I’m sure that’s not the answer you were looking for, but I hope it at least makes some sense.</p>
<p>Paraphrased: “I have a condition that makes it difficult to do well in school. Other applicants do not have this condition, and do well in school more easily. Will colleges want me more than them?”</p>
<p>Answer: No.</p>
<p>These things are worth mentioning when you can say that at some point, it affected your grades, but you have adapted/adjusted/overcome and it won’t affect you in the future. Saying “it always has and always will affect my grades” isn’t going to make admissions look upon you favorably. </p>
<p>The pre/post diagnosis as Sikorsky mentioned is a good example; explains poor grades, but also says that it won’t affect you (at least as much) in the future.</p>
<p>You do not get it. Colleges want diversity, and they want kids who have overcome adversity.</p>
<p>It is just like poor students. Do you really think most schools want to give out financial aid? Do you think they like having students put on probation each semester because they can’t pay?</p>
<p>No, they don’t like it. But they do it to increase diversity and also give a chance to someone who has had it tougher than the average student.</p>
<p>I would not use the ADHD as an excuse, but I would give specific examples on how you have managed to work around your disability. I would not say “that’s why I have bad grades” whether or not it is true. Your grades are not that bad to be making excuses.</p>
<p>Also people need to realize that high school has many aspects that are totally different from college. College courses are usually 3 hours per week, in one, two, or three sessions. HS classes are about the same but spread out over 5 days, making it more difficult for students with ADHD and other attention difficulties. The HS day is often very tiring: 6 hours per day 5 days per week. College is usually 12 hours per week.</p>