<p>"Why? People make mistakes. EVERYONE has done something stupid, and it takes a good person to admit their mistakes and correct them. If you can, spin the story a bit so that your reason for starting doesn't sound tooo stupid or bad do it"</p>
<p>Nope. Won't work. Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but colleges are not looking to accept people who make mistakes that are illegal and that involve addictions that could have been avoided by not breaking the law.</p>
<p>If one checks out the Gatekeepers, one will read a story about an outstanding student who was rejected at Wesleyan after she was suspended for eating one marijuana brownie. She had turned herself in. She wrote Wesleyan an explanation about what she had done and what she had learned from the experience. She had no other behaviro problems on her record, and had recommendations attesting to her fine character. </p>
<p>She still was rejected.</p>
<p>Admissions officers aren't going to have a lot of sympathy for a student who writes an essay about overcoming a problem that he could have avoided by following the law. And if he happens to think that everyone makes that kind of mistake -- using drugs -- that would be more cause to reject him.</p>
<p>College admissions officers aren't looking for students who hang around with drug users and who think that things like boozing and drug use are normal pursuits for high school students.</p>
<p>It's interesting, because i didn't have a choice but to write about my alcohol related incident. Every college I applied to required an essay explaining why i was suspended. Oh well, I've been accepted/recieved a likely letter from 3 of the 4 schools i applied to. Ofcourse if i had a choice i would not have chosen to write about it, even though i believe that my alcohol related essay was the most powerful essay i wrote and definatly the most compelling reason, based on essays, to accept me. In my opinion, it addressed a startling reality about high school that most people face, but few have to own up to to adcoms.</p>
<p>This might be acceptable if you had been to rehab and overcome some serious emotional and mental issues, but marijuana is not physically addicting and I would just find the essay to be a cop-out about having nothing more important to right about. Plenty of valedictorians smoke weed.</p>
<p>It depends. You didn't give information about when/why you smoked and when you quit. Seems you couldn't have done it that long if you have those stats. Basically, i'd say go for it if you could give a compelling reason for using drugs in the first place (ie. extreme environmental pressure + ignorance- "i was young/naive/ignorant...everyone smoked... i didn't want to be ostracized from my peers" or "my parents smoke...we're really poor..." or "my [something important] died, i was really stressed/suicidal... needed some relief" but definitely not "my homeboys was all like 'damn son, wanna hit some o' this sugar?' and i was all 'hellz yeah'....</p>
<p>uh...the point is... i'd go for it. It will definitely stand out from the crowd, if nothing else. College admissions officers know what teens sometimes go through with drugs, sex, etc. I'd give you props just for having the ballz to talk about it</p>
<p>Any essay on drugs of any kind is the kiss of death for admissions.</p>
<p>Somebody said something about alcohol-related suspensions. That is a whole different area. I am not making judgements about whether or not that is fair or whether or not marijuana should be legalized. I am only talking about admissions.</p>