<p>Sophmore year, I got two Ds in Chemisty and Algebra 2 -- nearly failed them. They're obviously not my strong subjects, but I had some other issues going on around that time -- yet nothing utterly mindblowing such a death or something.</p>
<p>I'm basically a B student, but this was still a very noticeable difference in my usual performance, and while I vaguely referenced this in "Additional Info" promising that I'd do better academically, I'm wondering if maybe it's a better idea to send a short letter to each school.</p>
<p>I wanted to try and ignore the big pink elephant on my transcript by not drawing too much attention to it, but while filling out the UDelaware common app, it even gives you an opportunity to explain one or two very low grades, and it got me thinking -- shouldn't I just do this for all the schools I'm interested in?</p>
<p>Also, should I even do this for the schools that had their deadline on the first?</p>
<p>Can anyone with experience share some input? Thank you.</p>
<p>i had a similar problem actually
during junior year my grandmother passed away and my grades plummeted. Since freshman year I've kept my gpa at a 3.5 but that year it was a 2.5. I didn't get D's or anything but I had almost all C's and it really affected my overall GPA. I was talking to a few admissions counselors at diff. colleges and they said that it would be best to explain that in the application so they aren't wondering what happened and being totally oblivious. </p>
<p>I used the Commonapp so I just explained it in the addl info section, so i don't know if you're using some other app but thats what i did. It is different for me though because I had someone very close to me pass away, but I am not exactly sure how you would explain your weaknesses in those subjects. Good luck though!</p>
<p>In my short (personalized) letters to the schools (mostly reaches for me), should I acknowledge that I know I'm a reach academically but reinforce that I'm "humbly" applying anyway because I love <em>_, _</em><em>, _</em>?</p>