I am filling out an application for a university. This application asked me “If there has been a period of time, other than summer vacations, when you were not enrolled in school, please explain what you were doing (i.e., gap year, work, military, church mission, etc.).”
I took a semester off because I had clinical depression and it was severely affecting my grades. After my issues were resolved, I returned to my community college and my grades began to improve. The application I am currently filling out has a 25 character box to fill in “Activity/Occupation” to explain the gap in education and I have no clue what to put in order to describe this.
Um, tell the truth?
If it is only 25 characters you can put simply “Health Problems” or something like that.
@JustOneDad I plan to tell the truth, but I only have 25 characters to do it which was my problem (2-4 words). On other applications they had paragraph formats where I was able to explain my situation.
@xraymancs That seems simple enough and gets to the heart of it. Thanks!
You do not have to say you had depression. I would disagree with that advice. Simply say health problems as the other poster noted.
@linkdyk8 Thanks! I will do just that. They are asking for “dates for the activity/occupation”, do you think I should put the dates before I dropped out? Or just the period I wasn’t in school?
I had depression then and it negatively influenced my grades (I ended my second semester with a 2.5 GPA), but when I came back I maintained a 4.0 for all semesters.
Since they are asking about the time you were on leave, use those dates. You are perfectly justified in mentioning the depression in as much detail as you like in your personal statement if you want to explain the improvement in GPA. It really is up to you how to present it.
I would just say I had health problems that severely affected my grades and once addressed I felt confident to return to school and be a successful student. <25
@xraymancs The school has no personal statement (FSU). I can’t even mention extracurricular activities anywhere. They are judging you purely on grades received in CC I guess?
@amandaa403 thanks for the advice, but it is 25 characters, not 25 words. Like “1234567890123456789012345” is how many characters I get to explain my situation.
I see, then simply “health problems” should suffice