<p>I dealt with a personal tragedy during my freshman year of college which affected my grades significantly. After my first year in school, i had a 3.49 but have since raised that gpa to a 3.75 over the course of three semesters. Will this be taken into consideration when my transcripts are being reviewed?</p>
<p>I feel like I could write about what I dealt with for some of the essays or briefly talk about it at an interview, but I wanted to know how they valued an increase in Gpa like that. It would look better if you could view my gpa on a semester by semester basis, which would then explain the rough start I had...Does anyone know how MBA programs look at gpa's? And also will a higher gpa counterbalance a lower test score with appropriate letters of recommendation and leadership experience?</p>
<p>So I’m guessing you averaged a 4.0 GPA for the last 3 semesters. Congrats!</p>
<p>Sure, B schools value GPA increases overtime as all graduate schools do. The weight of it, however, is not that great. It’s not going to be that harmful in your B-school app as all b-school admissions people will tell you “its just one aspect of your application.” There’s an optional essay section for most b-schools where you can explain such circumstances, that’s where it should be addressed, and that should be the end of it.</p>
<p>Certainly a GPA boost from 3.5 to 3.75 is not a significant difference. If you believe you did well despite dealing with personal issues you should definitely address this in your statement. Make sure it is a BIG deal, because if it weren’t you would probably have got less than a 3.0 - if you get what I am saying. This will demonstrate, that despite, very life altering problems you were able to sustain a respectable GPA. Instead of focusing less on why you had a low GPA, but rather how you were able to do well under pressure. Unfortunately a small increase in GPA is not highly valued, but you hold a competitive GPA nonetheless. Yes higher GPA will counter-balance a lower test score, but it really depends on how low the score and the standards of that particular school. Your test score should be within one standard deviation of the mean.</p>
<p>You should use the optional essay to address issues that the AdCom will question. A 3.75 GPA will not raise any eyebrows, especially if you did well the last 2 years. Using the optional essay to write about it will cause the AdCom to doubt your judgment, waste their time (they have to read thousands of essays), and give the impression that you don’t have any important accomplishments.</p>
<p>So instead of focusing on using this tragedy as a reason why my grades suffered, I should focus on how i managed my time with school and the “life changing event.”</p>
<p>now for liu02bhs…do you think i should not write about it? because I personally accomplished a lot with respect to how my life changed from this event. So is it worth the risk to try and explain everything? Because I feel that addressing something of this sort could only help me, and can in no way be used against me.</p>