Hello.
I am currently a rising junior and I have my mind set on getting my priorities straight this coming school year because I have had quite a few issues during sophomore year.
Freshman year, I got all A’s except for a B+ in the first semester of Biology so at the time my unweighted GPA was around 3.85.
Sophomore year however, was extremely chaotic for me.
A lot of things happened, and I felt myself breaking apart from all of the mental and physical stress that came out of these issues.
I suffer from depression but during sophomore year it hit me like a truck and during the first semester, I felt myself breaking but I still tried to finish well but I still ended up with quite a few B’s and a C that semester. However, I was extremely depressed (to the point of being suicidal) when second semester happened so I basically gave up on my grades for a month and I ended up having Low B’s in all but two of my classes, where I had F’s. I had multiple panic attacks during classes and it was in general, an extremely low point in life for me.
At the time, I was certain that I was going to end my life sooner or later so grades didn’t matter to me, actually, nothing mattered to me during that time because of everything that was happening.
However, somewhere along the line I had a wakeup call and I worked so hard on bringing my grades up, but I ended up with B’s, another C, and a D in Chem. I had a B in Chem first semester but it dropped all the way down to a D;
My current unweighted GPA is a 3.4 and I am so concerned about how this will look on my transcripts when I apply to college. I am taking summer classes to help my GPA, prep classes to get a head start on some curriculum, and I’m currently taking an ACT camp to get a general idea of how well I can do.
I only took one AP so far and I got a 3 which isn’t something that I am very proud of but I will be taking four or five ap classes this coming school year and I will do my absolute best to get better.
My extra curricular activities include:
I have competed in the National History Day competition for three years now and I have won as finalist and Champion in my county for all three years and moved on to the State competition in Sacramento for all three. I didn’t place at State the first two years but I was able to place as a State Finalist this past year. I will also be the president for the NHD club at our school this year.
I am in a nonprofit organization where students teach kids in underprivileged areas how to play an instrument for free. I played the violin for over ten years now (I have been in several orchestras and I have been in our school’s highest orchestra since freshman year) so I teach kids how to play the violin. have completed over 200 community service hours because of this, and because of my participation in this program I have received the following awards:
City of Los Angeles Certificate of Recognition
The Korean American Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles Certificate of Recognition
County of Orange Certificate of Recognition
I plan on majoring in either writing or journalism so I currently write books online and I have over 15,000 reads collectively.
I also got accepted onto our school’s newspaper so I will be a part of that this coming year and I am applying for internships at a county newspaper.
I am a member of our school’s National Honor Society and Youth Action Team.
I have also received the California State Assembly and State Legislature Certificate of Recognition.
My dream schools are the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and Emerson College as well as some others (maybe some IVYs but those are very high reaches)but those two are my top choices since they offer amazing journalism programs but I was wondering how my GPA will affect my chances, particular that D.
If I explain the reason behind the D which is depression, will I have a better chance of going in? Would they be okay with seeing an upward trend since I had pretty good grades freshman year but they dropped dramatically sophomore year and, assuming that I will do well junior and senior year, will they be understanding towards the C’s and D’s that I have gotten?
What are some ways that I can improve my chances of getting in to a dream school based on what I have listed so far?
Thank you so much for reading this and I hope to hear back from you soon.