I wrote an appeal letter for admission and wanted some feedback! :)

College Essays
1

June 26, 2015

Dear Faculty Appeals Committee,

I am appealing the evaluation of two letter grades for my current undergraduate engineering application as notified by enrollment services. I would like to urge the committee to accept a written letter from the institution with the exact percentage values as a document that reflects the accurate grade I achieved.

I am not surprised that the evaluation is done in this manner, as the letter grade reflects the interval of a percentage value. What came as a surprise to me was that I was awarded a letter grade in the first place. It was negligent of me to assume that all academic upgrading institutions used a percentage value as a final grade for a course. It is written in the SAIT regulations that a letter grade system is applied to all programs including academic upgrading. This is an oversight of information that I typically treat with a high degree of importance as it pertains to my success and passion.

I was notified about this early May and in an attempt to rectify the issue, I asked to challenge a diploma to make-up for the expected average decay from the letter grade. With very little time, I had to study a significant amount of time to be ready for the subject matter of the diploma and the calculus class that I was already taking. I feel like I should strive to get the best representation of the excellence I am capable of for this application and wish to demonstrate this in the program as well.

Enrollment services explained that if SAIT were to change the letter grade awarded on my official transcript into a percentage value then they would evaluate as such. SAIT was contacted and they settled that this letter grade could not be changed as per regulation, however a signed letter with the percentage values could be provided once the teachers confirm the values.

In the unfortunate circumstance that this written letter is not approved, I will continue to strive for my acceptance in the next year and upgrade these letter grades into percentage values. I will work through anticipated first year engineering content on my own time so that I can achieve a standard of excellence that I am passionate for.
Thank you for considering my appeal.

Sincerely,

XXX

2

TBH, this was a little hard to read. Maybe it’s just because I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the terminology you’re using (I’ve never heard about challenging diploma exams, academic upgrading, etc.). But I also think that you can be a little clearer and less formal without sounding unprofessional. You can do this by breaking up your sentences a little more.

Dear Faculty Appeals Committee,

I am appealing the evaluation of two letter grades for my current undergraduate engineering application**,** as notified by enrollment services. I would like to urge the committee to accept a written letter from the institution [What institution?] with the exact percentage values as a document that reflects the accurate grades I achieved.

I am not surprised that the evaluation is done in this manner, as the letter grade represents an interval of percentage values. What surprised me was that I was awarded a letter grade at all. It was negligent of me to assume that all academic upgrading institutions used a percentage value as the final grade for a course. It is written in the SAIT regulations that a letter grade system is applied to all programs**,** including academic upgrading. This was an oversight of information that I am typically highly attentive to because it pertains to my success and passion.

I was notified about this in early May**. In** an attempt to rectify the issue, I asked to challenge a diploma to make up for the expected average decay from the letter grade [I don’t know what you mean by this.]. I had to study a significant amount of material in a very short time period to be ready for the diploma and the calculus class that I was already taking. Because ______, I am striving to get the best representation of the excellence I am capable of for this application**,** and wish to demonstrate this in the program [What program?] as well.

[The last two sentences are confusing. Why do you mention that you only had a short amount of time to study? Do you want to get the best representation of your grades because you worked so hard and want to highlight that? Or do you want the best representation because you feel like this situation made you get a lower grade than you think you deserved?]

Enrollment services explained that if SAIT were to change the letter grades on my official transcript to percentage values, then they would evaluate as such. SAIT was contacted**,** and they settled that this letter grade could not be changed as per regulation**. However,** a signed letter with the percentage values could be provided once the teachers confirm the values.

In the unfortunate circumstance that this written letter is not approved, I will continue to strive for my acceptance in the next year and upgrade these letter grades into percentage values. I will work through anticipated first year engineering content on my own time so that I can achieve a standard of excellence that I am passionate about
.
Thank you for considering my appeal.

Sincerely,

XXX

3

Really hard to read because flow is “staccato”-like. It sounds a little pompous and entitled (sorry, just my perception as a reader with no prior knowledge of the subject).

Please realize that I am playing devil’s advocate and am trying to understand how your appeal would affect a person just getting this correspondence:

“What came as a surprise to me was that I was awarded a letter grade in the first place.”

  1. Aren’t you supposed to be aware of what has been provided in your transcript/records?

“This is an oversight of information that I typically treat with a high degree of importance as it pertains to my success and passion”.

2. So, in regard to this situation, you treated it with a low degree of importance?

See what I’m saying? A lot of your information contradicts previous statements.

The best appeals are those that can be expressed logically in a chronological sequence, but are easy to read.

4

Love the feedback so far OnMyWay2013 and aunt bea! I see what the both of you are saying and I am giving some good thought to see what I can do.

To answer some of the terminology examples you gave, in Canada you can just take(challenge) the final exam of a high school course and whatever grade you get is your final grade and upgrading just means retaking a high school course for a better grade. I do agree it sounds a little entitled and I feel that’s kinda where the whole less formal without sounding unprofessional thing might come into play.

aunt bea, I fear the contradicting might be the lack of detail and chronological sequence you mentioned about the situation. I just wanted to keep it short but I will see what I can do!

5

yes I would keep some of these thoughts and feelings out of it. I can’t make heads or tails of it myself.