I need advice. D’17 is in the middle of writing her essays for the Common App schools that are due Jan. 1. She had a tough semester this fall and her grades may not be what they have been. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know what all of her grades are going to be and we may not know until after Jan. 1. Should she say something about this in the section on the Common App where you explain situations like this?
The long version of her story is that she takes Prozac for anxiety. In late August, her psych suggested increasing her dosage since she was taking only about half the standard adult dose. Gradually she began to realize that she was having more and more difficulty concentrating and getting her homework done. By early October she was behind in every class and had failed to turn in several assignments because she just couldn’t focus long enough to complete them. She dropped two of her 7 classes (HL Calculus and IB Physics), but she still was having trouble even keeping up with the remaining classes, let alone making up the work she was behind on. Finally we realized that the increased Prozac dosage might be to blame since difficulty concentrating is one of the possible side effects, and her psych reduced her dosage. Unfortunately the withdrawal effects of Prozac can be difficult, and she had a couple of weeks where she was having major panic attacks and having to leave class and come home from school. Eventually she stabilized and was able to focus and work again, but by then it was mid-semester and the damage that had been done to her grades was not easy to repair.
We know what her grades are in three of her classes: A’s in Advanced Dance and IB English, and a B in IB Spanish. We don’t yet know about IB Art or IB History. The worst she is going to get in either of those is a C, and there’s a decent chance she could end up with B’s or even A’s (though I think that’s pretty unlikely).
She is already going to have to write something for the Common App explaining why she is only taking 5 classes (one of them a non-academic class). Should she also say something about her grades not being up to her usual standard? I don’t want her to come across as the sort of student who panics and makes excuses for herself if she gets a B or two. But if she ends up with a couple of C’s, it seems like that would need some explanation, considering she’s never had anything less than an A in her entire high school career before.
Hmm, possibly. We did meet with her counselor when all this was going on, so she knows part of the story. D and I could meet with her again in January. When do counselors usually send in the recommendations and mid-year reports?
Not “possibly” - that’s her job. Any explanation from your daughter will come across at best as making excuses and at worst as whining. Neither will serve her well.
Recs are due at the same time as the application. Mid-year reports are due ASAP after semester grades are issued.
Okay, so then is your advice that D should just ignore the whole thing and assume that her counselor will say something about it in her recommendation? If she has to send it in by Jan. 1 then she’s probably already sent it and there won’t be anything in there about this semester’s grades.
“Any explanation from your daughter will come across at best as making excuses and at worst as whining.”
I don’t agree. I don’t have enough information to make a recommendation about whether it is appropriate in this case, but I work with lots of students on explanation essays. If there is a medical reason for the dip in grades and the student has an effective description of how it has been addressed, then such an essay can be helpful/
The december 31/January 1 deadline is the deadline for the student to submit all of their required pieces of the application.
Teacher/GC recs and transcripts from the school are not due on 1/1 with the application for RD. Midyear reports are due around feb 15, so the counselor has time to write the recommendation after seeing the first semester grades. You and D should make an appointment to speak with counselor and let him/her know what you are comfortable disclosing.
I checked on D’s Naviance and her counselor has already submitted the Secondary School Report (which google tells me is the counselor recommendation) to all the colleges she’s applying to.
I don’t think the counselor knows about the medical reason behind D’s struggles this semester. The one time we met with her (in order to drop those two classes from D’s schedule), we had not yet figured out the role the change in Prozac dosage was playing.
I just realized that I may not have been clear about the fact that in many ways, D’s story is about how she fell way behind in her classes and then managed to pull herself out of it. At one point she had a D in both English and Spanish, and now she has an A and a B in those classes. That’s the story she would tell if she were going to write about it – how once the cause of her inability to get her work done had been identified, she worked hard and brought her grades back up.
This was the first time she’s ever been in a bad place with regard to her academics, and I’m almost glad it happened (though I could have done without the panic attacks) because now D knows that if she gets herself into a hole academically, she can still pull out of it.
I believe there is a place on the common app where you can provide additional information. Sometimes individual colleges will also provide an opportunity to explain extenuating circumstances. She could include a brief explanation about the grade drop and reduced course load being linked to a change in medication that has since been resolved. I would suggest a different essay topic that focuses more on her and less on her medication so that Prozac becomes an explanatory fact rather than the main thing the admissions officers associate with her.
Thumper, in my original post I said we don’t yet know what her grades are for two of her classes. If they end up being B’s, then of course there’s nothing to explain. The A and B that I mentioned in my latest post are grades that we do know about already.
This is what’s stressing me out, the fact that we don’t even know if there’s a problem, and we may not know by the time she submits her apps.
I would not put anything in the application and wait until after she receives her semester grades.
If at that time there’s a need for an explanation, you can always have your daughter and/or her counselor send the regional rep., or the admission offices at any schools that she thinks appropriate, a brief mention of the grade drop and a clear reason why, along with what steps have already been taken to address any medical issues.
Depending on her target schools, this type of explanation may not be needed at all, even with a drop in grades.
Couldn’t the information still be helpful if she gets a mix of As and Bs? If I were an adcom and her cumulative GPA were 3.9, and then her last semester she had, say, a 3.2, I would wonder why the downtrend.
The mid-year update is different from the GC rec. As I stated above, the GC rec is due at the same time as the application. The mid-year report has a part that the GC can optionally fill out, which as I said in an earlier post is due as soon as mid-year grades are released, but to @sybbie719 's point, no later than mid-Feb. Although always confirm with the school…
Thanks everyone for the advice. We decided to just mention the fact that she is taking a reduced course load due to the impacts of messing around with her dosage. If she gets bad grades this semester, her counselor can send in an additional report about that.