Making excuses for grades in personal statement

Applying to College
1

<p>What is the concensus on making excuses for a bad transcript in your personal statement? I am trying to get into Temple University Japan Campus, I got a 29 on the ACT but I am really worried about my high school transcript. It looks like this:</p>

<p>9th grade: All A's at a private school</p>

<p>10th: transfered to public school then A's and B's</p>

<p>11th: first semester 3 C's, 3 B's, and a D. Took 2 AP classes first semester but got a C and a D, so I dropped them. second semester i did college classes through a special program and got 2 D's, a C and a B.</p>

<p>12th: A's and B's. 2 AP classes but I dropped out of one after the first semester, even though I got a B (stupid I know). Also dropped honors pre-calc after I got a C first semester.</p>

<p>I got a final GPA of 3.165, and was barely in the bottom 50% of my class. I am reeeeally worried about my 11th grade. It shows that I took actual college classes and did horrible in them. Not to mention all the classes I dropped that year and senior year. Should I use part of my personal statement to explain my poor grades? Or is this always looked down upon? Also, I took a year off after college to work. Should I explain this in my essay so they don't think I was just bumming around? Please help!</p>

2

<p>Anybody who reads your transcript will see that something or other happened in the 11th grade. Lots of people suffer illnesses, or traumas, that mess up their performance for some period of time. I think you should explain what your problem was; just don’t sound as if you are making excuses for yourself. Since the whole point of asking for high school transcripts is to make a prediction about your performance in college, it will be best to make your difficulty sound as if it will not cause you problems in the future.</p>

3

<p>I was planning on explaining how I was overloading myself by taking too many classes and activities plus work, and took college classes before I was ready. And then I was going to say how I learned my lesson and am now doing a lot better in college (though I won’t have any transcript to prove it before I apply). I was actually sick that year and missed over a month of school in one semester but I thought that would sound really made up.</p>

4

<p>Those are excuses.</p>