medical problems and gpa--any opportunity to explain?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>Soph. son has been ill since school started this semester. Finally, after 3 courses of antibiotics and 2 doses of depmedrol, and one CT scan, it has been decided that he need tonsillectomy urgently--absoultely cannot wait until Christmas. In fact they wanted to do today and son talked them into a few days so that he could notify profs, etc.</p>

<p>This semester has already been extremely rough due to the illness, had to drop orgo due to missed time in hospital. Last year, had an emergency appendectomy which of course resulted in missed time from labs, etc.</p>

<p>My question is: If he can hang in and actually finish semester, even though grades won't be truly reflective, will he have any way of letting a school know under what conditions this work was done? Or does it really make a "hill of beans" difference to anyone. After all, everyone has a story.</p>

2

<p>Med schools do often have places (usually on the secondary application) where you can explain problems you ran into over the course of a semester. What they deem an "acceptable" excuse, I'm not really sure. I suspect, frankly, that they're often looking for things relating to race and socioeconomic class, but illness may qualify as well.</p>