<p>Don’t bother explaining grades that, while not good, aren’t utterly abysmal and you quickly brought up. It will just make you seem overly anxious. Colleges understand that there is a transition period; if you feel like you must explain those grades, do so in a supplemental essay. Anecdotally, my one friend who tried the “explaining why I got some Bs” thing by whining about how her grandma died and so she couldn’t get As any more (one can handle the topic of dying grandparents well in essays. She did not.) got rejected by a bunch of colleges with average SAT scores 100-150 points lower than hers. Oops!</p>
<p>Don’t listen to tjkid and take lots of things out. You have a strong main EC (English) and that’s probably enough. One thing that I think really helped me was in my essay addressing one of my main personality traits, and showing me, then explaining briefly how that personality trait led to my passions for the subjects I have ECs in. It showed that what scatter I displayed was cohesive in my reason for it.</p>