Hi,
I am new to this site but will seek advice anywhere I can on this situation as it is very important to me that I solve this problem.
I graduated from a private college prep high school in 2011 with plans to attend a prestigious liberal arts college in the fall with a merit based scholarship. My high school grades had been very strong with mostly A’s and A-'s in an IB diploma program and my SAT scores were good as well (about a 2180 if I recall correctly). The end of my senior year of high school, however, I started to battle a lot of depression due to circumstances in my life at the time and missed a lot of school. I had to really push myself to make it to graduation but nonetheless I knew how important everything I had worked for was and managed to get through and graduate.
When I started college in the fall I was more depressed because surrounding issues and I also felt burned out after all the pressure I put on myself in high school. After the first month I was asked to take a year of mandatory medical leave and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In my year off I did an internship, got a part time job, and later also took non-matriculating part time courses at UPenn LPS. I re-applied to my LAC for the fall of 2012 and returned but realized through the semester I was still not managing my bipolar; I was very depressed at times and impulsive and manic at others and couldn’t focus on my education. I finished the fall semester with only a 2.5 GPA (yikes!) but 2 weeks into the spring 2013 semester I realized I hit rock bottom and decided (this time not mandatory or forced but instead on my own) that I was going to withdraw and take medical leave a second time.
In the past year I got proper treatment and I feel 100% better about my mental health. This past fall I took 2 courses at my in-state college (that is the max. number a part time student can take) and have felt consistently more confident in my ability to succeed once again the way I did in high school and have been taking school seriously. But 2 courses at a state school was obviously not going to satisfy my compared to the competitive college I was attending before, so I decided once I was doing better that I would re-apply for admission again to my LAC. The dean told me that although I had shown great progress by taking classes elsewhere and positive letters from therapists, etc. I still couldn’t be re-admitted for spring 2014 because they wanted to see successful grades from a full year of leave in a program as strenuous as theirs. This would mean I would need to take at least 15 credits this semester somewhere and earn excellent grades in order to be re-admitted next fall.
So my question is this: My state college (UDel) will not allow non-matric students to take more that 7 credits. What can I do/ where could I go to take a full course load to satisfy my deans request? Also, any other suggestions on things that would be beneficial to do in my next semester off to add to my re-admission application.
Thank you