hello all! i’d first like to apologize for the messy formatting, i only have access to this via cell phone.
i’m a senior planning to apply to college soon, for fall 2016. As the title states, i have a super laughable gpa. 3.1 unweighted, 3.7 weighted (since my school weighs everything.) i think my uc gpa would be around a 3.4, which is really unfortunate.
but, my “reasoning” for this (don’t take this as a sob story!) my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer when i was in 8th grade. so in 9th grade, my time was usually spent spending time with her, instead of actually being at school. my dad would take me out of school to see her, since the doctors told me she didn’t have much time left. i was basically absent most of the time. and when she passed away in 10th grade, it was just bad. i was diagnosed with depression, which also led to such a time where i was mostly out of school, combatting my depression with therapists, etc. my grades started going downhill extremely from here.
Junior year came along, and i started to get my game back up. it wasn’t so great, i still had about a 3.6 weighted. but definitely better from fresh-soph year! I’m still in semi-depression and i’m not allowed to do anything that would let me plunge into my darkness any further.
i’ll be taking my first act this month, and i’m being prepped for it very harshly. they say my prospective is about a 30, 28 min, 32-33 if i ace the math. so, i don’t believe i’m just not an academic person, i just grew up in a really challenging environment.
i live in a rich neighborhood, and i live in one of the only apartments that are offered on rent. my single parent family can’t afford a house, as we only have a single income. (hoping that’ll be eligible for fafsa!) but the rest of my neighborhood’s houses are around the 600,000-3,000,000 range. it’s like beverly hills.
lastly, i’m planning on majoring in either rhetoric or philosophy, since i want to go into law. my personal statement is that i felt so grateful that my mom was offered free healthcare at the city of hope due to medical, so i want to help keep the same benefits for people similiar to my mom. i’ll be a human rights lawyer, fighting for the god given right to quality healthcare, regardless of how poor or rich you are.
** will be starting the city of hope club next year at school, so i’ll be the founder/president.
** link crew
** 20+ works a week, 5 hours a day for work (to help out my dad)
** 200+ hours of volunteering at a local hospital
do i have a chance to any uc’s or cal poly slo? i know berkeley and slo are big reaches, but my major seems less impacted as other majors so i just wanted to know. thank you for reading!