<p>I was diagnosed w. ADD end of my sophomore year. At that point my GPA was 2.9 unweighted (I took all Honors).</p>
<p>After getting on medication it turned up into a 4.0 my Junior year. In want to explain somehow this aberration/anomaly in my grades.</p>
<p>My SAT is 2230 (first try), and I'm going to retake it in the fall for 2300s, so I'm fine in that area.</p>
<p>My concern is that they wouldn't want to admit someone who:</p>
<p>1.) Has any professed psychological abnormality
OR
2.) Is using ADD, a "fake condition", as an excuse for laziness.</p>
<p>Opinions? Thanks</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with pointing out that you were dignosed and with medication the condition was brought under control.</p>
<p>I think neither of those is a concern.</p>
<p>Yours is, IMO, the only circumstance in which revealing your ADD makes sense. If ADD had never been a problem for you in high school, then it wouldn’t be any of their business, and there’d be no reason to tell them something they don’t need to know. If your ADD were not well managed now, then revealing it wouldn’t really be any help. If you were not doing well in school, then the fact you weren’t doing well would be the important thing (with respect to college admissions), and not the reason why.</p>
<p>But neither of those is your situation. You weren’t really doing great in school, but there was a valid reason why. (Nobody in education thinks ADD is a “psychological abnormality” or a “fake condition.”) You found out why, and you took steps to address the problem. Whatever you’re doing now is clearly working to manage your ADD. If a college knows this, they’ll understand that if they admit you, they’re probably going to get the newer, high-functioning you, and not the previous, less impressive you.</p>
<p>The only concern I have is the way you talk about your own condition: “psychological abnormality,” “aberration,” “excuse for laziness.” I think when you talk about ADD–yours, someone else’s, it doesn’t matter–you should stay far, far away from such judgmental talk.</p>
<p>^ I don’t personally agree with them. I’m just addressing the worst-off perspective and what I hope the admissions committee won’t adopt.</p>
<p>I hoped you didn’t. But from the way you were writing, I really couldn’t tell.</p>
<p>So when you are writing for college admissions committees about your ADD, you’ll avoid that kind of loaded language, right? All you need to say is that you weren’t diagnosed with ADD until the end of your sophomore year. Since the beginning of your junior year, you’ve been managing your ADD, and the grades from your junior and senior years are a better indicator of the kind of work you can do than the grades from before you were diagnosed and treating your ADD.</p>