Should I email Colleges to explain about my bad senior grades?

Applying to College
1

Hi I am new here! I currently have a mega problem with my senior midyear report and was wondering if anyone could give me an advice?
So all of my colleges has been applied through RD and UNFORTUNATELY my senior grade has deflated a lot…like a lot compared with my junior/freshman/sophomore grades.I never had B in my transcript (only one B+ in AP lang)
but this year, it’s full of B’s.
I ended up with 2 B’s (AP Chem and AP Econ) and one B+ in AP gov. Other grades are all A’s and one A- but my unweighted gpa is going to drop by 0.3. (3.85ish to 3.5ish)

To explain for a drop in my grade, this year has been much more tougher for me than any of my friends. I don’t want to make it sound like an excuse, but I had to counterbalance my academics at school with Quest bridge application and SAT’s in the beginning. I took/prepped SAT up to December and THIS seriously triggered a huge loss of concentration and energy at school. And some of you would be like why didn’t you study over the summer or junior year?
My original plan was indeed-to study over the summer before the senior year and take SAT in October. But after my mom’s surgery that happened over the summer, I couldn’t study and concentrate as I wanted. I had to take a larger role in household. This impacted me a lot, as my October SAT grade improved by 10…when I was planning to improve by 300 points. So you can just imagine how my first semester was just full of doing college researches that I couldn’t do over the summer/ writing essay/SAT studies/ church volunteering/helping my mom to recover. And add on to this, I had 6-7 days absences at school. I literally got sick so many times. I got food poisoning, eye allergy reaction, fever, stomach flu, flu…etc. 2015 was REALLY just awful academically and health wise.

My counselor knows this situation and told him about my concern about my senior grades, he told me that I could email the colleges about my concern. But honestly, I don’t know how to write and don’t know if my reasons are “justifiable”
Is it too much to email to colleges?

My colleges list are: Oberlin college/UVA/Vtech/USC/BU

2

A couple B’s shouldn’t kill your chances/GPA. I wouldn’t worry too much. That being said, I don’t think SAT is really a valid excuse… Everybody has to take the SAT/ACT, and many participate in time consuming extracurriculars and whatnot as well. Your excuses sound like the average high schooler life. Good luck!

3

I don’t know. I am just concerned that they will take a drop to B negatively and think I’m slacking off when I didn’t. MY chem and econ teacher really sucks, like they are notorious for being the worst teacher in the school and I happened to get them…Ugh just that the pain is inexplicable

4

No. Chill.

5

…would it hurt if i send a note to colleges then?

6

Do you want them to see you as whining or making excuses?

7

Don’t send a note. I think it would make things worse.