I’m currently working on my Common Application (aiming for the standard top reach schools) and I had a quick question.
If you have on your transcript a dip in grades, should you attempt to provide an explanation? Or should you deemphasize the grade as much as possible, not talking about it as that brings it to their attention?
In my case it is a C in a semester grade. Due to a combination of family crises, my grade dipped (it was an AP course so the problems fell most heavily on it). Every other grade on the transcript is an A, and I later redid that course at a college and got GPA recovery. That means that GPA wise it counts as an A, though the written C remains. Next year was all APs and straight As. My GPA is around 4.3 and ACT is 33. I also have good ECs. So should I mention the grade specifically and attempt to give an explanation, or should I just leave it and hope the rest of the app weighs it out?
Thank you!
I wouldn’t try to make excuses for it but you could ask your GC to give some insight in their LOR. With your GPA and test scores it truly is a glitch and I wouldn’t bring more attention to it.
You say nothing. Millions of kids have a C. Trying to explain away one C will just sound like you are making excuses… And so what if you got a C? It’s not like a whole semester worth of grades took a hit.
I suggest you try to explain it, carefully, depending of course what the family crisis involved. Especially if it will be non-recurring. Schools always like to hear about kids overcoming adversity, but if not done with care, they might snicker at the kid who appears mostly to be a whiner.
Kudos to you for overcoming this crisis. It means that even if you don’t get in to your top reach schools, you will do fine wherever you end up
@3puppies , it is good that OP was able to get through the family crisis, but if every applicant tried to explain a single C on a report card, AOs would read endless lists of excuses. No doubt OP had a really tough time and it’s admirable to get through it with one C. But I don’t think OP deserves recognition from a college for getting through a tough time. And one C isn’t necessarily going to prevent a student from getting into a top college. My thought is that most kids have some kind of tough time to overcome in the course of their high school years. Explaining poor grades, at least in my opinion, should be reserved for situations in which there is a noticeable and sustained drop in grades for multiple classes due to extenuating circumstances, and if such is the case, it should be noted by a counselor, not the student.
I pretty much agree with you, which is why I tried to clarify my response with “depending of course what the family crisis involved”. I can imagine lots of horrifying situations where the student was overcoming tremendous personal issues and still managing to get a C would be truly remarkable. There could have been other less intense situations where the label “family crisis” could just be an overblown excuse for any number of simple problems.
For the record, I don’t want OP to provide details here. I just wouldn’t suggest closing the door completely on an explanation without a full consideration of what was really going on.
And as for having the Counselor provide the explanation, that would depend on the student/counselor relationship. Many GC’s don’t / can’t know all their students, and I can understand a reluctance to divulge personal / family details, particularly when there may be other family members affected.
I agree with @Lindagaf. I’d say there are at least 3 reasons for a student not to write an “explanation”
First, third-parties are more believable. Second, a minor issue such as one C grade (which the OP made up anyway to show they could master the material) is not the reason someone won’t get into a very selective college, nor will all A’s (the intent of writing an “explanation” is, after all, to show the OP would have been an “all-A” kind of kid) be a boost. After a certain level they understand you can do the work and its the overall application they look at, not whether one kid has trivially better grades than another.
Lastly, few kids have the maturity to write an effective letter without attempting to shift blame. We might imagine a letter that says “my mom had a serious illness and I had to care for my little brother” but what might actually be written is "“my mom had a serious illness and I had to care for my little brother, but my jerk of a calculus teacher wouldn’t accept an assignment that was late”. The two don’t leave the same impression on the reader…
Thank you all for the great advice. I purposely didn’t include details to make it a more general post, and your advice fits all scenarios. Thank you!