<p>I’m in a similar situation, hoping that some success is in the near future. High school GPA was great up until senior year. I took Honors classes and got mostly A’s in everything, I has some EC’s but not many. Senior year I was diagnosed with panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and major depression and my grades suffered severely. I managed to keep my GPA at about a 3.0 I think but I missed a ton of school, and switched out of my AP classes because I was afraid of having panic attacks in them. I didn’t get accepted to any of my top schools when college admissions came around, and I went to UMass Amherst instead (where I didn’t even want to go). Had a terrible semester there and ended up with a GPA below 2.0 due to all of my previous symptoms returning and came back home to go to community college. </p>
<p>I’m in the last semester of my associate’s degree now (year and a half later) and I currently have a 3.8 GPA, recently inducted into Phi Theta Kappa (national honors society of CC’s) and work 40 hours a week to pay for my education and transportation. </p>
<p>I’m extremely worried that my top schools will reject me again, or if they’ll even consider the improvement that I’ve made. I don’t have time for all these EC’s and clubs because of the amount of time I have to work to pay for my schooling. I’d love more than anything to go to a good LAC such as Amherst College (top pick) but I don’t know if that’s unrealistic.</p>