I was suspended for 3 days my freshman year for sexual harassment. At that point, my grades were about 3.6 and I didn’t really care about school. After almost getting charged, I really decided to shape up my act, and now at the end of my junior year I’m 4th in my class with a 4.02 GPA and a 34 on the ACT, the highest score in my entire class. That incident really changed me and I learned from it and came away a better person. In a way, I’m almost glad it happened, because if it didn’t I might not have decided to put forth the effort and ending up how I did. I’m captain of the wrestling team, co-captain on football team, received all sorts of various band honors, well-liked by administration, and involved in many activities including founding a club. How big of a blemish is that suspension? I haven’t gotten in trouble since.
By the way looking at U-M LSA.
Meet with your GC to discuss. It’s your GC who would address it in his/her Rec Letter.
Do NOT make it the topic of your essay. Your essay should define POSITIVE things about you, rather than be an apology for something negative.
Its not a positive obviously but being freshman year and given the great grades you’ve gotten since then it will most likely be overlookable by most schools. I agree that you should talk with your GC as they’re the most likely person who would address the issue to a college and be the one to try to explain it in a rec letter in the best light. Just don’t try to hide it in your applications (most schools have additional comments or as said above you can just have it mentioned in your GC rec letter), but you don’t want to make it a focus either since it was 3-4 years ago.