I won a competition this semester and I’m probably going to place well in another one in late February. Is it appropriate to update my RD schools on these accomplishments? If so, how should I do so? Thank you!
Sure! Email the admissions office. Give them your identifying information so it is easy for them to match up with your application (full name, if they assigned you a number of some kind in their portal, SSN if no portal number). Tell them you have applied in the RD pool for fall 2015, and that you wanted to please ask them to consider this additional accomplishment with the rest of your application. Reiterate your interest in the school, then sign off. I wouldn’t wait until much later than the end of January to send it for schools sending decisions at the end of March – you want to get that info in there while your app is still in the pile being considered. 
If you think something else good might happen in the next couple of weeks you could group in the same email, hold off. But don’t wait too long.
Thank you! I’ll probably just send them the thing I won already (which is better than the February thing anyway).
Just be SUPER sure if you are cutting and pasting your email that you fix the proper school name (spelled properly, too) in the email. Easy to mess up…
I had several personal/medical issues throughout high school, and I basically had to make a choice early on between devoting my time to stellar ECs or keeping up with rigorous academics. I chose academics (foolish, I know). Several trusted adults told me that my profile was competitive enough without disclosing any of this, but after getting deferred from Princeton, my parents think it’s a good idea for me to disclose to my RD colleges and Princeton. My guidance counselor has 400+ kids to deal with and doesn’t have time for me, so I basically have to do this on my own.
Is this really a good idea? If so, how should I do this? I didn’t put any of this in the “additional info” section of the Common App (probably a really bad idea), but since I’m updating my RD colleges on what I said above anyway, if I do decide to do this, I’ll just do it in the same email.
You need to write a formal letter explaining the difficulties you had in HS (1/10th of the letter max) and explain what you were able to accomplish in spite of the medical issues then continue on with what you are doing now.
The bottom line is there really is no excuse for no ECs. Every other applicant is going be applying with an EC full of activities. Your medical conditional can be used to negate your lack of ECs to some degree which is why it is important to emphasis what you are doing now.
In some way you are writing a letter of appeal / a new personal statement.
So is it worth disclosing? I do have some ECs, some on the state level, enough that people told me I was competitive for top schools without disclosing, but not as good as they could’ve been without my personal issues. Should I just try to go with what I have or disclose? I don’t want to seem like I’m making excuses, but my parents think it might be a good idea.
Could I have some other opinions? It’s not that I think you’re untrustworthy, it’s just that this is pretty important to my parents and me.
I think you need to disclose what the medical condition is.
If it’s something like ADHD or depression then I would not bother mentioning it.
It’s a physical condition that required multiple surgeries during my HS years, some of them unexpected, that’s all I’ll say about it on a public forum.
Also, I did have mental health issues on top of that. Should I just disclose the physical condition?
ya i think disclosing the physical condition important. I would not mention the mental health issues tho.
Lastly make sure the tone is right. It needs to be inspiration and uplifting inspite of your adversities. Make sure it does not come off as sad and depressing.
Well I’d write a letter talking about the whole shebang, personally, both physical and mental - but make sure the focus is on how well you are doing NOW despite earlier difficulties. It would be better, of course, if your GC or a teacher could also write a short note backing this up. Have you checked to be sure that none of your schools have the opportunity for a parent/peer evaluation? Several schools my D applied to offered this option: in that case your parents could write about it. If all else fails, you can do it yourself. Something along the lines of, “Thank you for this opportunity to share a little bit of additional information that may help as you review my transcript…”
Good luck!