<p>as of right now, my senior year gpa is a 4.37 (all A's two APs). last year was a 4.17 (all A's with one AP). but in my frosh and sophomore years, i had really, really, really (really) bad grades. i made them all up through summer school and independent study, and now have a cummulative hovering around a 3.3-3.5. depends on what my final grades are this semester.</p>
<p>the reason for the big change in my grades is... starting in middle school and ending around the end of sophomore year, my parents were having problems and eventually divorced. i was also diagnosed with both depression and an anxiety disorder, and my sister became ill with a potentially fatal disease. it was pretty much the worst 3 years of my life.</p>
<p>but i was determined and motivated and had a lot of initiative to not only do better, but go back and fix all that i had done wrong, academically.</p>
<p>i just read a post somewhere that said "upward trends look really good" or something, and then a rebuttal was that upward trends don't look as good as some think they do. i know they aren't as good as good grades throughout, obviously, but how much will colleges take this in to consideration? i have pretty good SAT scores and lots of leadership and have won national awards and such, and i just want to know.</p>
<p>It really depends on the school. If you can try to interview with the admissions departments of the schools you're interested in attending. Then you can explain the circumstances.</p>
<p>In your interview, or anywhere that you explain the circumstances, make sure that you do not sound like you are making excuses or whining. Especially in writing, tone is very important - the way you wrote your initial post could be read as whining, even if that's not what you intended. Make sure you're giving explanations, not excuses.</p>
<p>^yes. definitely don't sound like "oh it was completely impossible to get good grades becuase my life was so bad, I didn't do anything that year, poor me, and it's impossible to get good grades when your life is so bad."</p>
<p>(you weren't like that in your post or anything though. so don't worry to much)</p>
<p>what they want is more of how you learned from and were able to overcome your bad experiences. but unless the grades a really heavily weighted that much of an upward trend should help.</p>
<p>I just took the straight up approach: Yea I f-d up, but im doing well now (and let test scores talk potential. I was diagnosed with depression - am I going to make it an excuse, no. Just focused my app on the good things I did outside of school when school was bad</p>