Sorry to hear about this situation in your family, how anguishing. And no, it isn’t a ‘terrible excuse.’ It is a direct cause, not an excuse. But I won’t lie, this is difficult. You will have to listen to various opinions and if you have a guidance counselor or other adults who know you and also know about college admissions you should discuss with them. This is also far from the first time this has been asked here so there are many threads with comments on this topic.
I personally feel this is an extremely detrimental subject for an essay and even to reveal this as additional information. First because, although it is the most important thing you have dealt with it really isn’t the most important thing for the schools to know about you as an applicant (and yes I understand it takes a lot to deal with, you should feel strong for doing so) so you are losing an opportunity. More importantly this is only something you have recently sought treatment for. So this is not something you can claim perspective on, you can only say how significant it was, not how far behind you it is. You can’t demonstrate that you can speak as a healthy recovered person with a couple of year of high performance academics to display. The colleges will not be able to assess the current state of your health, so basically you will be telling them that you are in a condition that makes you unstable. And at college, they need students who know how to get help when they need it so they don’t flunk out. Mental health help, academic help, organizational help, physical health help etc etc–getting help early and often. Your story shows that you didn’t do that in a critical situation.
I’m trying to be straight with you that it doesn’t matter what accuracies or inaccuracies the readers have about eating disorders for this purpose of college admissions, it just matters that they have no means to assess you medically, to assess that you are telling the full picture etc. Now this is just my opinion and I am not an admissions officer. There may be cases where you would be accepted . so that is your call. I would be supportive and even read your essay if you wanted to do it. I’m just trying to show an aspect you might not have considered because I believe it is a big risk. I would feel better about it if time had passed and if there was some kind of demonstration of recovery and functioning in stressful situation.
Now I think you can consider discussing an illness. However if you have two years of below par grades what do you think they can do? Give .5 higher on gpa or what? All you can say is here is how I performed under difficult circumstances, things weren’t easy but I was able to pull this out at least, I didn’t get these grades from lack of caring. I think you are best off applying to schools where your grades aren’t terribly out of line with accepted students. Motivated students can do well at many variety of colleges we have to choose from. There is not one path. The motivated student will ‘bloom where planted’ to use an apt cliche. You have to believe in yourself more than your school making thing magically happen.
Now I pause because I took a look at your chances thread. You are only trying to explain a few B’s. You have another explanation for a not quite smooth as you like performance, some which makes sense. Explaining Bs is a bit pathetic. I wouldn’t go there. I think you can decide to take a gap year if you think you will have a stronger application from showing all your Sr year grades and accomplishments, and whatever you do/plan for gap year. Or you can try this round and see how it goes.
Finally I have often linked this rule breaking essay on the topic at hand. Please note this is a guy. And he had the illness nearly 4 years behind him. And he was the class Val. And it is a terrific essay. He got into all 6 selective LAC that he applied to, but wow this was 14 years ago.
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2001/mar/010326.clayton_kennedy.html