During my freshman and sophomore years of HS, I struggled with an untreated mood disorder and eating disorder. I missed semester 2 of sophomore year due to treatment and did all of my work at home without a tutor–that, in addition to hell and a decreased ability to dedicate myself to schoolwork, wasn’t great for my grades. (I have all my stuff listed on http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1917050-what-level-of-selectivity-should-i-go-for-p1.html ) There’s a small downward trend in some of my classes.
Despite the really bad experiences, I have learned a lot over the past year. I value my life/education/happiness more, care more about making the most out of my abilities to help myself and others, am able to appreciate horrible crap for actually giving me new ways to look at the world, realize the importance of letting of of regrets about the past, blah blah blah.
I feel like making an essay out of this would be effective in showing what an amazing insightful wonderful soul I am as well as subtly playing up my grades. I have good grades in challenging classes, just not perfect. I definitely wouldn’t go into any detail about my issues–just about what I got out of it.
However, I’ve heard from a friend that being open with colleges about mental health problems is a bad idea because they’ll see it as a liability.
I appreciate any input I won’t actually be writing essays for a while but I just want to know if I should keep this idea or shoot it down.
‘I’ve heard from a friend that being open with colleges about mental health problems is a bad idea because they’ll see it as a liability.’ Unfortunately, that may be the case. I’d find another part of yourself to write your essay about. It may be helpful for you to write for yourself about the mood disorder. It is great you are doing well now.
Hi! I know I’m kind of late on this string, but I am in Recovery from Anorexia and I included overcoming my eating disorder in my CA essay under the “challenging a belief or idea” prompt (@CBT & DBT) and my college counselor loved the essay and said that as long as I was okay writing about it, she thought the way I worked it into the prompt was great! I think it honestly depends on you and how you approach the subject. It sounds like treatment significantly impacted your school experience (mine as well) and it might be really beneficial for the college to know how you struggled with such a serious disorder while still completing schoolwork on time. Although I am not super open about my ED at school or with most people, I want to tell my story in the future and be an advocate for mental health awareness. So this might just be me getting on my soapbox, but I get really angry at the idea that a college would decide a student’s college admission based on an ILLNESS that they cannot help. Technically, it is discrimination for them to do this, and it is students raising awareness on campus that can SAVE THE LIVES of other students! I think that as long as you come from a place of recovery and focus on how you overcame your ED, it could be helpful to include it in your essay. At first I wanted to write about anything but my ED, but there was something that kept pulling at me and telling me to use the prompt I did and to talk about challenging beliefs. Go with your gut, if it is telling you to write about something else, do that! But if you feel like you could really answer one of the prompts well talking about your recovery, do it, because you will be speaking from the heart and with your instincts. I hope this helped?
I won’t actually be writing essays for a while but I just want to know if I should keep this idea or shoot it down.