| I read a book on admissions (it’s called The Gatekeepers. I recommend it to all prospective Ivy and top LAC students). Basically, there were a couple sections on a girl who had a pretty bad incident with drugs. She was a very formidable applicant with leadership and good academics, and I personally didn’t doubt that she would get into the colleges she was looking at. However, she wrote one of her major essays on the drug incident, and although it was a terrific essay (and because of the incident she even became the chairman of some prestigious school organization and earned respect from the entire student body and faculty), all of the top colleges except Cornell denied or waitlisted her due to that incident. Sometimes attention grabbers aren’t very positively compelling. Case in point, for conservative schools and even some LAC, they like to keep on the safer side in their applicant pool—just because. At least that’s what I thought. So unless your case is really poignant or impressive or something, I’d suggest against it. |