<p>Long story short, I failed (F) first semester Advanced Algebra II/Trig during my sophomore year. No good reason, to be honest, as it was a poor choice on my part for not knowing the limits of my mathematical abilities. For second semester, I transferred to Algebra II and received an A. During the first semester of the following summer during summer school, I retook Algebra II (first semester only) and earned an A. </p>
<p>During the following year (jr), I took PreCalculus for both semester. For both semesters, I earned a C. This year, I’m retaking PreCalculus yet again, as I’m clearly weak in this area.</p>
<p>Should I even bother devoting an entire short-response (#3) essay to writing about this? I really don’t have a good reason for the outcome, or should I just briefly mention it in my first essay? Or should I just omit this entirely?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>PS: If anyone could help me with my essays, please PM me or message me on the AIM username I have listed.</p>
<p>If you dont have a good reason, dont use up the essay space, which you could use for something more meaningful. If they see you got an F first semester, changed classes, and got an A, they probably know wat you’d tell them.</p>
<p>If I wrote a shorter 200 word essay to discuss how I grew from it, and learned to know my limits and address my shortfalls, is it worth it? Or would it seem too captain obvious?</p>
<p>This is only my opinion. I am a mom. My daughter also did poorly in math, precalc. She received a C. She wrote about it on the Common App. There is a separate space where you can explain anything you want. I encouraged her to do that. She worked very hard with a peer tutor that year. The gist of her essay was that she didn’t give up, she worked very hard to pass the course. I think you could do the same thing. You are taking the course again in order to learn the material and prepare yourself for calculus. I think that’s very important to say. </p>
<p>Also, I would venture to guess that most ad reps are not too heavy on math, unless you’re talking a school like Cornell where profs read the apps. So you may get some sympathy. Bottom line: Don’t whine, but show what you’re doing to learn the material, even though it doesn’t come easily to you, and you’re not giving up. Any ad rep is going to respect you for that!</p>
<p>We were advised by a college admissions specialist that it is very important to explain any deficiencies in the record… so yes, you definitely should say something. It doesn’t have to be too long, and you don’t have to make excuses – but I do think it would be valuable to say exactly what you have said here. </p>
<p>What impresses me about what you have written so far is:
You were direct and acknowledged that the problem was your own weakness in math – that is, you didn’t try to blame a bad teacher or make another excuse
*You have tried to bolster your math skills by taking courses that are not required of you in summer school, even retaking a course where you earned a passing grade (C) last year.</p>
<p>So I see a good quality: you are willing to work hard to address your weak spots – you could have avoided taking another year of math this year, since retaking the same course won’t really help with college admissions – but it shows commitment on your part. </p>
<p>So yes: definitely address it.</p>
<p>What the admissions specialist (former director of admissions at a high-ranked LAC) told us is that if there is a weakness on the record, the ad com is definitely going to notice it – there is no hiding. So you can only help yourself by providing an explanation. If they don’t like your no-excuses explanation, you won’t be any worse off than if you had written nothing; but maybe they will be like me and LurkNessMonster and respect you for what you say.</p>
<p>My daughter had signficant weaknesses in math and did provide an explanation on all her apps – she was admitted to top schools, so I think it did help. I don’t think her explanation was as good as yours, either.</p>
<p>I think that the value of an explanation is that it prevents untrue inferences from being drawn against you. That F and those C’s look bad no matter what, but without an explanation someone could think you were just slacking off and taking the easy way out. When you explain how tough math is for you and how hard you are working, then at least they know you are serious about putting in effort in your classes.</p>