<p>Hello everyone,</p>
<p>I am preparing for grad school application this Oct
and I found that my grades from international exchange program may have some negative impacts on judging my academic skills (even though I would like to make an excuse that it was mainly due to the different style of teaching and grading in France).</p>
<p>So here’s the description of my grades situation in exchange program.</p>
<p>I spent 2 semesters in France and in the first semester, I was so surprised to get all the kinds of grades. from A to F ! I had all of them and especially for F grade, I consulted with the prof and he told me that he cannot discuss it more cuz he is in Africa for his field trip saying that one F grade will not ruin my life and he cannot review my works again. I met several people of that school to make up that situation but I could not do anything about it in the end. Anyway, my first semester grades were fairly shocking.
So in the second semester, I did really make lots of efforts so I got better grades overall, I had some more As finally. And to emphasize, the courses that I have taken in the second semester are way more relevant to the field of study that I would like to pursue at graduate level. </p>
<p>To give you more information about my academic career, I earned BA in polisci and IR at Korea university with 4.3/4.5 GPA. I have believed that I can maintain the sound academic background but my exchange program record seems to tell me that I had some hard time to adjust myself to international or different academic environment. </p>
<p>I would like to study at the grad school in UK or France.
Especially for French school, it is the same school that I attended for the exchange. So that makes me feel a bit ashamed. More or less, for the UK school as well.</p>
<p>I want to get some advice from people who are reading this,
should I make an excuse in my personal statement for this sitaution ? or should I ignore it and focus more on my extracurricular activities and other stuffs ? </p>
<p>Plus, if I want to make stronger impression on my second semester achievement in France, would it be working to get a recommendation letter from the prof who taught one of the relevant courses and gave me A ?</p>
<p>Or… am I screwed ?
What do you think ?</p>
<p>Thank you for your help and I’ll be looking forward to your advice!</p>