I had a bad semester, do I write about it?

College Essays
1

Hi all.

I’ve got a big question to ask about the subject of my Common App personal statement. The first semester of my junior year, I was in a bad place mentally. I wasn’t necessarily depressed or anything, but I was just disengaged from school and lost all of my motivation to work. I put on a lot of weight and was also in the worst physical shape of my life. I avoided checking the online grade book because of fear for how bad my grades looked. I knew things were ugly, but I still didn’t do anything about it. I ended up with a D in my APUSH class and a C in AP Physics, with the rest of my classes being B’s, save for the A I got in AP English.

I could have chosen to quit, but instead I used this awful semester as motivation to turn everything around. Instead of coming home and taking a nap or watch TV, I started my homework immediately and tried to get it done as soon as possible so that I could have time to go for a run. By running everyday, I was not only in great physical shape, but I felt really good about myself mentally. Running became a reward for doing my work because I loved it so much. By the end of the semester, I had all As except a B+ in Physics.

That bad semester was a serious wake up call and changed everything in my life. I learned how to take responsibility, and just matured as a person overall.

Do you guys think that writing about this topic would be good for my personal statement, or would it just seem like a desperate attempt to make excuses for my poor grades? That second semester salvaged my GPA a bit, but I don’t believe it is representative of me, and its a bit on the lower end for my top choice, Wake Forest.

Its important to add that I have my APUSH teacher writing one of my letters of recommendation. This was the class which I think really showed my growth as a student, as I got a D in it first semester, but I got nearly a 99% in it second semester. I’m sure my teacher will talk about the difference he saw in me.

Thanks

2

If she is covering it in her rec letter, I don’t know if I would write about it in your essay. I would try to really search for something that people won’t see in any other part of your application, and write about that.

3

The point behind this essay is to give them a reason to say yes.

That’s it. You want the adcom, in the 2 minutes he has to read your letter, to become convinced that you would be a positive addition to his school’s student body.

Writing about a semester when your grades plummeted is probably NOT the best way to do that, even if your grades did eventually rebound. All it would do is draw attention to something that’s already in your transcript, that’s already in your letter of recommendation.

You want your application to be about so very much more than that one semester of struggle. You want it to be about any of the many successes you’ve experienced, about all the things that your mom and your best friend and your dog love so very much about you.

It’s your chance to shine, not an opportunity to explain any short lived lack of shine.

I would choose another topic.

4

Yeah, I thought this over last night and I’m definitely going in another direction for my essay. What do you guys think putting at least something about this in the Additional Info portion?

5

I think that schools look for the upward trend type thing, so I don’t know if it is really necessary

6

Why draw added attention to it? What’s the upside?