<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I am a recent U.Va graduate with a low gpa and a tumultuous educational past. As the offspring of diplomats, I have spent my secondary school years globe trotting and moving from and into different school systems. My grades have always been rather lackluster. I moved to the U.S in 2003 and promptly enrolled in a public high school. The problem was, because of my cross- atlantic move, I had missed all but the last 3 months of 10th grade. So I ended up spending the remainder of sophomore year in my Guidance Counselor’s office taking 2 online classes and auditing all of the other classes. The rest of high school, I ended up playing catch up and it was just a big enormous academic mess because of trying to settle the differences between the British System in which I had finished my 9th grade and the American high school system. I graduated high school with a 2.8 gpa and enrolled at a local community college. There I started to study biology, a subject I later learned was far from suited to my career goals and aspirations. I got my associates degree and with a 3.3 gpa was accepted to the U.Va college of arts and sciences. My struggle with keeping up with biology hit me hard that first semester at U.Va. I burned and crashed and practically got D’s and C’s in my major courses. My Guidance Counselor wasn’t too worried however, and said that this wasn’t very unusual of community college transfers. To learn how to study at U.Va, he enrolled me in a class designed for CC transfers where we were taught the ins and outs of the curriculum and how to make best of the resources we were given.</p>
<p>That following semester, I improved a lot, avoiding any D’s on my transcript. I was doing really well on my non-major classes incidentally, something that I should have paid more attention to earlier on. Even with my vast improvement second semester,my gpa had plummeted and would not improve much in the last two semesters I had left in college. When the new year came along, I was torn; continue down my disastrous path to a degree in biology or change my major. I ultimately decided to change my major to english and finish up my undergrad education taking tons of classes that people took 4 years to complete. My last year was a complete mess, I was over scheduled, over worked and over exhausted. Enrolling in 4 and then 5 upper level reading and writing classes got to me. On top of that, things back home hit rock bottom. My dad, whom i am extremely close to, got a really scary diagnosis,which sent him and my family into an unraveling spiral. We also were hit hard by our continuing financial troubles aggravated by my college tuition. My parents had basically gone broke and into 40k+ in debt to finance my education and here I was screwing everything up. Early during my last semester, my parents also broke the news that they were about to be posted back to their country of origin. Given that my homeland is a third world country with horrible conditions for young women, I was deeply upset and terrified. I couldn’t focus on school with the threat of deportation looming over me along with everything else. I was an emotional wreck and found my way to therapy where i tried to make sense of everything going on in my life.</p>
<p>I finally managed to graduate in May with a 2.8 undergad gpa from U.Va, and A 3.0 in my major. I am so irked and annoyed that I could have done sooo much better in my english courses, had I not rushed through the major and made solid B’s and B+s throughout.</p>
<p>Despite my far from stellar academic history, I genuinely love learning and am so eager to continue further education. I want to take a year or 2 off to get some work and internship experience and then try to go to grad school. Problem is, every grad program worth the name requires stellar academics. I am freaking out that my academic dreams are doomed…Is there really no hope for me now? How can I possibly further my education given my admittedly rocky academic past?</p>
<p>please, any advice and input will be so appreciated!</p>