Large discrepancy between CGPA and Major GPA

jsanche32
Wed, 01 Jun 2011 01:10:37 +0000

Not at all, I don’t mind elaborating.

I explained my medical condition as concisely as I could (It’s a very rare neuro-muscular disorder. Less than 1 person per 100,000 has it) and how difficult it was to get diagnosed. (I bounced around all over the US seeing specialists for a good 4 years). After I was diagnosed, I was able to tackle the problem (Can’t really do much when you keep getting sick and you don’t know what’s wrong with you) and that’s when I was able to really concentrate on my classes. I mentioned my rising GPA in my last 1.5 years as evidence that I could endure the rigors of graduate school (I think this is something that is key. You have to prove that there was a serious academic turn-around). I also met three wonderful teachers in the Econ dept of my school who really helped me along my path (They all taught classes I got an A+ in), and they agreed to write my REC’s. (It also helped that in their rec’s they put me in the top 1% of their students)
What also helped was that I did a degree in Applied Math. A lot of graduate level Economics involves higher math so they also probably took that into account.

Speaking objectively, even with all that, I probably got very lucky that the person(s) reading my application was/were very understanding towards my circumstances.