I’m a rising sophomore at a good university, intending to transfer (my dream school is Columbia). My big caveat: I had to take a full year off from school (year of 2018-19) due to major mental illness, and subsequent physical deterioration. I have nothing to put on paper for this year–no work, no online classes, no personal projects–yet it needs to be accounted for in my transfer app, and admissions will want to know how it fits into my story.
I’m deeply proud of my recovery. It was some of the most grueling and revelatory work I’d ever done. I was a highly competitive and motivated student before I hit mental and physical rock bottom, and now I feel completely restructured and in control. But I’ve heard that Ivy admissions, partially due to stigma and partially due to real reasons, tend to avoid students who take time off for/disclose their mental illness, and I don’t want to hurt my chances in any way.
I would never otherwise lie on my application, but can/should I recast my mental illness as physical, and if I did, would I be found out? Either way, my identity as an healthy, active student will be the centerpiece of my application, not my recovery.
Do not lie on your application. Particularly, do not lie about something this important.
However, I also want to ask: Why do you want to transfer? The most highly ranked universities are stressful. Classes go fast. There is a lot of homework and some of the homework is very tough. Exams are tough. The other students are very competitive.
The highly selective schools know that they are stressful. Admissions is trying to find students who will do well there anyway. You on the other hand should be looking to attend a university where you can do well.
Also, why is Columbia your dream school?
By the way, I do have some experience attending highly ranked universities. I know what the stress feels like.
I understand what it means to be highly ranked–I’m at a T20 university right now. But I want to do work in urban studies, and there’s no undergraduate degree offered at my school. Barnard-Columbia is one of the best, and NYC is an amazing place to be a student/do field research.
Don’t lie, but don’t go into detail either. Just say “due to illness”.
You took a year off for health reasons that are now resolved. That is all that they need to know.
Honestly, I think it depends on how spin its; I also have had to leave school for a while due to mental illness and while I was afraid to speak about it I think it gave me a more competitive edge. I turned my story into one of struggle and strength where I was first diagnosed and fell apart to how I work through it and put my energy and stress into my school work and passion and how this only strengthen my interest in my felid and etc.
Storytelling is KEY, if you are proud of your progress then share it as the strength of growth and your passion and not a weakness.
Honestly, I would mention it. I also took the 2018-2019 year off for mental health and wrote about it for some of my colleges that asked about time off. In the end, I think it worked in my favor. I was accepted in to one school that I wasn’t even sure I would get in to literally a week after I applied. I also was waitlisted at a school with a 5% transfer acceptance rate despite my not stellar 3.4 college GPA. I really think this is because it demonstrated why one semester my GPA was a lot lower than I would like it to be and why I didn’t take a lot of classes another semester. The way I wrote my essay though focused a lot on my recovery and how far I’ve come.