<p>I’m a low income Questbridge applicant and for one semester I had to work at my father’s store to help support income since he did not have the money to hire anyone else. I took an extra period that year(this was b4 I was aware i had to get a job) so school began at 7, ended at 3:15, then work until about 7. Then I got home and had to eat dinner and simply did not have enough time in the week to study enough for that 4.0(also really stressful =P to worry about bills/taxes at 15 haha). I though to myself that usually this excuse is fine, but noticed that many other students also have excuses similar to mine and thus adcoms might just ignore them all. My counselor is going to write about it though. Thoughts? Should I even include this or will adcoms just brush it off as a silly excuse?</p>
<p>So, do you think adcoms will hold the semester against me or will they kind of “excuse it” from my transcripts? </p>
<p>Or in other words, will an applicant with a 4.0 U.W(with all the same classes as me) be preferred over me if he had no job? This hypothetical situation is only in terms of transcripts.</p>
<p>One semester of grade drop isn’t going to make much difference.GPA is just one small part, essays, SAT score, your family background, any hardships - all that is going to play a part. Just put your best foot forward for the essays. Yes, you should explain it, without making it sound ‘poor me’…</p>
<p>It’s a good excuse. But it might hurt you a little bit because adcoms want to see that you can handle ECs and grades even with a job. Make sure when you or your counselor explains it, that you don’t play the “poor me” (^) card, but emphasize how you overcame the challenge and what you learned from it.</p>
<p>^ Yea thats what Im afraid of. Its a bit strange though, because I see my EC’s as the best part of my application(many of my friends in ivies told me they are also considered very good even by lets say Harvard standards. My most prominent are on the national level). And those took up a substantial amount of time for me, usually much more time that this job during my other semesters. Like for one EC, for about 5 weeks I had to stay at school until 10:00 every day(It was until 7:00 for other weeks). And even many hours on weekends, but I still managed a 4.0 during those semesters. That was just one of my EC’s, my most time consuming, but nonetheless just one.</p>
<p>Now that I look at it further, I think what really affected me was the stress(we were making the bear minimum for that semester, but now its not too bad) and that I couldn’t pursue any of my hobbies, and I was just stuck doing manual labor for hours after school(even though it became kind of interesting when I found new shipping methods that are more efficient…that only lasted a little bit). I need some advice of how I can show this without looking like a little whiny snob. Or if it appears I am that, how can I hide it haha? xD</p>
<p>I don’t think I should write an essay about it though =/</p>