Will This Hurt My Chances?

jayl199
Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:01:17 +0000

I am considering applying to the College of William & Mary in the near future, but I have a few concerns that could be deal breakers. Any comments or suggestions on the following would be greatly appreciated.

I am from Georgia and I was an average student in high school. When I look at other applicants they were the tops in high school. The reason I was like that was because my HS counselors went back and forth between switching me from a college prep and technical college prep curriculum because they disagreed on if I was college material based off of middle school grades.

This made it hard to catch up on classes and I ultimately had to go through the TCP curriculum just to graduate. However, I was the only tech prep student in the high school to be taking honors history classes. I wonder if that this may be a disadvantage though.

After high school I attended a local community college and did relatively well going in, but half way through it I was suffering from “culture shock” (coming into a large college from a small HS, the difficult of class that I wasn’t prepared for etc.) that took a toll on my grades and health. I was placed on academic probation due to learning support class grades and eventually I had to withdrawal from college to sort things out - which they put me on academic suspension for.

I didn’t give up though so now I am in another community college and doing well (3.5 GPA, second semester). I have grown and matured and learned the value of education the hard way.

I plan to transfer back to my first college to make up for all bad grades and withdrawal-failings on my transcript and work to get that academic suspension/probation lifted. Ultimately it will lower my GPA when I transfer back, but I plan to work as hard as possible to get as close to a 4.0 as I can. At both colleges I was involved in political clubs and the literary magazines as well.

Now my question is this, will this hurt my chances of getting into W & M when I apply (should I just give up this dream?) Or could I use this as an advantage? Everyone likes a story about facing the odds, overcoming adversity, good old fashion hard work, etc.

Also, what can I do to improve my chances?

Much Thanks, J.