Numbers matter when it comes to college admissions. Prospective college students typically submit SAT or ACT scores, plus their GPA, as part of their application, and many higher education experts believe GPAs reveal how students will do in college.
“The performance that they’ve had in high school is often, you know, the best kind of single indicator of their future success on our campus,” says Robert McCullough, assistant vice president for enrollment and director of undergraduate admission at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. “It’s a pretty good kind of predictor of whether the student will have success.”
[Learn how to get accepted into college with a low GPA.]
While it’s ideal to have a GPA that’s at or close to 4.0, many teens fall short, which can make getting into college more challenging.
Admissions experts say applicants often use admissions essays to address a less-than-stellar GPA, but there are right and wrong ways to explain poor grades. If you find yourself in this situation, here are a few do’s and don’ts to follow.
— Do explain when a drop in grades is because of extreme hardship: You shouldn’t hesitate to mention if your grades are lower because of extraordinary circumstances, such as needing to work part time because a parent lost a job, experts say.
But if you couldn’t perform well in school because of personal illness, you may have to provide more than an essay that discusses this challenge.
“Be prepared to contact the school to ask: How does the college or university want that information relayed?” says Tiffany Nelson, director of admissions at Spelman College in Atlanta. In some instances, she says, a school may want documentation to corroborate what the applicant says.
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— Don’t blame a teacher: If you received a bad grade or two with a certain teacher, it’s best not to attribute your GPA to that teacher, says Bruce Bunnick, interim vice provost of admissions and financial aid at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
“You have a person who’s being discussed who doesn’t have an opportunity to defend themselves,” he says.
Plus, other applicants can weaken your argument. “It could be the case where we get multiple applications from that same high school, and yet none of the other applicants are saying these things about teachers in your school,” Bunnick says.
— Do think twice about elaborating when lackluster grades are consistent: “In general, you don’t always want to address that GPA,” says Vinay Bhaskara, a co-founder of CollegeVine, a consulting company that helps prospective college students get into schools.
If you didn’t focus on academics as much as you should have, it may not be worth trying to justify grades that were consistently bad, says Bhaskara. Instead, he says, you may be better off attempting to wow an admissions committee with a riskier essay, such as one that focuses on a divisive topic or one written in iambic pentameter.
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— Don’t assume essays are the only place to explain your GPA: The teacher of a class in which you struggled may come to your defense in a college application.
Bunnick says sometimes a teacher or counselor through a recommendation letter will note that a student struggled with the coursework but contributed in other ways.
Admissions experts say it’s most important that students with lower GPAs relay in their applications how they responded to life’s curve balls in the past and how they’ll respond in the future.
“College enrollment is four years of peaks and valleys,” Bunnick says. “But it’s how you respond, how you react to adversity, how you respond to setbacks and even how you deal with wonderful achievements that really will set you apart.”
— Do show your strengths: Sometimes, your GPA may take a hit because of a bad breakup or a general lack of motivation in a class. It’s best to be honest about an academic slip-up, even a slightly embarrassing one, but focus on how you bounced back, says Nelson.
“It’s always best to own the grade and talk about what you learned from the experience,” she says.
McCullough, of Case Western Reserve, adds that applicants should also move the conversation forward by explicitly communicating how they plan to do things differently in the future.
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Do’s, Don’ts for Explaining a Low GPA in College Applications originally appeared on usnews.com
