Top Law Schools

I had a meeting this morning with the asst director of admissions at Florida State. She said my scores were in the middle of the pack and that my downward grade trend may hold me back.I'm an accounting major and i always thought it just went down because everything got more difficult, but she told me any explanation of what was going on would be better than no explanation.

There WERE some weird things happening but i don't knowif they sound whiny or not. Too wordy? Not enough explanation? This isn't really a draft. More like thoughts on the facts. Could someone tell me what they think?

In January 2007, my father suffered a fall from a two-story building. His injuries were extensive and required an extended recovery period. At the time, his job was located in Atlanta and the rest of my family lived in Florida to finish the school year. When he returned to work, his health began declining and he was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress disorder. As a result, he quit his job to move back to Florida to recover. He was unemployed for 4 months before he found a new job. Unfortunately, later that year the job position was terminated and again he was unemployed. After another 4 month period of unemployment, he found work in a different location. My family moved with him this time. During this time period, I found myself traveling back and forth from Tallahassee to wherever my father or the rest of my family was located in order to help my parents move, spend time with my father as well as put in time at my mother's catering company to help with finances. At the time it did not seem like this had a large effect on my academics. The truth of the matter is that I was largely preoccupied during this time period with the financial issues that ensued as a result of my father's job losses as well as with his emotional distress from the accident and the effect it had on my family as a whole. My major in college was Accounting and as I progressed in my studies my classes became more difficult. In the past, I have attributed my grade trend to the increasing difficulty level of my major and I have always prided myself on being able to set aside many of problems until my academic work is completed to its full potential.


I even wrote in my PS how proud I was of all I accomplished even though I moved around alot as a kid and never had a stable "home", but according to admissions I don't have much to be proud of.

YES! Add the addendum. Plus do what I did and add it as a separate addendum. Don't waste space in your PS. Downward trends are not good and need to be explained. Many (most? almost all?) people have upward trends as they take upper level classes in fields that they are interested in.

That said, I think that this addendum goes a long way to explaining it and turns a potential red flag into an accomplishment. I also like the idea that you don't blame it on the attendant events in your life but think that it's cuz the classes got harder. I think this demonstrates maturity/responsibility, while at the same time saying that even if that's not the case, you have a damn good reason.

agentcom wrote:YES! Add the addendum. Plus do what I did and add it as a separate addendum. Don't waste space in your PS. Downward trends are not good and need to be explained. Many (most? almost all?) people have upward trends as they take upper level classes in fields that they are interested in.

That said, I think that this addendum goes a long way to explaining it and turns a potential red flag into an accomplishment. I also like the idea that you don't blame it on the attendant events in your life but think that it's cuz the classes got harder. I think this demonstrates maturity/responsibility, while at the same time saying that even if that's not the case, you have a damn good reason.

Awesome, thanks so much! I really appreciate the feedback. I guess I just didn't think to do one before. I hope it's not too late!

It's never too late until you've been rejected. Definitely add it to any new applications that you are sending out. As for the ones that are already in:

I'd be curious what other TLSers have to say about how to go about sending it in. Here's my gut instinct:

I'd probably call the school and let them know that you want to discuss your GPA or send in an addendum to your application. Presumably, they'll ask for more info annd hopefully you'll get to talk to an actual admissions officer. You can tell him/her something like: "I was just meeting with an admissions officer from another school. She said that my declining GPA over my last two years was a mark against my application. I never thought of it that way, I always attributed it to the fact that the accounting classes that I took got progressively harder. In addition, my family was going through some tough times at that time. I just never thought to put that on my application."

I imagine that they'll want to hear more about that, at which point you could basically read off the paragraph that you wrote. Then I'd say something like: "If you think it would help, I'd really like to send you an addendum to my application that explains what we talked about."

Again, I'd be curious to hear what other TLSers have to say about this idea, but that's how I would do it.