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I am wondering if I should write a GPA addendum because of 1 Quarter of academic probation.

Prior to starting fall 4th year my employer talked to me about making work my #1 priority, despite having the same talk upon starting my employment and insisting school will always be the #1 priority. Of course this translated to working more hours. I had no choice but to accept because of serious financial troubles in my family. At the same time I became the president of a inter-collegiate competing student organization which spread my time even thinner.(The student organization seems very hard to sell because no third party would understand that it actually required my effort daily)

The end result was working 6-7 days a week and schooling 6 days a week which resulted in 2+ hours of commuting every day because of the distance between school and work.

Would it be valid to write a GPA addendum explaining that I made a mistake in my schedule for one quarter and as demonstrated by the much better GPA following that quarter I learned not to fall into the same trap. Obviously the above is very poor wording but I am sure you get the gist of it.


Also another quick question. I notice that people often point to their major GPA and mine is also higher than my cumulative but I double majored and one major GPA is significantly higher than the other. The only reason I double majored was at the time I thought there was some high level of prestige for double majors. Unfortunately I didn't smart up and I ended up double majoring in something I hated. The question is, could I list my poli sci major GPA/law classes and cite it showing my true passion for law etc?

Thanks

I won't address the addendum for poor performance in that one quarter, but the general wisdom seems to be that law schools aren't going to care whether you double majored or whether your major GPA is higher than your degree GPA. After all, the cumulative GPA is what they have to report to US News. You shouldn't expect any forgiveness in that respect and you aren't going to get any type of boost for being a political science major - that's also not going to be a convincing way to demonstrate your true passion for law. You can list that GPA (on your resume I assume) but it's not going to help you out in the admissions process.

You're already going to have to write an addendum because every single schools asks if you've been disciplined or put on probation for academic or other reasons.

I would leave out the bit about the competitive whatever team, because it frankly displays poor judgment to have taken on what you assert is another daily drain on your time and effort when you were already stretched too thin between work and academics. You may not have had a choice about needing to work because of the "serious financial troubles" in your family, and it may not even have made sense for you to reduce your courseload in light of more hours at work, but you didn't have to accept the presidency of Intercollegiate Whatever, and doing so insinuates that you lack awareness of your own abilities and limits, which will put up red flags for some adcomms.

I didn't think of it in that way.

Thanks, that's why I asked.