Many many dropped courses... should I bother to explain? Forum

[goodcharles]

I needed to work extra-time during college years for money but still wanted to save my GPA, so I ended up dropping 8 courses. I still managed to graduate with 3.8 in less than four years only because I had a number of AP credits to begin with... Some tell me not to worry because none of the dropped courses show up on the transcript (all of them were dropped before the drop deadlines). But it's pretty obvious that I took A LOT LESS courses per quarter than my peers, and for one quarter I was even a part-time student cause I dropped too many.

My advisor told me to explain it to the law schools but... A friend of mine told me that it's not worth bringing admission officers' attention to such minor defect.

Should I bother to explain my spotty transcript to law school admissions? Or will it bring more harm than benefit by bringing my weakness to attention?

[capitalacq]

I needed to work extra-time during college years for money but still wanted to save my GPA, so I ended up dropping 8 courses. I still managed to graduate with 3.8 in less than four years only because I had a number of AP credits to begin with... Some tell me not to worry because none of the dropped courses show up on the transcript (all of them were dropped before the drop deadlines). But it's pretty obvious that I took A LOT LESS courses per quarter than my peers, and for one quarter I was even a part-time student cause I dropped too many.

My advisor told me to explain it to the law schools but... A friend of mine told me that it's not worth bringing admission officers' attention to such minor defect.

Should I bother to explain my spotty transcript to law school admissions? Or will it bring more harm than benefit by bringing my weakness to attention?

don't mention/draw attention to this. you could pretty much explain it away in a positive light simply by mentioning in your job description on your resume something like "worked full time throughout undergrad" if a school's app doesn't ask how many hours/week you worked

[Dukehopeful2]

I don't know if this is how it is at all schools, but at my school you can't see where people dropped courses. You can only see withdraw pass/ withdraw fail/ incomplete so on...... I also will have a semester like that though where I went from doing normally 18 hours a semester to 12 hours but I decided to change majors at the time and dropped classes I did not need so that would be my excuse if asked.

[Fred_McGriff]

Add/Drop shouldn't show up on or affect anything.

[danidancer]

If it's not showing up on your transcript, then it's not an issue, don't mention it. Keep in mind that most applications already ask for your work history, number of hours worked, etc, so they should be able to connect the dots. But for those that don't I would write up a short addendum - working as much as you did is an excellent reason for a lighter course load.