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My initial grades were a bit low (2-3.0), but in my last year I earned a 3.87 due to simple maturity. Do you think I should write an addendum and explain that I matured, which then helped me finish with an upward trend?

I don't see any reason not to.

Sounds like you should write an addendum, although it wont make much of a difference. GPA trends aren't worth much of anything

I don't agree. Some schools specifically say that they look for grade trends and other factors.

Is there something more than "maturity" that led to grade changes? I would try to spice it up a bit. Don't lie, just be more convincing.

john1990 wrote:Sounds like you should write an addendum, although it wont make much of a difference. GPA trends aren't worth much of anything

cutecarmel wrote:I don't agree. Some schools specifically say that they look for grade trends and other factors.

Is there something more than "maturity" that led to grade changes? I would try to spice it up a bit. Don't lie, just be more convincing.

john1990 wrote:Sounds like you should write an addendum, although it wont make much of a difference. GPA trends aren't worth much of anything

I agree with this. Simply saying you matured isn't very convincing and doesn't really tell them anything they can't see just from looking at your transcripts. If your reason for struggling early on is essentially that you weren't taking the work seriously enough, I'm not sure you want to draw attention to this for any adcomm. If there is some sort of more concrete reason, I would talk about that instead. If not, hard to say if it's worth doing the addendum IMO.

cutecarmel wrote:I don't agree. Some schools specifically say that they look for grade trends and other factors.

Is there something more than "maturity" that led to grade changes? I would try to spice it up a bit. Don't lie, just be more convincing.

john1990 wrote:Sounds like you should write an addendum, although it wont make much of a difference. GPA trends aren't worth much of anything

There is a big difference between what schools say and do. For example, i had a school give me a chart with the acceptances/ applied by lsat and gpa. They told me to my face that if anyONE in my range was accepted, then i should apply This really happened. This was GW rep who spoke to me before i retook my 158 (i'm not a URM btw) and at that time including urm's the box for 3.28/158 was 10/341 (im looking at it now)
Besides, saying that they look for them does not mean that they give them much weight.

The schools try to get as many people to apply as possible. That said, I think they are trying to persuade the maximum number of people to apply, so they try to convince people that they care about things such as "GPA trend".
But in fact, they don't really care that much. If you can give more concrete reasons other than maturity, then go for it. If not, I don't think you want to draw attention to the fact that you simply failed to work earlier in your college career.