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From what I know the addendum is a good idea - you always want to quell any concerns the adcom might have. As for is this specific addendum of high quality? I don't know enough about admissions so I would wait for someone else to chime in for me here. You definitely want the addendum, though.

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Take my advice being a 0L with a grain of salt, but I would presume the negative trend. Plenty of people in law schools are fathers and it's fair to assume there are some single parents. Again, though, you should wait for someone with more credibility and knowledge on the issue.

What was your GPA each year?

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So you just had a big drop at the end? That sounds addendum-worthy, but I would just say that you broke up with the mother of your son and had to travel great distances to see him, causing a GPA drop. I would then add that whatever the issue was has now been resolved and you are confident this won't be a problem going forward.

The problem of course is that if your GPA dropped because your kid moved away adcomms will have good reason to think this hasn't been fixed.

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I think you should explicitly point to other factors that are indicative of your potential. For example, you could say something along the lines of "I believe that my LSAT score of xxx is a more accurate indicator of my academic potential, as I took that exam after xyz."

I don't know if my wording is great, or even whether my idea is great, but I just wanted to throw an extra option into the ring.

Also, I doubt single dad would hurt your chances. I know a couple of single mothers at HLS (who were single when they were accepted, too) and it doesn't seem to have hurt them. If anything, it is equally possible that a school would take your experiences to mean that you have learned valuable life lessons and are now more capable and mature.

With adcomms, who knows?

I would go with a shorter addendum--maybe something like this:

During my junior and senior years, my GPA suffered for personal reasons. My long-term relationship with my son's mother ended, and I had to adjust to seeing my son only a few days a week. I was devastated, but with the help of a psychologist at the University of Illinois, I was able to recover emotionally and accept that my life had changed.

While I am a stronger person for having endured these difficulties, I admit that I struggled academically during that time. Now that I have fully recovered, I have no doubt that my intellectual capacity and work ethic will allow me to excel at the University of Chicago Law School.

How do you write addendums? Like, are they as formal as a PS? Or is it just a small explanation of why.... In other words, when you write an addendum, will they be looking at your writing skills, or just simply reading to hear what you have to say?

Whatever you do, take out the part about having "world-class aptitude."

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