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First let me say I am really sorry your mom went through this and I'm glad to hear that things seem to have approved.

I would include this as a GPA addendum. I would leave out how it affected relationships with your family members but explain there was a family medical emergency that required you to travel back and forth etc. etc. I think a really crucial point here is to mention that the situation has been rectified. Highlight that since the situation has been brought under your control, your GPA has been much higher. This is important for a few reasons, but particularly because it helps answer the question of is this an ongoing problem? You don't want someone wondering if you will be forced to leave school to travel often and what kind of toll that could take on you again.

Best of luck

apricots wrote:I am a K-JD and have a 3.36 GPA, 175 LSAT.
I got a 2.75 GPA first year while I dealt with family issues (my mom has a serious mental disability and it affected her relationships with my father, ex-step father, and the children she had with my ex-step father) in my home town on the west coast while I attended a Boston school. I took maybe ten trips back home over the course of the school year, had to make frequent phone calls back home, and feel it detracted from my study time.
We got her medical help and a prescription by the summer time, and I have had a 3.5-3.7 GPA in the four semesters since then.
Should I write this up into an addendum, and if so, approximately how long / how much detail should I divulge? I don't want it to read like a sob story.


Thanks for the help in advance.

galadriel3019 wrote:First let me say I am really sorry your mom went through this and I'm glad to hear that things seem to have approved.

I would include this as a GPA addendum. I would leave out how it affected relationships with your family members but explain there was a family medical emergency that required you to travel back and forth etc. etc. I think a really crucial point here is to mention that the situation has been rectified. Highlight that since the situation has been brought under your control, your GPA has been much higher. This is important for a few reasons, but particularly because it helps answer the question of is this an ongoing problem? You don't want someone wondering if you will be forced to leave school to travel often and what kind of toll that could take on you again.

Best of luck

apricots wrote:I am a K-JD and have a 3.36 GPA, 175 LSAT.
I got a 2.75 GPA first year while I dealt with family issues (my mom has a serious mental disability and it affected her relationships with my father, ex-step father, and the children she had with my ex-step father) in my home town on the west coast while I attended a Boston school. I took maybe ten trips back home over the course of the school year, had to make frequent phone calls back home, and feel it detracted from my study time.
We got her medical help and a prescription by the summer time, and I have had a 3.5-3.7 GPA in the four semesters since then.
Should I write this up into an addendum, and if so, approximately how long / how much detail should I divulge? I don't want it to read like a sob story.


Thanks for the help in advance.

I agree with Galadriel, but just to chime in with my own two cents... Yes, 100% include this as an addendum. Be concise - don't feel an obligation to fill the page just because you will be uploading this as its own "additional document" on the applications. Less is more.

My mother has a disability that required my attention during freshman year. I found myself coordinating my mother's care between my family members, which was difficult because of the distance b/t [school] and [home]. The combination of traveling [home] monthly during the school year and organizing/coordinating/building a schedule for my mother's care consumed a lot of time and energy. Fortunately my family found a better solution for my mother's healthcare after my freshman year and I was able to apply my full academic potential to the subsequent terms. My GPA in my last four semesters is more indicative of my potential performance in law school than my cumulative GPA not only because the question of my mother's healthcare has been resolved, but also because this whole experience has taught me resilience.

This is a poor example and I'm sure many people here can do better but I Just wanted to see what it might look like in 5 sentences, which I think is enough.

Thanks to both of you, I'll be sure to write something up.