Top Law Schools

Hey all, I was wondering what I should do about a medical condition that I had my freshman year. My grades freshman year were 3.1 and 3.2, which were substantially lower than my average for my sophomore and junior year of 3.6. I'm going into my senior year right now. Unfortunately, those grades from freshman year bring my GPA down to a 3.45, which is kind of a bummer.

I did have a condition known as a pilonidal cyst during my freshman year. It's pretty gross, google at your own risk. Long story short, it had me out of class for about two weeks at one point, as well as two trips to the university medical clinic and one to the ER. I was put on antibiotics and when I finally had the thing removed during the following summer, the recovery period was about 4 weeks before I could walk again, and 6 weeks before I was back to relatively normal activity. I spent a night in the ER due to a complication with the recovery at one point as well.

Does this constitute as something enough to write an addendum about? It was so long ago now that I'm not sure exactly how it impacted my grades, but obviously this year was abnormal.

Any and all advice would be appreciated; thanks.

Upward grade trend is already working for you. You can include an addendum shortly stating the abnormality of the year and that the later GPA performance better reflects your capability. Some people may say you don't need to include an addendum but you're given the chance to say something, why not say something? Just make it concise and informational, not pandering.

I would include an addendum - i had a similar situation and I did. Just don't make it too long or lofty...

i had a medical condition freshman year that also tanked my grades. definitely write an addendum, just don't make it too long or whiny.

By the way, you should know that regardless of whether you write an addendum, you're not going to outperform your numbers. upward grade trends are a good thing, but you'll be judged on the cumulative GPA you got, not the cumulative GPA you would have gotten without getting sick. In my experience, this past admissions cycle, I got all the same admissions results as the majority of people on Law School Numbers with my real cumulative GPA - not the results of people with my GPA-minus-freshman-year-grades.

Thanks, I think I'll include something short then, just so they have the whole picture. While I don't expect it to make me outperform my numbers, it might give me the edge on those with similar or identical stats which is more than enough for me. If I reach my lsat target, hopefully I won't have to worry about all this anyway.