Length of Addendum Forum

[PearsonSpecter614]

I'm writing an addendum to explain my cumulative GPA number (long story short, my first semester freshman year I was dealing with personal and family issues and received a very low GPA, and tried to redeem myself every semester afterwards). I wrote about what led to my low first semester GPA, the fact that I declined the option to enroll in a community college to be closer to home and wanted to prove I could succeed at my current school, as well as deciding to continue pursuing a double major and minor instead of settling on a single major where classes wouldn't be too difficult and I could take "fluff" classes for the GPA boost. My addendum now is about 3 pages long. I've seen people post here they've only submitted a paragraph as their addendum, but a paragraph cannot encompass my full explanation. I can shorten it to two pages, but is that too long? Will the person reading my addendum just pass it over because it is long, even if it is well written? Any advice or comments would help! Thank you in advance!

[ltbenn]

definitely too long. it really shouldn't be more than a page.

my addendum addresses a similar gpa problem, along with the subsequent leave of absence i took after sophomore year, and some c&f on the side - and it's just under a page.

without having seen the addendum it's hard to give concrete advice - but i would imagine that in order to get to three pages, you've included quite a bit of commentary... try to stick to a brief description of the problem, illustration of how it was solved (ie, "every subsequent semester my GPA continually rose") without flowery/apologetic language.

also i have to ask - is one semester of bad grades freshman fall really so bad that it requires an addendum? especially if your transcript shows overall and continuous improvement - i'm not sure they'll care so much, if anything it shows hard work etc.