Attempting a retroactive withdrawal outside of deadline...

[astrostellar]

I'm a nontraditional student. When I first enrolled at my current school, I didn't know it, but I was about to go into one of the worst years of my life.

Brace yourselves; it's going to get pretty personal and a little bit whiny here, but during that first semester:
I was active duty military
I had a diagnosed anxiety disorder that was being treated
My providers were yanking me off of meds and putting me on new ones every couple of months and I was frequently in SSRI withdrawal (they even tried a mood stabilizer, which completely wrecked me)
My marriage became emotionally manipulative and full of gaslighting, and my husband was cheating on me (which I found out shortly after that semester)
My marriage was so bad that I ended up going to my emergency clinic for suicidal ideation
As my marriage deteriorated, so did my mental health... had comorbid depression and panic

It's been 2 1/2 years, and since my ex-husband and I divorced later that year, my grades have been great (3.99) and my mental health is 1000 times better. 8 years and I never realized I was in such a terrible relationship.

I already had a mediocre GPA from prior to the military, so it's incredibly disheartening to look at my transcript and see that full semester of Fs. No matter what I do, it seems my cGPA will never overcome it.

My school has a retroactive withdrawal policy for extenuating circumstances, but they cap it at one year from the requested semester. Do you think there's any way I could appeal this? If so, if there an appropriate route? I assume I can't just e-mail the dean asking nicely. I have substantiating mental health records. Has anybody had any success with something like this?

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[bioboy23]

I withdrew completely from college due to health reasons for one semester a couple of years ago. Earlier this year I wrote them an appeal letter (mostly to get the WDs off my transcript. It annoyed me) and they accepted it and returned my money for that semester, even though I stated it was not about the money. They had a hard retroactive withdrawal cutoff of 1 semester. I wrote them 3 semesters later and they still did it. It's worth a shot!

 

[deleted480308]

Go ahead and try

 

[Lannister]

If this doesn't work out, I just wanted to let you know that some schools (or, at least, my school) have a question on their secondary that asks you to explain any grade lower than a B-. So assuming your overall GPA is high enough to get you through the screening process, you may have an opportunity to explain what happened, and I think your situation would garner some sympathy from adcoms.