General Admissions & OTCAS Personal Statement OTCAS

[cadotstudent]

Hi There,

I'm currently completing my OTCAS application and have a question regarding the personal essay.
Because my undergraduate degree GPA was non-competitive, I went back to school to raise my GPA. I was able to earn at least an A for all my post-baccalaureate courses. Unfortunately, in my undergraduate transcript I also received a very low grade for one of my courses which I repeated and was able to do much better. My question is whether I should explain the low grade and lower undergraduate GPA in my personal essay. Does this depend on the school?

Thanks.

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[RUNNING_OT]

Hi There,

I'm currently completing my OTCAS application and have a question regarding the personal essay.
Because my undergraduate degree GPA was non-competitive, I went back to school to raise my GPA. I was able to earn at least an A for all my post-baccalaureate courses. Unfortunately, in my undergraduate transcript I also received a very low grade for one of my courses which I repeated and was able to do much better. My question is whether I should explain the low grade and lower undergraduate GPA in my personal essay. Does this depend on the school?

Thanks.

You can explain it but try to turn it into a positive experience. Talk about how you became a better student and what you learned about yourself. Try not to give excuses, just make it an experience that you grew from to show you are serious about your studies.

Also, some programs sometimes have an section under their questions or supplemental essay asking if your grades truly reflect who you are as a student and if you got low grades at what point what would you like the admissions committee to know regarding that.

Hope this helps!
Good luck!