Should I explain my grade trend on the secondaries?

[hellocubed]

I started my UG career decently with a 3.7 on my first semester, but then went on a downward spiral through the end of my sophmore year... ending with a cGPA of 3.08.

During my Junior and Senior years, I put myself on overdrive and subsequently received straight A's for every semester, including 2 summer sessions. I hit a 3.8 on my first semester out of hell, and subsequently received a higher GPA every semester afterwards... ending on a 4.0.
I ended with a 3.55 cGPA (poor, but the best I could manage)


I really don't have a legitimate solid excuse for why this happened, but I can try. I was volunteering at my church as a leader nearly 30 hours a week while tripling up on physics/orgo/human phys. The church is a UG student run establishment, and hence it was difficult for me to walk away from it because so many parts of it were depending on me.
But in the end, there was no real reason I needed to volunteer so intensively. If I was smarter, I would have decreased my hours, or been honest to myself that I couldn't handle the workload. But I was disillusioned and it cost me, dearly.
I walked away from it having learned a lot about myself, conflict/honesty, and "energy management," which was the very reason I was able to do so well in my final years.


A lot of secondaries seem to have a "optional/additional essay" and "hardship overcome essay," and was wondering if it would be to my advantage to use write about this.
I know that this is a major landmark of my application that adcoms are going to want to know about. But considering that my "excuse" is quite weak, I was wondering if I should mention this at all.

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[jkm07]

I have somewhat of a similar situation. The only time I ever openly discussed my downward grade trend was if the secondary question specifically asked for it (i.e. UC Davis, NYU). For the optional and personal challenge essays, I talked about something else unrelated to academics. I wanted to highlight the positives in my application. I'll leave the negative part out until the interview stage (if I get that far).

 

[hellocubed]

That was my general impression

I'm a reapplicant, and during my interviews last year every interviewer asked me this question with "mindfully pleasant" concern. I just wanted to know if it was something I should address~

 

[airplanes]

Doesn't really sound like a great excuse to me...you would be better off admitting you slipped up/lost interest/whatever. Accept responsibility, don't make excuses...faculty interviewers at med schools are not going to sympathize with "I had student org church obligations I couldn't walk away from" plus "I took three hard classes." Just FYI.

 

[ipodtouch]

Definitely!


But like having a DUI on a record, I think he wanted to know if this was something we customarily need to address on an application.

 

[1TB4RKSB4CK]

You make it seem like 3.55 is the new 3.0 w/ a 20 MCAT.

 

[mdquestion]

Doesn't seem like a great excuse. A big thing about being a medical student is managing time effectively. There's a lot to learn in a relatively short timeframe and you need to have learned how to juggle many things at once.

 

[deleted261193]

similar question - i had a slight dip in gpa sophomore year... but i think this is because i was taking most of my "hard" science classes at that time (orgo + physics + upper div bio). i feel like it's weird if people are getting straight up positive trends in gpa because freshmen year = easy, intro classes. then sophomore year is when you get hit with your first experience of "hard", college-level science classes. and then after that, you can show that you were able to pull it together and learn how to study for those, and you'd get an upward trend. but i feel like there would be that initial drop 2nd year. what do you guys think?

 

[hiyaman]

similar question - i had a slight dip in gpa sophomore year... but i think this is because i was taking most of my "hard" science classes at that time (orgo + physics + upper div bio). i feel like it's weird if people are getting straight up positive trends in gpa because freshmen year = easy, intro classes. then sophomore year is when you get hit with your first experience of "hard", college-level science classes. and then after that, you can show that you were able to pull it together and learn how to study for those, and you'd get an upward trend. but i feel like there would be that initial drop 2nd year. what do you guys think?

I think you are reading too much SDN forums. If you have a dip in GPA there's nothing you can do about it now and I doubt adcoms would really notice it unless it was extremely dramatic. Adcoms are people too, they cant all be perfect and I'm sure they would understand if you had some variations in GPA.