To explain, or not to explain...THAT is the question...

[HowIMetYourPet]

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Hey guys...

Question for you (Another one)

I had a health issue come up last fall that caused me to miss a lot of classes, leading to the worst semester of my college carer (2.7)....nothing lower than a C, but no As to make up for it.... The year before I was riding the 3.7-4.0 train with almost all science classes, and this past semester I had a 3.5 (I took Ochem II, which because I had a poor foundation from the previous semester I got a C+ in...everything else was A/A-)....If this was early in my school career I wouldn't worry about it, since it is surrounded by good semesters, BUT it is going to calculate into my last 30/45......so....to my actual questions

1) Do I explain it at all?

2) How detailed do I have to be about my health issues? I know medical records are private, but will it be frowned upon if I don't provide more information? Do I have to provide validation from my physician that there was an issue?

If I finish up this explanation section, my VMCAS app will be done!!

 

[that redhead]

I think the same advice applies to anyone writing an explanation statement, which has been discussed recently: explain yourself in a way that a) doesn't shift the blame away from yourself and take full responsibility for what happened and b) shows you have overcome the obstacle and learned from it and grown as a person or student or whatever. Unless you're playing the "it wasn't my fault!" card, I don't think a thoughtfully written explanation statement hurts. In the case of one really poor semester, I think an explanation is warranted. One C in an otherwise good semester, not so much.

As for health issues, you can be as candid as you want to be, but I would err on the side of less information. "A serious health problem prevented me from attending classes" is enough; you don't need to detail your battle with XYZ disease or whatever.

 

[Kpowell14]

I think the same advice applies to anyone writing an explanation statement, which has been discussed recently:explain yourself in a way that a) doesn't shift the blame away from yourself and take full responsibility for what happened and b) shows you have overcome the obstacle and learned from it and grown as a person or student or whatever. Unless you're playing the "it wasn't my fault!" card, I don't think a thoughtfully written explanation statement hurts. In the case of one really poor semester, I think an explanation is warranted. One C in an otherwise good semester, not so much.

As for health issues, you can be as candid as you want to be, but I would err on the side of less information. "A serious health problem prevented me from attending classes" is enough; you don't need to detail your battle with XYZ disease or whatever.

👍 👍 exactly what I was going to say!