Schools sometimes ask if there are any “special circumstances” or “hardships” that have affected your academic performance or undergraduate career that you might want to share in a separate essay.
The purpose of this essay is to help Admissions Committees understand whether they should modify their view of your academic performance because it was affected by a situation that was out of the ordinary. They are just as interested in how you handled the situation.
The question that you need to ask is whether the circumstance or hardship that you experienced is significant, and whether your handling of it demonstrates that you are a competitive candidate for graduate school.
We strongly recommend that you discuss your response to this question with a faculty advisor, career coach, dean or other trusted advisor.
Many students have experienced hardships, and so please know that you’re not alone in assessing whether you want to share these hardships with an Admissions Committee.
In the drop down menu below, we have
- Identified the seven most frequently-discussed circumstances
- Discussed the pros and cons of disclosing each circumstance, and
- Given an example of a statement whose content and tone constitute an appropriate response about that circumstance.
Many students, when transitioning from high school to college, see their Grade Point Average (GPA) drop during their first year and, possibly, into their sophomore year.
This drop may occur for many reasons:
- You may have breezed through high school without ever studying
- You may not have been adequately prepared by your high school for college
- You may not have had the organizational or study skills you needed to succeed in college
- You may have underestimated the difficulty of college level courses – i.e., you enrolled in Chem 126 when you weren’t ready to do so
- You may have underestimated how much time you needed to spend studying outside of actual class hours
- You may not have realized the importance of attending every class
- You may have spent time socializing or overcommitting to extracurricular activities when you wish you had been studying
You may want to address the situation IF the drop in your GPA was significant enough during your first or sophomore years such that, despite excellent grades during your junior and senior years, you’re not able to raise your overall GPA to a level that reflects your actual ability and potential.
What steps can you take?
If you are concerned that your GPA might lead an Admissions Committee simply to reject your application, we recommend talking with a faculty advisor or a Piper Center coach to discuss whether you should speak to an Admissions Officer to find out whether your GPA will pose a significant problem. (If, for example, the school posts a minimum GPA, do they look at applicants who are close to, but slightly below, the minimum?)
- What you may learn is that schools typically look at an applicant’s overall academic transcript and that they will note that you improved your grades during your junior and senior years.
- They will also notice that you took Chemistry during your first year (if you were, for example, thinking about being pre-med), and that you switched to, and excelled in, Economics, Business Management, and Statistics during your sophomore year.
Should you address this issue as a “special circumstance” if given the opportunity to do so?
- The answer is – it depends. We recommend that you share your individual academic experiences with a trusted advisor who has enough experience with such issues to know whether to address your academic record in an essay.
If you and your advisor determine that you want to disclose, then we recommend that you draft a calm, concise statement. Our advice is three-fold: “No drama.” “No excuses.” “No defensiveness.”
Thus, for example, you might write: “Like many students, I entered college with an interest in medicine. During my first year, I discovered that my aptitudes were not in science and that my main strengths lay elsewhere. From that experience, I learned how to handle failure and how to accept my own limitations. Since then, I have put what I learned to good use, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my major in Economics and the challenges presented by that subject.”
A statement like this focuses on you as a reflective, thoughtful learner who has taken the lessons from your first year and applied them well to the remainder of your academic career.
If you’re applying to graduate or professional school and you have an “F” on your transcript, we recommend that you speak with a faculty member, a career counselor, a dean or a coach about the best way to handle an “F.” Your advisor will want to know why you received an “F,” and the particular circumstances will assist you and your advisor in deciding whether and how to discuss it.
If you received an “F” and retook the course, you might write something along the following lines: “I received an “F” in Physics 126 because I did not realize, until too late in the semester, that I did not understand the material at the level I needed to in order to pass. I repeated the course, and the second time, I received a B+. From this experience, I learned how to assess my level of comprehension earlier in the semester and how to ask for support when I need it.”
A statement like this shows that you’ve taken responsibility for the “F,” that you retook the course (in other words, you put in additional effort), and that you learned something important from the experience.
If you received an “F” and did not retake the course, you might say something along these lines: “During my first semester of college, I received an “F” in Beginning Latin because I did not figure out, until too late in the semester, that I had no real understanding of what we were studying. Upon reflection, I realized that I do not have an aptitude for languages like Latin and that retaking the course would have led to a similar result. With this understanding of my limitations, and with the support of my Latin professor, I asked and received permission to study ASL as my language. I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenges of this language, and I am now using ASL in my work with the deaf and hard of hearing community.”
If you don’t retake a course in which you received an “F,” you need to be truthful about the reason why.
Incompletes, if not addressed, will turn into “F’s.” The best thing to do is to finish any incompletes before you apply to graduate school so that you don’t have outstanding work.
If, however, you do have incompletes on the transcript you submit, you’ll need to explain why. An example of a response might be: “I have two incompletes on my transcript from four courses taken during the spring semester of my junior year. I became seriously ill late in the semester, and I spent the summer recuperating. I was able to complete two courses during the summer, and I am finishing up the other two now, as I am back to full health.”
Here, you’re not spending a lot of time on the seriousness of your illness. You’re simply stating a fact and focusing on the solution: you’ve brought yourself back to health, you finished two courses over the summer, and you’re finishing the outstanding coursework now.
You may face circumstances where you need to disclose that you have been disciplined for cheating in a course, for plagiarizing someone else’s work, or for using AI in a way that violated course guidelines.
Here we recommend that you speak with a trusted advisor about how best to write about your mistake.
Our recommendation is to “fall on your sword,” to accept responsibility for what you did, and to show that you’ve learned and grown.
Your statement might look something like this: “In my first semester of college, I cheated on the final exam in Chemistry 126, and received an “F” in the course. From this experience, I learned that no exam, no matter how difficult, is worth cheating over, and that my personal integrity is far more important than any grade. When facing a challenging exam or assignment, I am now more accepting of my limitations; I know that my self worth is not reflected in a grade that might be below my expectations. Since that time, I have not cheated, and I will not do so in the future.”
There are no excuses in this statement: you cheated; you were caught; and you received the “F” that you deserved. You learned some valuable lessons, and you won’t cheat again.
Talking about test anxiety, the difficulty of the material, illness during the exam or any other number of reasons for cheating (read “excuses”) are not what your readers want to see. They need to know that you learned a hard lesson and that you’ll never cheat again.
One of the very positive things about higher education today is that institutions now recognize that students learn in many different ways and that many students are neurodiverse.
- Neurodiverse students think and learn in ways that may have led them to seek “accommodations” because certain ways of delivering and testing material (particularly lectures and timed examinations) make it more difficult for these students to learn and to express their full gifts and intelligence.
Increasingly, there is less of a stigma around neurodiversity: students who are neurodiverse are more comfortable disclosing that fact, and those working with neurodiverse students have a much better sense of the kinds of accommodations that can provide support.
Although schools, by law, may not discriminate against you as an applicant because of your neurodiversity, a valid concern is that readers of your application may still consciously or unconsciously discriminate against you.
- These readers will question whether you’ll be able to succeed in graduate school or whether your neurodiversity, even with accommodations, might hold you back.
- If you choose to disclose, there is, sadly, always a risk that your readers will factor your neurodiversity into their decision-making, even if they shouldn’t. Thus, you will need to weigh the risks of disclosure vs. non-disclosure.
Your decision will ultimately depend on your particular circumstances and your comfort with disclosure, both of which we recommend that you discuss with a trusted advisor.
Given this background, you may want to reflect on the following questions:
- First, is the fact that you are neurodiverse relevant to your application?
- That you’re applying to graduate school means that you have done well enough academically to be a competitive applicant.
- How you have handled your neurodiversity thus far (with or without accommodations) has contributed to your success.
- Second, will the accommodations that you had as an undergraduate be available to you as a graduate student?
- Here, you can do your homework by checking on schools’ websites, or by calling Admissions, to see what kinds of accommodations and student support are available.
- Third, has your neurodiversity affected your academic success — i.e., your overall GPA or your grade in a particular course?
- If so, is your neurodiversity the primary factor affecting the result, and is the issue significant enough that you believe you need to address it?
- One common scenario might be that your grades in courses with timed examinations are lower than those in courses where you were tested in other ways. You might say something along the lines of the following: “As a neurodiverse student, I have found that I flourish in environments where I am not racing against the clock, particularly in timed examinations. I have learned that I am best able to show my mastery of Economics in papers, oral presentations or group projects, a difference that is reflected in my grades for coursework in this subject.”
- This statement is celebrating neurodiversity and sharing the conditions under which this applicant thrives, even while acknowledging the effect on the applicant’s GPA. The applicant is not making excuses for average performance.
- Fourth, you may want to consider asking one of your recommenders, someone who understands that your neurodiversity and particular intelligence are gifts and strengths, to write on your behalf.
- What this recommender can do is speak to your mastery of the material, readiness for graduate school, and ability to be successful.
- A strong recommendation from someone who knows you is an excellent way to assure recommenders (who shouldn’t in any event be factoring in your neurodiversity!) that you are the kind of applicant whom they’d be fortunate to have at their school.
Many students experience challenges with their mental health, with the most common challenges being anxiety and depression.
- You may have accommodations to support you with these challenges, and / or you may have found support in other ways, through exercise, sleep and diet; counseling; medication; or assistance from family, friends, and trusted others.
One of the current problems with disclosing issues around mental health is that schools have been overwhelmed with applicants sharing their experience with mental health issues and using that fact as a reason for problematic academic performance. In other words, so many applicants are talking about mental health issues that some Graduate School Admissions Officers are discounting mental health issues as a “special circumstance.”
- Admissions Committees also have a concern that, if a mental health issue affected your academic performance as an undergraduate, the same may occur when you’re in graduate school, which can be an even more rigorous and stressful environment. Admissions Officers and graduate faculty worry that a student with mental health issues won’t have the resilience needed to complete a course of study, particularly one that may require four to six years of graduate or professional school.
One particular mental health issue that can harm a candidate’s application is writing about anxiety when taking tests or examinations.
- Many graduate and professional programs include examinations. Think about first year examinations in law school, as well as the Bar Exam that law school graduates take in order to practice law. Think about medical students taking their boards. Think about graduate students taking their “orals” at the end of their coursework or defending their dissertation at the end of their program.
- These examinations and events can be stressful, and when Admissions Officers learn that an applicant has anxiety around tests, and that the anxiety affected the applicant’s GPA, these Officers may become concerned that the same anxiety may affect a candidate’s ability to succeed in graduate school.
Given this context, if you believe that you need to disclose a mental health issue, you will need to do so with great care.
As with the other “special circumstances,” we strongly recommend that you speak with a trusted advisor about whether and how you should share these issues.
To determine your course of action, a good starting point is to acknowledge the fact that you’re applying to graduate school, which means that you, your faculty advisors and others believe that you would be a good candidate. This fact suggests that the challenges that you experienced with your mental health did not impede your ability to achieve academic success.
- Although you may wish that your GPA were higher than the one you have, the fact is that your GPA is strong enough to support a competitive application to graduate school.
If you handled, or are able to handle, your mental health issues reasonably well, either with accommodations or with support from family, friends, and others, then you may not need to disclose these issues in your application.
- Your having figured out how to handle your mental health challenges is more important – for the purposes of applying to graduate school – than the issues themselves.
If, however, you had a very serious decline in your academic performance during a certain period of time because of a mental health issue, you may want to consider disclosing (a) that fact, (b) the actions you took to address the issue, and (c) the strategies that you adopted going forward to support your well-being, all of which will demonstrate to the Admissions Committee that you are managing the situation appropriately.
We recommend not spending too much time on the situation that led to the mental health issue – or even to mention it at all – especially if the issue was unpleasant (a bad break-up with a boyfriend; a toxic situation with roommates; an unexpected cut from an athletic team) but not catastrophic (i.e., sudden and causing great damage).
We also recommend not spending too much time on the actual mental health issue or diagnosis. Here, you may wish to speak simply of a “mental health issue” without going into the details.
Being able to write calmly and dispassionately about a difficult time in your life will signal that you have distance from the event, that the worst parts are in the past, that you have grown, and that you have the situation under control.
A statement might read as follows: “During the second semester of my sophomore year, I was faced with a series of unexpected and serious personal issues that affected my mental health. Unfortunately, my grades during that semester reflect my lack of focus and inability to devote appropriate attention to my studies. I addressed the relevant issues during the summer after my sophomore year, and put in place strategies to help me handle difficult and unexpected personal challenges. Since then, I have handled these challenges when they’ve arisen while maintaining my focus on my studies, which is reflected in my academic achievements. I learned a lot from this experience, and I look forward to continuing with this approach if and when challenges arise for me during graduate school.”
The emphasis in this statement is not on what happened. Rather, it is a simple acknowledgment of a struggle with mental health and the effect of that struggle on the applicant’s grades, followed by a straightforward discussion in which the applicant got things back on track.
Many students have encountered situations during college that have affected their academic results and made their progress toward graduation much more difficult.
Students have faced the deaths of parents, siblings, grandparents or other loved ones. They have lost people they cared about to suicide. Parents have lost jobs, affecting their ability to pay for schooling. Beloved family members have become seriously ill, depleting emotional and financial resources. Family members have disappeared, been sent to prison, or engaged in harmful behaviors like substance abuse. Others have faced deportation proceedings. Students have had to take on extra jobs to support families while paying for their own schooling. With families in crisis, some students have had to go home to care for sick relatives or younger siblings.
Students have also had to face any number of serious personal challenges, including a serious accident or illness, sexual assault, food or financial insecurity, harassment or discrimination, or homelessness.
Sadly, the problems described above are all too common, which means that, once again, we recommend that you speak with a trusted advisor about whether the situation and the effect on your academic performance were so serious that they warrant discussion as a “special circumstance.”
As you address this question, you may want to consider the relevance of the situation to the program to which you’re applying.
- If, for example, you’re applying for a Master’s degree in counseling or in social work, problems that you’ve experienced personally or in your family may be relevant. If you choose to write about these issues, your readers will likely ask themselves the following questions:
- Have you actually dealt with the challenge and put strategies in place to address future challenges?
- Or are you attending graduate / professional school as a form of therapy, using the experience to work through challenges that are still ongoing?
- In short, once you’ve disclosed a particular issue or challenge, readers will assess whether they believe that you’re managing any challenges in an appropriate way, enabling you to succeed in their program.
Another trap for students is including too much detail about the particular issue or challenge. Here, we recommend focusing less on the issue and moving on to what you did to address it.
As an example, you might say something along the lines of the following: “During the second semester of my sophomore year, a close family member contracted a very serious, unexpected illness. During that semester, I was called home frequently to care for my younger siblings, and I took on a second job to provide financial support. Although this situation affected my academic performance, I am glad that I was able to support my family and that they were able to rely on me. Thankfully, my family member has recovered, and I have been able to return to my studies with the same level of focus as I had in the past.”
This statement does not go into detail, nor does it focus on the drama or emotion of the situation. It is simply stating the facts of the illness and what the applicant did to help out her family. Equally important, the applicant has stated that her decision accords with her values and that, once she fulfilled her responsibilities to her family, she returned to her schooling and continued as before. The overall effect is one of confidence, of a person who knows what is important, who can step into a situation and do what is needed, and then, when the situation has resolved, can get back to her academics.