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This is giving me a lot to think about, specifically whether or not I have anything on record to show that I am ready for the next step. My school GPA goes something like 3.5 -> 1.0 -> 1.5 year break -> 3.1. I think my GRE scores will be great (waiting on subject bio) but I don't know if my GPA counts as having recovered unfortunately. Coming back from hiatus was a roller coaster and I bombed a few course and did great on others. Anyways, we'll see what happens. I realize there is definitely a line that should not be crossed, but you would think not to hold anything back when writing to a committee that is about to decide the next 5 years of your life...on the other hand, a job can have a similar impact, yet I wouldn't think to get so personal on a resume...so there's that.

I'm putting together my personal statement and I'm trying to decide if I want to put down certain things down about my past or leave them out altogether. Without going into details, let's just say I've had a rough upbringing that has affected my school performance all the way through university. I feel like that needs to be explained, but I'm wondering who will be reading this? If the professors reading it will be the ones teaching courses the following semester, then I'm not sure I feel comfortable with them knowing that about me. If it's a small handful of professors, maybe it's ok...but are they required to keep its contents private at least? Now, forgetting about my apprehensions, could disclosing certain things about my past hurt me more than they would help ? For example, say I was a rape victim, and I want to mention it (without getting into details) to explain why I missed lots of classes and my GPA suffered...would they just see it as a bad excuse? My logic is that if I was on an acceptable committee, I might very well assume that among the candidates with better GPA's, there are victims of similar or worse things who have moved on better than I have. I'm just trying to find out what's acceptable and what isn't. Ideally, I would be much more comfortable without revealing anything too personal but when I think hard enough about why I dropped out of college the first time, it all points to those things.