Building a CV after dropping out of college?

[succratease]

Hey all,

To make a long story short: I'm 22 and had to drop out of school a semester and a half before graduating thanks to my parents' finances and my mental health. For a while I was a fantastic student, but in the last year my GPA tumbled a lil bit thanks to all that was happening at the time. Now I'm out and working three "jobs": a part-time internship at a national magazine, bookselling at a local shop, and freelancing as a critic and journalist to a surprising amount of success.

I've been out since December 2017, and my time out has made me realize that I do want to go to graduate school to study Afro-Caribbean literature (specifics in my signature), so I intend on finishing undergrad (part-time, ofc) once I get a full-time job to offset the cost, because there's no way I can even approach that academia again for a few months.

So, I'm trying to bone up on my education outside of school, but I need some sort of direction for when it comes time to explain my unorthodox education during application season. I also want to apply to some tough schools because boredom was also an issue towards the end of undergrad. (I wound up learning a lot more on my own.)

My dream school is Columbia University for a lot of reasons, but I'm going to apply to 10 schools, including UCLA because, hey, it's also a stellar program, and my boyfriend loves LA a lot.

How would one go about preparing for a specific academic trajectory while out of school? Now that my life has regained some steady footing, I'm putting together a five-year plan that will (hopefully) land me at Columbia, or a comparable program.

Here's what I've got to work with:

- A position as an editor and columnist for a literary journal based in Brooklyn that specializes in lit criticism from indie presses. Been commissioning and writing criticism on African/Caribbean texts, as well as publishing excerpts from forthcoming books in the field.

- An editorial internship at a legacy magazine. I'm trying to turn this shit into a job, first off, but there's also an editor here doing the exact thing I want to do: pursuing a PhD at an Ivy league while working full-time for the magazine. She's super brilliant so I'm going to ask her to grab coffee soon.

- Lots and lots o' contacts, particularly at publishing houses and magazines, and discounts on books since I sell them! I didn't get a good introduction to my field at all during undergrad, so I'm doing quite a bit of self-study while I'm out here figuring shit out.

- A paper published in an academic book. This happened before I dropped out, but it was a great opportunity. I was the only undergrad chosen to contribute!

- An opportunity to write a book??? Thanks to my critical work thus far, a few literary agents have reached out to me saying they're interested in representing any book projects I may be working on. One of them even represents Sheila Heti!! I've pitched them an idea for a small book of criticism (since I'm a fledgling no-name writer) and I'm 1000% certain that if they like the idea and if they manage to sell it, it'd definitely land at an independent press, but I'm still going to flex the fuck out of that byline. If it happens.

I'm going to be working in DC for at least a year, so I'm going to finish my bachelor's at Howard University while continuing the work I do now.

So, what're the best ways to use my work experience, resources, and opportunities to stand out when the time comes? I know you get to devote a solid chunk of your application to reasons why you dropped out or etc etc, but what I worry the most about right now is my GPA, and I want to show that I can handle rigorous critical work in this field. I also want to go in with some kind of knowledge as to what I want to study, because I know why I want to study it.

[CulturalCriminal]

On my CV I just have the grad (or expected grad) dates for my degrees. All the work you've been doing also sounds like it is worth including on a CV. If you feel the need to explain a gap, I would just point to all the great opportunities you've had during the break in your education while writing SOP. That said, I don't know if you really need to spend much time explaining yourself so long as you do well once you return to undergrad.

[punctilious]

Play to your strengths, not to your weaknesses. You have a lot of incredible experience that can be discussed in your CV and SOP, and like @CulturalCriminal said, I don't think you need to focus on explaining yourself. The successes my husband has seen outside of school in his two years between undergrad and starting at Harvard this fall (publishing a couple book reviews and a short story) very likely contributed to his acceptance at his dream program, so the work you've done outside of school can be just as valuable as what you've done in school.

[rising_star]

Honestly, I would focus on kicking butt in the coursework you do as you finish your BA and doing a thesis if at all possible. Doing those two things will show that the admissions committee doesn't need to worry about the fact that you took time off and will let you show that an upward trend in your GPA at the end. It should also help you get strong recommendation letters, which are a key part of your application. If necessary, drop the editorial internship or the book project in order to do an undergraduate thesis. The latter is the kind of research experience PhD programs are looking for, much more so than a non-peer-reviewed book.

If there are any notable Afro-Caribbean lit scholars in the DC area (at GWU, GMU, UMCP, UMBC, American, Georgetown, or another school besides Howard), see if you can reach out to them and visit to discuss your interests during office hours. See if you can take a class with them at their institution or do an independent study through Howard with them. Again, it'll help you with your interests, with networking in the field, and potentially with a rec letter. (Do the same at Howard obviously but I wanted to add this since you're in an area with a lot of institutions.)

Don't waste time/space apologizing for your GPA or time off. If anything, get your letter writers to address this. You want to focus on your strengths and why you'll excel in this particular program.