I need advice!

[jofisher1983]

Hello, My name is Johanna and I am in the process of applying to grad schools (maybe). I need some advice! When I finished all my course work my GPA was a 3.59 which I was very excited about. About this time I got married which failed horribly and since I had always done so well at school I decided to take a semester of classes to take my mind off of things. Unfortunately I was in no place to do so and end up having to stop going to school and getting 3 WU (which equal F's). This dropped my GPA to a 3.01. I am terrified and do not know what to do. Should I just forget about grad school? I mean I was on the Presidents Honor List for a couple of semester and graduated with a certificate in Leadership. I had amazing grades and I worked really hard to keep them high and now i feel like I will not get into the program I want because this was the last semester I went to school. Can someone give me some advice on what I can do? Please anyone I really want to go to grad school and I am finally in a place that I can.

[Sigaba]

What are the intervals between [A] finishing your course work, getting married, [C] the additional semester of classes, [D] the marriage capsizing, and [E] now? (Is the sequence of events correct?)

MOO, if you've got a reasonable amount of time between C/D and E (call it 2.5± years) you could use your SoP to make briefly the case that C represents an aberration, and that you've had enough time to get yourself back on track in an academic/intellectual sense.

Above and beyond this issue, I urge you to make doubly sure that your head is in a good place before you go to graduate school. The stress of the application process pales when compared to the anxieties and insecurities that your coursework will activate.

My $0.02.

[Mal83]

Sigaba, could not agree more with your last sentence. It's absolutely true. It's a semester of anxiety and uncertainty, you have no idea if what you're doing is good enough or measures up. That takes it's toll especially during the final weeks of the semester.

Yes, I would make sure that you're in the right frame of mind for grad school. And you would know that for sure if you can put together an SOP that demonstrates some insight into the sharp decrease in academic performance and the fact that you're now emotionally ready because of X,Y, and Z. It should be something that makes an admissions committee believe that this is was an obstacle that you were able to overcome. Not that that should be your entire SOP, but it should be convincing within a few sentences. Sometimes if you can turn weak point of your application into a strength it might actually be helpful, if it's artfully done of course.

What's a WU? A withdraw? Are you sure that equals an F?