Help 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.

[ajacot924]

I think you should go for it. A 3.01 isn't a bad GPA and for a lot of places (except ivy schools and the like), a 3.0 is the required GPA. If you have good letters of rec and a good GRE score, you should be fine. Also, you may want to consider explaining your GPA in your SOP. Of course you don't want to make it sound like you are making excuses or telling a drama filled tale, but it is a good time to explain "blemishes" on your application. I had to explain some blemishes in my SOP and it was fine. There were a few websites that I found helpful: http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/gradapp/stmtpurpose.htm and http://www.essayedge.com/graduate/essayadvice/course/.

I am by no means a grad school application expert, but in my opinion, the worst they can say is no. I think it would be better to apply, then to always wonder "what if?" I hope this was helpful and good luck to you!