Low(ish) GPA due to work circumstances?

[hematomahawk]

Apologies if I've accidentally flouted some of the rules for posts here; it's my first time participating in the forum, and I'm in a bit of a rush to get some feedback. 

 

I graduated from a top liberal arts college in New Hampshire with a GPA a bit below 3.3. As I've been parsing through some of the average GPAs to the programs I'm considering, I've been feeling pretty anxious about the whole ordeal. 

 

I've read a few articles that detail how to deal with a low GPA in a personal statement, but most of them can be summed up as "don't make excuses, but try to explain yourself fully," which comes across as relatively unhelpful.

 

I do believe my circumstances were rather unique; for the majority of college, I was working 30+ hours at the dining hall every week. I have been financially independent of my mother since I left the house to go to school. Even if I hadn't been, there would've been no money for me to ask for. The harsh reality of the price of tuition, textbooks, transportation, and other miscellaneous costs dictated that I really had to work my way through college, and my GPA reflects this. 

 

I hate to weaponize my circumstances, but I feel as if this is the only way an adcom would look at my GPA without scoffing. I studied pretty hard to ace the GRE (99th percentile in both sections), but I'm still pretty worried. Has anyone else dealt with a situation like this?

[Lisa44201]

Several people work their way through college; in that regard, you are not unique. 99th percentile on the GREs, on the other hand, is pretty unique. Unless your work experience is directly related to your major (i.e., Hospitality & Restaurant Management), I wouldn't mention it, unless you can do so in a sentence or two while making that sentence relevant in the context of your SOP.

[Loric]

Apologies if I've accidentally flouted some of the rules for posts here; it's my first time participating in the forum, and I'm in a bit of a rush to get some feedback. 

 

I graduated from a top liberal arts college in New Hampshire with a GPA a bit below 3.3. As I've been parsing through some of the average GPAs to the programs I'm considering, I've been feeling pretty anxious about the whole ordeal. 

 

I've read a few articles that detail how to deal with a low GPA in a personal statement, but most of them can be summed up as "don't make excuses, but try to explain yourself fully," which comes across as relatively unhelpful.

 

I do believe my circumstances were rather unique; for the majority of college, I was working 30+ hours at the dining hall every week. I have been financially independent of my mother since I left the house to go to school. Even if I hadn't been, there would've been no money for me to ask for. The harsh reality of the price of tuition, textbooks, transportation, and other miscellaneous costs dictated that I really had to work my way through college, and my GPA reflects this. 

 

I hate to weaponize my circumstances, but I feel as if this is the only way an adcom would look at my GPA without scoffing. I studied pretty hard to ace the GRE (99th percentile in both sections), but I'm still pretty worried. Has anyone else dealt with a situation like this?

 

You have to make it clear that the circumstances of your life are not "someone else's fault." You earned the lower grades.. which btw is higher than my GPA and i've been to grad school.. so it's not that much of an uphill battle.

 

Your GPA is not a representation of the fact that you worked. You made choices and those were the consequences. You appear to not like your GPA - like i said, it's not actually bad - but you can't blame the circumstance for it. What happened, happened, and you made choices that lead to it happening that way. Was the situation fair? Just? No. Life isn't.

 

Expressing a maturity level that accepts the decisions you made will be what keeps you out of the reject pile if a program views your GPA as subpar for their standards.

[alison14]

So then what would the advice be? To not even address the GPA issue? I also have a low cumulative GPA (3.2), but my junior + senior GPA is better (3.5). It's still not amazing but might it be worth to note the improvement? How might one address the issue of GPA (or should they?) without "making excuses"?

[fuzzylogician]

So then what would the advice be? To not even address the GPA issue? I also have a low cumulative GPA (3.2), but my junior + senior GPA is better (3.5). It's still not amazing but might it be worth to note the improvement? How might one address the issue of GPA (or should they?) without "making excuses"?

 

Is there anything you could say to explain the lower grades earlier on? Legitimate reasons for low grades might include illness, dealing with family trouble, etc. Partying or just having difficulty adjusting are probably not as good reasons. When they say "don't make excuses" normally that means not casting blame on others or on external forces affecting your life, unless they are really extraordinary. If you do choose to give an explanation, you want to stick to the facts and only mention things that are now in the past or under control, and stay positive. The goal is to alleviate any concerns adcom members might have, so telling them you have a problem that is not under control will not help, and sounding like you can't take responsibility for your own actions also isn't good. You might say "In my sophomore year I chose X as my major, but soon realized that it did not suit me. Since starting the Y major in junior year, I have maintained a YY GPA." Honestly I am not sure I would say anything in your case, since 3.2 is not that low, but it depends on the competitiveness of the schools you are applying to and what you could say in your explanation. 

 

OP: same goes here. I think you could mention working your way through school in your SOP, but keep it short and positive. If you are applying to programs that fully fund their students, that would be an aspect you could play up - you earned a XX GPA while working YY hrs a week to support yourself through college; you are looking forward to being able to concentrate more on your studies in grad school, and you are confident that it will positively affect both your grades and your research productivity. I'd work such a statement into another sentence that explains your short-term and long-term career goals and how grad school will prepare you to pursue them. 

 

Another option that is available in many applications is a "is there anything else you would like to tell us" question, where you might be able to move the discussion of your work/grades. If this exists, I think it's more appropriate than discussing this issue in your SOP because it is not really directly related to your research. At the end of the day, your job is to present yourself as best you can and to advocate for yourself. You need to decide if adding the explanation will add or hurt. If you have a good reason for deficiencies in your application, it might help in obvious ways to explain it. The downside is that you might come off as making excuses, in case your good reason is not perceived as such by others. It's your job to decide which one it is; people here will have their opinions, and you might also ask your professors how they would react to reading such an explanation in an SOP. That would be a good indication of what you should do.

[Loric]

So then what would the advice be? To not even address the GPA issue? I also have a low cumulative GPA (3.2), but my junior + senior GPA is better (3.5). It's still not amazing but might it be worth to note the improvement? How might one address the issue of GPA (or should they?) without "making excuses"?

 

You need to think more wholistically in terms of your app. They will have a form or sheet or something with your GPA mere inches away from your SOP. It's not like if you don't tell them, they wont know about it, nor is your GPA low enough that it'd be out of the norm for it to cross their desk.

 

Unless you call attention to it, they probably wont notice much, unless it's a highly competitive school (which in reality most are not.)

 

So if you want to bring it up, you need to frame it positively. Anything that resembles an excuse is out. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you really need to mentally reframe it for yourself before you're going to be able to write about it.

 

What are you explaining?

 

Absolutely under no circumstances that "work made school harder so i got a lower GPA, it couldn't be helped."

 

However, "You'll see that my GPA improved as I moved further into my education and became truly dedicated to my studies" or something of that sort is fine. It's less about what you're saying, and more about what other people are seeing when they read it.

 

This is different than "I suffered a kidney failure and so I had to miss many classes and tanked a semester."

 

Many people who work have amazing GPA's. Trying to set up that arguement to people who spend much of their time looking at people's GPA's and resumes is not going to get you anywhere other than possibly their contempt.

 

I say this because I don't want you to write it because I DO want you to succeed.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Loric

[Guest Gnome Chomsky]

I think mentioning it would do more harm than not mentioning it. I go to a state school where the majority of students are commuters. Almost no one in my classes doesn't have a job. Maybe it's different at a private liberal arts college where students are from other parts of the country and have wealthy parents. I don't see the big deal about working 30 hours. Maybe if you worked 50+ but even then I don't think it would be worth mentioning. Lots of people who need to work full-time or multiple jobs only take one or two classes per semester. Lots of people who only work part-time end up taking a full load of classes. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't see the big deal, and mentioning it would come off as more whiny than anything. 

[juilletmercredi]

Honestly, I wouldn't bother explaining a 3.3.