A prospective PhD student writes:
I am a reader of your blog and your philosohy gourmet report -and a philosophy student. I found both resources very illuminating in thinking about grad school. I have seen that people sometime email you questions. I myself have two questions that I seek some guidance with. Maybe you can give me your opinion, or if you want to post them on your blog I would be ok with that too as long as I am anonymous.The last few years I have had to deal with quite a lot. I had a family member going through a psychosis which was very stressful, I had a chronic illness myself, my family in the Middle East is not doing very well (to say the least), and recently I have had mental health issues too. All these things happened one after another by the way, it wasn't just one bad year. As a result, my marks aren't as good as they could be. But they are also not the worst, fortunately.
My questions are the following:(1) How do grad school admissions view highly fluctuating grades? Right now I have grades in the high 70s but also in the low 60s (UK). This must look very strange.(2) How do I explain all of this to grad school admissions? What I have listed above kind of sounds like a lot of excuse making, and I do not want to sound like this. However, it's true. So I don't know what to say or if I should say anything at all. At the same time I feel that it would be unfair (towards myself) to not say anything at all. Thinking a bit more strategically, what would you advise?
In general, I think an explanation for uneven grades is best given by a recommender, so if there is a recommender whom you know well and trust, discuss these issues with him or her, and ask if he or she can address them in the application in a general way ("the student has had to deal with family stress, including illness, and has had his own health problems, which explains the uneven academic record").
What do readers think?
