If you find out let me know - my game plan was to talk about how my performance was tied to whether or not I was on medication/myriad other life transition issues peculiar to my early 20s but I'm not sure that will work
My grades also seriously improved after I transferred from a school where I was miserable. I think the GPA thing is pretty ridiculous - many people do substantially better as adult students.
I lived with my family for undergrad in a very stressful home situation and commuted from an outer boro into manhattan everyday. Stressful as all hell, but I'm thinking not quite worthy of writing about as those are pretty #firstworldproblems.
I think your health issues and the improvement you showed after transferring sound legit, though, and I can imagine both being reasonable explanations for an erratic record.
Since your major GPAs are good, I would emphasize that as much as possible, but yes, you should see if there's a cut off. English MA programs won't necessarily care how you did in Chemistry, for example, but since you are applying for MLS degrees they may value the overall GPA more (you should check with them, as suggested).
i was told by a few different people that the best way to overcome a low GPA was to take post bacc grad classes to demonstrate you are capable of doing graduate level work and have something to offer the program. i dont exactly know a whole lot about library/information science but most programs i looked into social sciences and public health have cut offs at 3.0 and if you didnt meet that cut off, then having post bacc classes tended to be a way of helping you overcome that. i am speaking as someone with a 2.9 and one bad semester btw, i just didnt find people were very forgiving despite explaining that i had pneumonia because they looked at it like why didnt i take the semester off if i was so sick type deal. good luck, i know it's a sucky situation.
Were you eventually able to get in somewhere? Was it after you took those post bacc courses?
My fiance is going into social sciences and has like a 2.97ish and it was due to depression that he has since gotten treated. He went from a sort of erratic background with a lot of withdrawals to really solid and strong performance. We both know he is capable of the work but are worried his gpa and transcript will get in the way.
tbh, i didnt feel like i had much of a choice anymore. the one grad school i applied to had an increase in 100 applications, so i knew i was just not competitive in the way i needed to be. taking post bacc classes and getting some new volunteer experiences were sort of necessary for me because i felt like my application was stuck.
As others have suggested, your efforts might be better served by demonstrating your ability to succeed in new coursework. The real trouble I detect is that your GPA is so low that it might not reach cut-offs, and your statement could be skipped entirely. You might as well apply this year if you have the time and funds, but your app will be much stronger with evidence of new, more consistent performance in classes.
I had a 2.97 GPA in undergrad and a 3.0 in my field in behavioral and social sciences. I was just a mediocre student. That is, as an undergraduate student, I really could only do work well in the courses that I was inspired in. However, next Fall, I will be graduating from my Masters program in Education (good program/well thought of professors in the field). What I did was I took some classes as an advanced special student and had garnered some experience in my field prior to applying to graduate school. The professors got to know me in their classroom where I participated and got good grades, and I was accepted provisionally (from the grad school not college because of my GPA). My GRE wasn't spectacular either. I think it was a 1200 combined or something. I will have to take it again for tougher PhD programs.
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My grades also seriously improved after I transferred from a school where I was miserable. I think the GPA thing is pretty ridiculous - many people do substantially better as adult students.
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I think your health issues and the improvement you showed after transferring sound legit, though, and I can imagine both being reasonable explanations for an erratic record.
what programs are you applying for?
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Since your major GPAs are good, I would emphasize that as much as possible, but yes, you should see if there's a cut off. English MA programs won't necessarily care how you did in Chemistry, for example, but since you are applying for MLS degrees they may value the overall GPA more (you should check with them, as suggested).
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My fiance is going into social sciences and has like a 2.97ish and it was due to depression that he has since gotten treated. He went from a sort of erratic background with a lot of withdrawals to really solid and strong performance. We both know he is capable of the work but are worried his gpa and transcript will get in the way.
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I had a 2.97 GPA in undergrad and a 3.0 in my field in behavioral and social sciences. I was just a mediocre student. That is, as an undergraduate student, I really could only do work well in the courses that I was inspired in. However, next Fall, I will be graduating from my Masters program in Education (good program/well thought of professors in the field). What I did was I took some classes as an advanced special student and had garnered some experience in my field prior to applying to graduate school. The professors got to know me in their classroom where I participated and got good grades, and I was accepted provisionally (from the grad school not college because of my GPA). My GRE wasn't spectacular either. I think it was a 1200 combined or something. I will have to take it again for tougher PhD programs.
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