 You are not your numbers. You wanna show med school that you are more than just your GPA, here's how to do it in your personal statement. For the best medical school personal statement coaching, definitely hit subscribe and that bell so you don't miss a video I post every Tuesday. A popular question I get is whether or not students should address their GPA in the personal statement. And I always say it depends. So here's the breakdown. Thanks for joining me on my channel. I am Dr. Josie with Write Your Acceptance. I'm a university faculty member and I coach students through the sometimes overwhelming personal statement writing process. So if you have any questions, if you wanna know how I formally work with students, definitely book a call with me. The link is in the description. Step one, first ask yourself these two questions. One, what determines a low GPA? And two, when did the downward trend actually happen? So anything three, seven and above is exceptional. It's great. But anything kind of three, five and above is still considered competitive. You wanna make sure that you think about kind of where you are with the schools that you're applying to too. Like once you have your school list, you can kind of go digging and see what the admitted students GPAs were and anything kind of deviating 0.3 or less, you're kind of okay. You wanna think about that. And then also when did the downward trend happen? Was there a catalyst? Was there a reason for it? Let's say you transferred from community college to the university. So you kind of were adjusting to new systems and new learning pattern. Did you work? Did you have a strenuous work-life balance beyond school, other responsibilities? The earlier the downtrend happened and you kind of were able to kind of course correct the better. If the downtrend happened in your GPA senior year, I would consider other options like a post-bac, but I know those are pricey and you definitely wanna consult a pre-health advisor, but you wanna find out first how competitive you are with your GPA in comparison to the schools you're applying to and when did the downtrend happen? The earlier, the better. Step two, decide what your GPA doesn't reveal about you. So this could be a main point for your personal statement and not necessarily talking directly about your GPA. So are you a first-generation college student figuring things out as you go by yourself? Are you working like I mentioned? Do you have a lot of personal responsibilities at home? So what kind of personal life experiences or demands on your time may be contributing and that might be kind of an entry into aspects of who you are and why this journey is so unique and personal and important to you. And those might be kind of content ideas for your personal statement. Do you have a less than amazing GPA and you don't know if you should include it in your personal statement? Comment below, I'd love to help you out. Step three is figuring out whether or not you had control over the situation. So we have things that we control and things that are kind of out of our control. The cynical make a pine that we are in control of all of our expectations, reactions, all that good stuff. But if you had a car accident, if you had an illness, if a relative had an illness, if you lost a part-time job that was needed for income for the household. So these are all kind of demanding, strenuous situations that these stressors can really contribute to your mental health and just physical demands that may negatively affect your kind of headspace where you are to dedicate to academic rigor. If these things happened, you can consider definitely kind of narrating maybe in kind of story form, which we've talked about and I'll link it up above, how to tell a story with, as if you had the camera over your shoulders. So maybe you tell the story of that point of impact, that point of like a crossroads or change. And then in your takeaways, in your lessons learned in a minor telling section right after is where you can kind of mention the GPA and how you had to kind of adjust, recalibrate your systems. If there are kind of situations within your control academically that you changed your major, you had a couple kind of tough run-ins with a couple of courses. You wanna consider whether or not you will kind of talk about it. If you do, maybe consider doing kind of drafting like a paragraph on adaptability. And so you can kind of have a few examples as to how you have shown and grown within adaptability and one of them is kind of like that dip and you show that and spin it as resilience and that you kind of made these changes and adapted to kind of XYZ and grew to become a better well-rounded student. So you can kind of couch it in a broader theme of adaptability and resilience. Another thing is if you don't mention it, there is the opportunity of maybe in additional information or a lot of schools will ask you to please provide more information about any courses that you received, less install or grade, C or B minus and below or something like that. So you'll have the opportunity to talk about it. And when you do talk about it directly, this is not a sob story. This is not, you know, what had happened was, the teacher didn't like me. I was, I did not like this topic, whatever. You want to very matter-of-factly explain what happened and what you wanna dedicate most of the time is to how you course corrected, like how you kind of found the way to improve, to navigate those waters that, you know, were less than ideal for you and to be just a better student. And you want to showcase that you are a better, stronger learner because of this experience. So that is key. Your takeaway should always be kind of spinning it towards adaptability and resilience or that you have, that you showcase in detail how you shifted your kind of mindset or approach and course corrected so that you are a better student for it. If you want more information on how I formally work with students on the personal statement and secondaries, definitely book your call. The link is in the description below. Thank you for watching. Please hit that like button. It means a ton. Thank you for helping me reach 1,000 subscribers, which just happened. And I'll see you soon. Thanks, bye.