 What's up, YouTube? Do you have a low GPA and aren't sure what to say? If anything, in your personal statement, stick around. We'll talk about that now. Thank you for joining me on my channel. This is Write Your Acceptance. Make sure you hit subscribe and the bell so you get notified when I post new videos. First, I want to get it all out of the way, what not to do. So too many times I am reviewing essays, working with students, and I see this very eloquent kind of beautiful, compelling journey to medicine or journey to dentistry. And then, you know, it's kind of storytelling, weaving, reflection, journey, and then paragraph four comes. And it's like, unfortunately, I did not do as well, or unfortunately, my GPA does not resemble or reflect accurately, reflect my aptitude or my skills or my passion for the field. And it's just like this completely jarring, very different type of paragraph that takes the reader out completely of this journey that we are kind of learning and gaining more info about you and really kind of buying into your candidacy into your story, your journey, right? So that I would say is what not to do. Hi, I am Dr. Josie with Write Your Acceptance. I have taught over 15 years, college level writing, have prepared a personal statement workshops for writing school, for writing centers at various institutions. And I've worked with hundreds of students on their personal statements for college, for med school, for then residency. So I know what they're looking for. And now it's your turn. So definitely kind of stick around so we can talk about this very delicate little tweak that you want to consider if this is your kind of issue that you're navigating right now for your personal statement. So first key takeaway is to make sure that you kind of really think through whether or not you say something. Personally, if, you know, you get a D and O chem, but then you get an A minus, I wouldn't say anything. Always consult with your pre health advisors, because they will know kind of your entire application and the breadth of your candidacy. So they'll give you kind of their two cents as well. Make sure you spin a negative into a positive, usually through either resilience, growth or wisdom. So make sure you kind of spin that into a negative. Sometimes I see very kind of mea culpa. I was really kind of feeling bad for myself or having trouble with this professor or so it's very either kind of their blazing on themselves, because they think that that's going to kind of, I don't know, convey, you know, a sense of accountability, or they're blazing on other people like the professor and they're not taking accountability. So you want to make sure that when you do say something, if you say something, that you are spinning it into a positive. I usually like kind of growth, resilience or wisdom, because that really kind of allows you to talk about other aspects that are positive too. Ultimately, this is your journey to medicine or this is your journey to dentistry, right? So you want to make sure that you are using your prime real estate on your personal statement to tell that journey. You don't want to spend too much time on a red flag, any red flag, in my opinion, because you are detracting from kind of actually showcasing your most compelling self. So if you do decide to put something into your personal statement, here are three pointers that I would say consider option one, consider matching it up with another point of resilience or step back in your story. So too many times when students decide to actually kind of put it in to their personal statement, they kind of dedicate an entire kind of paragraph to the low GPA or to kind of, you know, poor performance in courses that resulted in lower GPA. And visually that kind of shows it doesn't belong, right? It's an eyesore and it tends to be too long in my opinion. So I would say consider maybe matching it up with something else that you can then kind of do a public sentence that accommodates both setbacks or both kind of obstacles that you overcame, right? Because you're going to spin it into a positive and then kind of you talk about them in kind of conjunction or you talk about the first one and then you kind of go into the second one. I've seen students successfully do this with like, you know, an immigration story, them kind of navigating the new cultural kind of signs and new cultural cues in the US versus like their home country and how they had to learn by kind of doing and fumbling a little, making mistakes and having awkward kind of conversation sometimes, but they learned academic English, right? So like they learned how to navigate their academics and then they go into their GPA a little bit. So you kind of match it up with something. Another one I've seen is like dad had a health scare and you had to kind of completely reshuffle your entire life and priorities that were priorities last week were no longer priorities now. And so you had to kind of revamp your schedule, your priorities, how you organized your time and effort to family versus school, not as an excuse, but just kind of like, you know, think about the context of your low GPA and then consider maybe then matching those up. So those are two that I've seen that have worked well in essays that I've worked on. So option two, and it's kind of related is to really downplay it, don't necessarily devote an entire paragraph to it. So this is such prime real estate for your personal statement, consider writing in two, three sentences max, and then figure out where you want to put it. I don't know why, but a lot of times when I see these types of paragraphs or kind of pieces of information, they tend to come at the end. I see kind of like a beautiful like, you know, spark moment and continued commitment to the field. Then second to last paragraph is like this sore, right? I saw of a paragraph on a low GPA red flag. And this is why I want to become a doctor. This is why I'm meant to be a physician. And so I've almost like lost the beauty and the buildup that as a reader, I was kind of buying into in the first, you know, two thirds of the essay. So what I would say is kind of cut it down very short, where it's not it can't stand alone as its own paragraph and then figure out where you want to put it, whether it's with another set pack or another resilience on kind of pointer, like point one, or somewhere else where you can kind of put it as part of the context of what was happening in that moment in your life and kind of see if you can kind of connect that to medicine. Maybe it's a patient story, and maybe it's a patient that you helped rally. One of the essays that I was working with a student that was doing some kind of PT work. And so then they were like, you know, rallying the patient at the client who did not really want to kind of do the type of work that they needed to do to really rehab their leg. And so then most of that most of that paragraph was on working with this client. And then the last two or three sentences was about like, I know very well, the difficulty when kind of the internal noise becomes too loud. And I had to rally myself when and then they went into two sentences of the low GPA. And then they went back into their story. So it became very kind of like it was this very subtle dip in information. And then they went back to their story. And it doesn't feel like this I swear at the end where then I figure out like, I kind of forget what the whole other part of the whole other chunk of the essay was. Are you unsure about how to write about a red flag in your personal statement? Comment below. I'd love to hear from you. So now third point, I've actually seen students write about the GPA in other places in their application, not in the personal statement. Right. So that's something like I said, kind of consult your pre health advisor, but that's something that you want to consider to also depending on the schools, right? Some secondaries will ask you if you got a B minus or C plus or, you know, something or lower, please in whatever class, please explain what happened or why or whatever. So you will have other opportunities to talk about this and kind of write your wrong right in a way. So think about that too. Are you kind of really maximizing the spaces that you have for your application and where this should kind of adequately go? Thank you so much for joining me. If you want to talk about personal statements, if you are starting to write it, if you are kind of thinking through it, I offer students a free 15 minute strategy call with me. Link is in the description. It's also on my channel banner up top on my YouTube page. So you can definitely kind of schedule your call there and we can chat all things personal statement related to you specifically. Thank you so much for watching. Give us a like if you found this helpful and come back soon. Bye.