S/O: revealing health conditions in college app
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Anonymous
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My DD has a chronic condition along the lines of MS, epilepsy, Tourette’s, etc.
Illness made it much harder to learn until it was diagnosed and with medication, the issues making it harder to learn have gone. Despite illness, has maintained 4.0 and a variety of ECs. Typical hard working student that had to work much harder due to illness. SHe is now doing some ecs specific to illness such as fundraising and awareness and will most likely focus on a neuroscience type career. Has always had interest in stem. Is this something to mention in applications? No accommodations needed and illness under control with meds. It is something that she has to remember to take her medsm3x a day which she manages in her own. |
Anonymous
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If she wants to expand on the ECs in the "You may use the space below to provide any additional information you wish to share." she can.
If the character count available in the activities section is enough - that is fine. I believe the Coalition app / Scoir has more space for activities and she might want to consider this to see if it is a better fit |
Anonymous
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Look at the current thread on revealing ADHD in applications.
If essays are focused on career & major choices, the medical condition seems relevant. Be careful about reviewing the tone so your child comes across as genuine and gives an impression as a whole candidate. Be honest. Are you hoping that this is your child's hook to get in because she had to work harder? If so, keep in mind that some people have to work harder for other reasons (parents are not in the know, no money for tutoring, dyslexia, etc). Only share information that makes AO impressed that your daughter is a hard worker and has a meaningful career plan vs. "overcoming" something. |
Anonymous
NP here. If her child has a significant chronic illness/disability, she didn’t “overcome” something, she actually overcame something. FFS. Parents get posters falling over themselves with sympathy when their kids overcome cancer, but anything else, and it had better “relate to their major.” |
Anonymous
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I would advise the student to develop their notion of resilience around their condition in one of the supplemental essays. Mental health gets a super bad rap, and physical chronic disease garners more sympathy. I know. My mother has MS, and my son has ADHD/ASD. People actively fear autism but fall over themselves for the MS (as they should, but it would be nice if mental health sufferers had the same support). |
Anonymous
| I'd be wary of mentioning Tourette’s. No one wants a student screaming random obscenities in the middle of class. |
Anonymous
I am PP being quoted and I feel the same about cancer. I value personal medical privacy and I don't like to share my personal business with randoms in order to obtain something of value to me. If it's relevant I agree with divulging. But if one has passed through the fire, it's not always relevant to talk about it. Randoms include admissions officers, essay readers, etc. If I wouldn't talk to a new friend or prof about it naturally at the new school, why would I want some random essay reader rating my life experience/hardship and how I wrote about it against others. I guess I'm a bit harsh. Sorry if I struck a nerve. But I do believe this. |
Anonymous
NP: PP, I hear what you're saying, and I take no offense, but fyi with many chronic illnesses, one never actually "passes through the fire." Disease management might grow more intuitive, but it's as if, once your house is no longer burning down, have to spend the rest of your life managing a brush fire that never goes out and that could set the home ablaze all over again. Type 1 diabetics for example (my kid is one) make literally hundreds of extra decisions every day, and they're 24/7 fending off two different versions of potentially fatal health emergencies. So it's a really tricky thing for a kid with chronic disease to figure out how much to talk about it, and to articulate what they want to say. For my own kid, who was diagnosed in high school after a hospitalization, learning to manage the disease was the defining experience of her high school experience. It will be a massive part of college and the rest of her life. But she also didn't want her application to be "about" her sickness, because while she has the disease, she is so much more than a kid with the disease. Her decision was to state the facts pretty simply in the additional information section, and then to write her essay and supplementals about different things entirely -- joyful things, aspirational things, which feel more like the core of who she is at her best. |
Anonymous
| I wouldn’t get into it even if it relates to career plans. The o want to be a doctor because I has x, my family member had x, etc. . . is also a super overdone personal statement. |
Anonymous
Well, I have a child with an invisible physical illness that has knocked her down for multiple years. There is no way to explain her life, let alone her transcript, without including this information. |
Anonymous
Only a tiny fraction of people with TS do anything like that. But since it makes for great TV, everyone assumes that’s what it is. |
Anonymous
| I think it depends on what the illness is and how she’s likely to be perceived once she reveals it, unfortunately. I’m guessing epilepsy. I think it’s fine to talk a lot that in essays. I wouldn’t talk about ADHD or ASD. |
Anonymous
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She should do what she wants.
But. I have a physical disability that is invisible and over the years I have found the best disclosure policy is on a need to know basis and with a balance of what's more likely to lead to discrimination - people knowing about your condition, or people noticing weird behavior and not having an explanation? Your kid has a 4.0 - I'm assuming you mean unweighted? If UW, she has nothing to explain. She has done well. If she had 2.0 in ninth and tenth, got treatment, and now is getting 4.0, then you explain. 4.0 throughout? Dont risk the discrimination by explaining. |
Anonymous
| I think it’s entirely fine to write the essay about a topic that discloses her condition. The trick is to have it be about more than the condition too. It’s part of her story and if it is part of the story she wants to tell-do it. |
Anonymous
PP. I believe there are multiple possible school choices for everyone and I'm not a snob about rankings. If someone needs a specific school environment or they are really afraid of being rejected from a dream school, then I suggest making the most personal approaches possible. For example, if allowed/advisable, speak with the people that make the decision or people in the department that the student will be educated by on the other side. I noticed on this year's Indiana Bloomington App that they asked whether the applicant had spoken with a faculty member about admission. I suppose that could have factored into "Demonstrated Interest". Two of the schools my child is applying to let you know that you can call the specific regional admissions officer with questions. Also, I favor the use of the additional information section for briefly explaining complicated situations if there is no action the school needs to take other than admit yes/no. I understand that chronic conditions never go away. But if lots of explanation is required to get in, is the school the right place? I do wonder about that. In my state, ten nationally UNranked but highly effective and pleasant to attend universities just committed to let in any h.s. grad with a 3.0 or above. I work with people from these schools and they get paid decent money and have happy lives. Community college is also excellent for repairing a track record. Schools do generally have GPA rules of thumb that are suggestive of the amount of work and pressure one could expect after matriculating. Anyway, these are just my thoughts and of course each parent is better placed to counsel their child appropriately. |