Category: Fuqua application: ”Have you ever been dropped, suspended, warned, placed on academic or disciplinary probation, disciplined, expelled, requested or advised to resign from any post-secondary school, college, university, professional, or law school?”
Me: Yes.
Fuqua Application: ”Please submit the optional essay.”
Me: #@%$!&*^!
So this one time, at band camp…just kidding. But I did need to explain my past infraction and separate myself from that ‘Who’s Who’ of delinquency above into a ‘minor infraction’ category. Since this was an “optional” essay, I treated it more as a confession than a vehicle to show my literary abilities.
Going to graduate school was a whirlwind experience. I hadn’t necessarily planned on going, but in the Spring of my Junior year, the opportunity presented itself…if I could start that Fall. So I went to Summer classes, and then the beginning of my ‘Senior’ year at the University of Delaware was actually the first year of graduate school.
For a number of reasons, I did poorly the first semester and was put on academic probation, after receiving 2 ‘B’s and 1 ‘C’. At a 2.75 GPA, I started below the 3.0 minimum GPA required as part of my full scholarship. Not a good way to start off! But I ended up finishing the Masters program with a 3.7 GPA, so clearly I was able to recover quite gracefully.
So in my one page essay, I wrote about being placed on academic probation, why, and how I remedied the situation. I also drew a parallel to the upcoming MBA program, and how my former experience in graduate school would help avoid difficulties this time.
Good enough. I couldn’t go back and change what happened, so I wasn’t going to spend an inordinate amount of time making excuses for it.
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