Spin It - What to do if your grades are less than perfect

by Brian Freedman

Grades don't mean everything.

This should become your mantra. Every morning, in fact, before you begin the daily and seemingly never-ending process of working on your grad-school application, you should sit in the lotus position by a window, close you eyes and repeat: "Grades don't mean everything, grades don't mean everything." And don't write any of your application essays until you have thoroughly internalized this and firmly believe it.

Albert Einstein did notoriously poorly in school. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. Peter Jennings didn't even make it through high school. Which is not to say that school doesn't matterÑon the contrary, it is the single best way to ensure your professional and personal advancementÑbut it should help to put things in perspective.

The lesson is this: There is more to your perceived academic potential than the grades you've earned. And while they certainly play a part in your overall application, they are not the only aspect that admissions-committee members look at. And there are ways for you to spin less-than-stellar grades to your advantage.

A Glass of Water

The quintessential example used by undergrad psychology students and overheated and undertalented teenage poets is this one: Is the glass half-full...or half-empty? (Pause here to digest the deepness of this essential questionÉ Okay, ready to move on? Good.) Yes, it's a cliche, and yes, it tells us little, even when the question is answered. But somewhere, buried deep beneath the layers of ridiculousness inherent in the proposition, is an essential truth: Perception matters. And you must use this to your advantage.

Think of that "C" you received in your freshman-year Introduction to Czech Literature 101. There's nothing you can do about it now, and no amount of begging or offering of bribes will convince the clerks in the registrar's office to change it. Which means that it's up to you to spin the story to you advantage.

Address the issue in your application essay. Talk about how, when the rest of the class was assigned Milan Kundera's "Ignorance," you chose to move ahead with your own reading of his oeuvre, since you were so inspired by the first chapter of the book. And when the rest of the class was just halfway through it, you had already completed it, as well as "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," and had begun working on your comparative analysis of those two books simply for your own sense of intellectual edification (and here you should include that essay). Whatever it is, the key here is to be honest - if you've never even cracked the copy of "Ignorance" you bought for the class, do not lie about it - but spin it to your advantage.

Remember, if candidates for president can do it, you can, too.

A Student in Full

Most grad-school applicants have some sort of blemish on their transcript. And whether it's because of a particularly difficult class, or because you were in the process of breaking up with the love of your life that semester and therefore couldn't focus as completely as you would have liked on the work at hand, the fact remains: You are human. Your job now is to make the rest of your application look as appealing as possible to the admissions committee.

You must remember this: Admissions committees look for people who they think will not only succeed in their program, but who will also contribute to the life of the student body as a whole. In other words, they realize that an entering class of grad-school students comprised solely of Type-A personalities who are driven to do nothing but study and regurgitate information will not make for a terribly edifying academic and intellectual experience for anyone. They want an assortment of people, and the best way for them to accomplish that is to consider each applicant as a person-in-full.

So what, then, if you got a "C" in Economics 101? That was sophomore year, and since then, you've begun your own successful business selling the finest widgets ever produced. Address the negative, stress the positive, and make it clear on your application and in your interview (if there is one) that you will not only succeed in the program, but that youÕll make the experience better for the other students, as well.

A Little Elton John Never Hurts

One of Sir Elton's earliest hits was a little ditty called "Your Song." It has nothing at all to do with grad school, or application processes. In fact, it's a rather sappy tune about falling in love and all that other love-song-type stuff. Plus, he wrote it in his chicken-suit-wearing phase, so there you go. But you should pay attention to the title: Your application process is your song. It is about you. The mistake most people make is filling it out passively and writing generic essays because the think theyÕre required to.

You, however, are different (aren't you?). You realize that an application is not merely a set of documents that will allow the admissions committee to pass judgment on you. No, you realize that an application is a set of documents that will allow you to create a set of perceptions about yourself that will, in turn, work to your advantage. This is your song. Sing it proudly, and make it count.

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