There are two situations you’d need to write a Letter of Explanation for low grades…

1. You failed a class/performed poorly after getting accepted into a college.
2. You failed a class/performed poorly prior to applying to a college.

We’re going to be explaining both situations in depth.

In the first scenario, the college requesting your Letter of Explanation for low grades noticed a sudden dip in academic performance AFTER accepting you during the application process. In other words, they’re getting suspicious.

Here’s an example:

You “let yourself go” after getting accepted into Cornell. With admissions season over, you slacked off… a little too much. The fallout is a C in your Math class. Cornell isn’t too happy about this. Your transcript showed straight A’s, until now. Thus, they want you to write a Letter of explanation to clarify your sudden dip in academic performance.

In the second scenario, the college does not outright request a Letter of Explanation for low grades from you. Rather, you send them one because you are not confident in your grades prior to sending your application.

Here’s an example:

You may have earned a 3.2 GPA but are vying for a highly competitive school with a competitive major such as computer science. You don’t believe your 3.2 GPA will be able to compete against other students and their grades. In this case, writing a Letter of Explanation for low grades is the right path for you.

In both of these situations, the strategy behind writing a solid Letter of Explanation for low grades is the same. There’s not much distinction between the two whether you’ve already been accepted or you’ve yet to submit your application.

The focus of this article is to address how to write a Letter of Explanation for low grades. Then, we’ll show examples for each of them.

Table of Contents

1. How to Write a Letter of Explanation for Low Grades.
   • Be Honest.
   • Address Emergencies… With Tact.
   • The Importance of Impossibility.
   • Guide Admissions Officers Step-By-Step.
2. Example Letter of Explanation for Low Grades. (After Getting Accepted Into College)
3. Example Letter of Explanation for Low Grades. (Before Sending Your College Application)

How to Write a Letter of Explanation for Low Grades.

There are 4 elements that constitute a solid Letter of Explanation.

Okay, there’s actually more than that. But, for the sake of brevity, we’re just covering these 4 because they’re the most important.

1. Honesty.
2. Tactfulness when addressing emergencies.
3. Impossible situations.
4. Being specific to avoid misunderstanding.

If you can successfully navigate these 4 elements and weave them into your Letter of Explanation for low grades, you’ll significantly increase your chances of success.

Let’s explore them one by one below.

Be Honest.

This is a hard one.

It sounds easy enough for us to say. “Just be honest! Honesty is the best policy!”

But, we understand that in your shoes, you may be tempted to wave at least a flicker of a white lie to the admissions officers. After all, this is your college admissions chance we’re talking about!

What if telling the truth turns the admissions officers away from you? What if they get so disappointed by the truth that they no longer wish to accept you?

And, well, that COULD happen!

However, it’s been our experience here at PenningPapers that most students who even waver a single white lie don’t have their Letter of Explanation for low grades accepted.

That doesn’t mean everyone who lies doesn’t get away with it. Some people lie by saying they have a mental health crisis that wasn’t previously addressed, and they get away with it scott-free!

But, it’s been our experience that students who tell the full truth with tact, sophistication, and maturity in their Letter of Explanation for low grades often come out of the situation best.

They seem to have the highest chances of success. And, it could just be that admissions officers have been reading college essays and writing college letters for an eternity and a half. So, they know how to distinguish the minor nuances in writing technique between the liars and the truthers (even the slightest of lies.)

So, tell the truth! It’s the most conservative path when writing a Letter of Explanation for low grades whilst maximizing your chances of success. The admissions officers have come across many lies before. Don’t risk it!

Address Emergencies… With Tact.

One of the things you’ll need to do when you’re writing your Letter of Explanation for low grades is to address any emergencies you’ve experienced which may have negatively impacted your performance.

Examples of emergencies include but are not limited to…

1. Financial stresses that could have impacted your personal life.
2. Familial situations such as fights, divorce, and death.
3. Illness or physical injury.
4. Current events that required immediate action and attention.
5. Mental health diagnosis.

These emergencies can be written in your Letter of Explanation for low grades. But, they need to be done tactfully.

So, don’t write your letter as an excuse for your low performance. Instead, elaborate on the WHYs and the HOWs your experience played a role in dipping your academic performance.

The more realistic and sophisticated you can write your explanation, the more likely the admissions officers are going to believe you.

One trick you can do while writing about emergencies is to pretend the admissions officers were completely unaware of your situation as an outsider. (Which they are.) That is, if you were to be in their shoes, pretend that you have 0 context and see if you can understand or comprehend the writing.

This often requires you to go through each sentence you write and ask yourself: does this actually make sense to a stranger? If I open my sentence with the death of a family member, will that be too fast for an audience to process? Will I need to introduce such impactful information with a little more pretext before dropping that bomb?

These are all important questions to ask yourself; but, as a general rule, the more empathy you have in your essay, the better!

The Importance of Impossibility.

Note: There are exceptions in which you may admit that while some things were beyond your control, you could have done better to improve your grades. These acts of humility should be treaded lightly, though! If you’re unsure about how to write your letter, consider speaking with an expert for free help!

Impossibility is when the situation you were dealt with was, well, impossible to solve.

In other words, there are no actions within reason you could have taken to ameliorate the situation.

There are a lot of impossible situations, and more often than not you’ve probably suffered a few of these situations yourself. The importance this has with the Letter of Explanation for low grades is that it provides admissions officers with a more understanding perspective of your situation.

In particular, admissions officers need to know that there’s an element of impossibility so they know that you’re not entirely in the wrong.

Here’s an example.

Let’s say that due to financial instability in the family, you’ve needed to take on part-time jobs during your academic career. You needed to clock in extra hours with outside employers in order to scrape by with as much money as possible to help your family keep the roof on the house.

If that’s the case, you’ll need to describe to admissions officers how there were little to no opportunities for escaping your situation. You needed to help support your family financially, lest you lose the roof over your head. And, this time commitment made any dedication to academic performance virtually impossible.

There are going to be situations where your situation is not really impossible. There could have been things you could have done to make the situation better. Nonetheless, demonstrating to admissions officers how few options you had would make a massive difference in helping to garner their empathy.

Guide Admissions Officers Step-By-Step.

This is a crucial point.

When you’re explaining your reasons for low grades in the Letter of Explanation, it’s the admissions officer’s job to understand your situation to the best of their ability.

Oftentimes, your admissions officers are going to be sleep deprived, overworked, and busy reading through a million and a half essays.

Now, although this makes them seem very scary and terrifying, you must also remember that your admissions officers are on your side. They’re doing their best to understand you such that they can give you a proper assessment of your situation (and therefore a properly holistic admissions process that is fair to you.)

Thus, you need to make sure that there is no room for misinterpretation when writing your Letter of Explanation.

When your readers look at your letter, they should be able to read it in one go without having to go back to understand what it happening.

One way to achieve this is to vary the sentence structure length, punctuation, and vocabulary. By providing variance, the admissions officers can have a more streamlined reading experience that doesn’t drone on.

In addition, try to keep your details particular enough to specify complexities yet not be pedantic enough to sound overbearing. There are some things (such as what constitutes an A and a B in grading) that admissions officers don’t need to have explained. But, other nuances outside of the admissions officer’s frame of reference (such as your particular intricacies and struggles translating into your class’s grades) would need to be clarified in detail.

Example Letter of Explanation for Low Grades. (After Getting Accepted Into College)

“Dear University of Southern California Office of Admissions, 

Thank you for taking the time to read through my letter of explanation. It is unfortunate that my academic performance took a rather unusual and sudden turn for a downward trend, especially considering my previous performance in the past years prior to admissions. 

I understand that my sudden dip in performance, particularly in my Math course, is indicative of an unusual pattern. And, I completely take full responsibility for such a performance. However, I would like to preface this letter by explaining that I was not in fact using my Senior year’s semester as an opportunity to slack off after having been accepted into USC. 

USC is my top school; and, the Trojan identity means very much to me. I would not use my Senior year after being accepted to slack off and denigrate the sanctity of my own college acceptance into my dream institution.

With that said, I would like to cover the actual reasons behind my dip in performance. 

To put it briefly, I’ve had physical difficulty performing as well as I had hoped. Specifically, I was deprived of the physical energy required to fully operate at 100% concentration as I normally would due to a new and crucial nutrition plan I implemented with the approval of my doctor. 

During the time of my admission to USC, I was nearing 200 pounds at 5’6 feet. This is a very severe weight that, according to my doctor, would incur many great health detriments over time if I do not take action early. 

Thus, I’ve worked with a nutritionist and received approval from my doctor to follow through with a high-protein low-carb diet that would reduce my processed carbs and sugar intake significantly. In addition, I would be eating at a calorie deficit for a few months to reach a stable weight. 

Although the first few weeks worked fine, I began to notice a sudden crash in energy partly due to the lack of carbohydrates and sugar. Any intake of the two would relieve my energy and crankiness; but, it’d also make me “crash” later on. In other words, I was somewhat having withdrawal symptoms from sugar and carbohydrates after having led a high-carb and high-sugar diet for a long time. 

Despite the weight progress, this withdrawal and sudden reduction in calories put my body in a position of unusual energy levels. And, by sheer coincidence, it was during the times of my testing season that my cravings, lack of energy, moodiness, and withdrawal symptoms hit hardest. 

I understand I could have hypothetically stabilized my eating to reach my original weight and still maintain academic performance. However, this weight loss has been too important for me to reconsider. It’s been not just a journey of carving the body that I can feel proud of; but, it was also one of avoiding potential health disasters along the line. Thus, I had a moral and spiritual responsibility to pursue this slow but steady diet over time to avoid disaster. 

It is my hope that you may understand my position and that you would consider still accepting me into the University of Southern California. Should I be accepted, I know I will continue to fight on with my academics, as I have with my health.”

Example Letter of Explanation for Low Grades. (After Getting Accepted Into College)

Example Letter of Explanation for Low Grades. (Before Sending Your College Application)

“Dear University of Southern California Office of Admissions, 

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I am writing this primarily to provide crucial context and background information that specifies the unusual nature behind my dip in academic performance. 

In particular, I earned far lower grades (2 C’s) in the second semester of my Sophomore year compared to the typical straight A’s in the rest of my transcript. I understand this puts me in an unusual light. So, I wish to explain my reasons behind the 2 C’s. 

During the second half of my Sophomore year, I had a falling out with a meaningful friend group which has stuck with me for a long time. Although this experience had no direct impact on my academic performance, the emotional stress I struggled through as a result of it certainly had a massive impact on my ability to channel motivation like I used to. I actually had no trouble and no ill-will against my English and History course. But, the emotional fallout of my social circle diminishing left a massive impact on my ability to perform in much of anything else. 

It wasn’t until my senior year that I was diagnosed with Depression. But, strangely enough, the years after my Sophomore year went smoothly due to my mind’s “adapting to stress.” Thus, I was “covertly Depressed” wherein I’d blend in and be capable of adapting to Depressive scenarios including performing academically despite my newfound condition. 

Interestingly, it was through this counseling session that I learned to cope and process the grief of the loss of a meaningful group of friends. And, in doing so, I learned how to not just maintain healthy relationships from now onwards, but also how to maintain academic stability in a more healthy and sustainable manner that does not incite academic instability. 

This experience from my Sophomore year seems trivial, and perhaps not quite important enough to consider. But, I found this to be not just a meaningful experience that constitutes a big theme in my life, but also an important milestone of self-development and personal growth that (if I were to abstain from writing about this) my application would be incomplete without it. 

However, I do not assign all responsibility for this scenario; I can recognize that there were moments when I could have turned the tables and made my situation better. 

I hope this explanation provides a more in-depth perspective on my academic performance and a complete view of my character and development as a person here at the University of Southern California.”

Example Letter of Explanation for Low Grades. (Before Sending Your College Application)

If you have any other burning questions about how to write your Letter of Explanation for low grades, or you simply need help with drafting a letter before submission, consider receiving professional help. Contact us for a free consultation, and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours! Our professional college admissions consulting and advising services have helped countless students get into some of the best schools in the nation, including Harvey Mudd, Dartmouth, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Duke, UPenn, UMich, GeorgiaTech, UCLA, USC, and more!