well...
 

I will say that your bluntness was unexpected and so i will explain what i plan on putting in my letter. I went to school out of state over 15 hours by car from my home. I knew absolutely no one in the area my first semester here and I struggled with being homesick and wanting to transfer back home. My grandfather also passed away of lou gehrigs disease while I was at school. I had a bad gpa my first semester and only then while i tried to deal with being homesick and then my grandfather's passing. I think that a lot of freshman in college struggle their first year because it is a very emotional time. Yes, i could have been a better student but shouldn't it count that i only had one bad semester and have otherwise done very well in both college and high school? I know that I am asking for advice from GCer's and greatly appreciate the feedback but to judge me and say i was probably partying it up and immature was offensive.

similar situation
 

Sorry to crash...

Because I don't know which school I will attend next year, I can't say for sure whether or not their Panhellenic does this. But in any case, I would like to pose a hypothetical. If my future school's panhellenic does accept letters of explanation such as the OP's does, how much information is too much?

My letter would indeed account for one bad semester, a semester off, and the an explanation of why i'm gonna be a 20 yr old sophomore. Yes of course you should have a very good, real reason. But should it be tangible? Would it be acceptable to provide an oncologist's phone number, in case a sorority wanted to "verify".

I'd like to say that i'm on top of everything else, as of right now i am halfway through one of 2 semesters that i must complete to transfer. And As i calculate it, I need to have a 3.5 for these consecutive semesters. Which is very attainable. As for my recs, most are from alumna of TT, UT-SA and UT, AzState, and UofAz. I'm confident i will have at least 2 recs for each group. But as said before, "connections" aren't everything. That is why i'm worried about the 2.8 i have now.

Any response to providing Too much information in an explanation letter would be greatly appreciated.

Would a chapter be able to bend the minimum GPA rules based on a PNM's letter? I've never heard of such a thing. Maybe this happens with less competitive recruitments?

That was my thought. I know we did not and the chapter that I work with does not, but I never stopped to ask if it can be done.

I'm curious - if you care to share - what are your per-semester GPAs? I am simply curious as to how low they were and how high they have become in recent semesters.

Sorry you think it was offensive, but when you didn't give your reason for your low grades, we can only surmise. The examples I gave are all very common reasons that freshman do poorly.

As has been said, grade exceptions, if accepted at all, must be truly extraordinary situations. Many chapters can't even make exceptions, or must get permission from higher up the chains to take a grade exception/grade risk. Your reasons that you gave, while I'm sure were tough for you, to a stranger are nothing so out of the ordinary as to warrant a grade exception.

Not to you personally, but to others reading this thread:

Anyone who has a bad semester, in hindsight, can come up with some sort of semi-logical explanation for it.

I think all of us here on GC DO NOT want PNMs who are visiting a site to think that a poor GPA average can be overcome with some sort of letter explanation. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. Most schools likely will not accept a letter, and in most circumstances, the reasons for your poor grades will not matter. The rules are the rules and they are there for a reason. Unless you have a truly compelling reason, you are stuck with your grades and the consequences thereof.

My campus was not competetive in the least and our GPA rules (at least for my chapter) were hard and fast. NO exceptions.

And yet, in my experience, exceptions can and have been made. I think it probably varies with chapters.

My instinct is if they are asking for a letter, then they want one. They want to hear more about the pnm, her situation, etc. And better to have a letter that everyone can read, analyze, debate and discuss than rely on Susie Sorority's courtroom skills to convince the membership that her rush crush is worth the academic risk.

No need to make the letter sound defensive, either. It just needs to be well written and clearly explains your situation. I think the fact that you had one bad year or semester balanced by good ones will carry weight, but that needs to be laid out in the letter. I don't think the chapter will see your transcript - just your current gpa, so this would be info they need to better assess your case.

speaking for the many chapters I'm familiar with, and not just those of my own letters, grades are one factor that is set in stone. No bending. We recruit, very heavily, PNMs who will be positive contributors to our GPAs. There is a healthy competition among the houses to be first in ASA (all sorority average) and to have a GPA that is above the University average. It is a great selling point during recruitment, for both PNMs and their parents.

I don't know of a single sorority that wasn't founded based on academic principles, to assist women in gaining a toehold/step up in a man's world. The emphasis on academics is foremost, and continues to this day. Everything else (sisterhood, social aspects, service), IMO, flows from this common love of and pursuit of knowledge.

(steps down from academic soapbox to polite applause of peers)

I think that groups have national/international minimums that they won't go under, but that at a lot of campuses what the chapter actually wants is a lot higher than that minimum. In those cases, I can see that for a very exceptional girl, an exception might be made.

So let's say you have to have a 2.6 but the new member average is typically a 3.4. A girl with a 3.0 probably has some 'splainin' to do, and even then, it might be a long shot.

Well the problem that I have is mostly that my college gpa is being compared to the freshmans high school gpa. I would think that they would be weighted differently because college is obviously more difficult than high school. I had a high gpa in high school too. So all these girls that come in with high gpas might not maintain them in college. I think comparing a freshman who had a gpa of 2.79 in high school compared to my college 2.79 isnt fair. When i transferred schools my gpa was weighted differently because it was college credit and not high school credit. How can a sorority honestly believe that a girl who can only manage a 2.79 in high school will amount to a higher gpa in much harder class and school? It just doesnt seem fair to me. Sorry for ranting.

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I would think that most chapters have a separate GPA requirement for college and HS.

Example: A chapter at my school required a 3.0 HS (for freshmen with no college GPA) and a 2.80 for college students.

Most chapters list both, but they are not always different.