Should You Explain a Bad Grade When Applying to College?

As most college-bound students know, the college application is a space for showing off. You want to put your absolute best foot forward to wow those college admissions committees. Sometimes, though, there are less than flattering aspects of your application that you simply can’t avoid. If you have received a less than stellar grade, you might be wondering how you should address it on your college application. If it’s on your transcript, it’s something that you definitely can’t hide. So, what should you do? In this post we’ll discuss the various scenarios in which you might explain a bad grade, and how you can go about doing so. If you’re wondering what to do about a blemish on your transcript, don’t miss our advice. It’s appropriate to address a bad grade on your transcript in a few different scenarios, but the common thread in each is that there is a perfectly good explanation for your bad grade. You may be a conscientious, hard working, intelligent student, but even the most perfect student might sometimes get a bad grade under extenuating circumstances. For example, if you went through significant personal changes, a family emergency, or another unavoidable event that had an impact on your academic work, you will definitely want to explain what happened. This includes things like a serious illness, the death of a family member, moving to a new school, or a similar, unavoidable event. Keep in mind that if you want to explain a bad grade and have your explanation bear any weight, it needs to be significantly different from your normal performance. If you have received a series of grades in the range of B- and C+, explaining a C or a C- won’t affect your application much. Instead, the bad grade or grades need to significantly differ from the grades you normally achieve. Explaining a C or C- will be much easier if you normally pull a perfect GPA. At the same time, the grades you’re explaining need to be an isolated event. If you get perfect grades during freshman year and then get sick during your sophomore year and get all Cs during the second semester, you’ll only be able to explain them if your grades go back up after your illness passes. If your blemish falls towards the end of your transcript and you don’t have time for it to reflect an improvement, you might even explain that you are now back on track and that the admissions committee can expect to see improvement on your second semester grades. If your grades suffer significantly due to an unavoidable event, and you are able to recover afterwards, there is a good chance that an admissions committee will be sympathetic to your explanation. Estimating your chance of getting into a college is not easy in today’s competitive environment. Thankfully, with our state-of-the-art software and data, we can analyze your academic and extracurricular profile and estimate your chances. Our profile analysis tool can also help you identify the improvement you need to make to enter your dream school. It’s important to remember that admissions committees literally see thousands of applications and they are familiar with a broad variety of personal circumstances. If your circumstances are not likely to stand out as extenuating or unusual, there’s no need to explain a bad grade. Sometimes they just happen, and trying to explain it as though it’s not your fault may come off as an unwillingness to accept personal responsibility. For example, if you normally receive grades in the B-range but during your junior year you fell in with the wrong crowd, put less time into studying, and got some grades in the lower-C range, you don’t have a very good excuse for the blemish on your transcript. Rather than trying to explain it, you should let your performance speak for itself and work extra hard to hit higher grades during your senior year. Similarly, there’s no reason to explain grades that aren’t significantly different from your normal achievements. If you are used to getting all Bs, but then get the flu and get an B- in geometry your sophomore year, the admissions committee probably doesn’t need to hear about it. After all, the grade is not much different from your usual performance, and getting the flu isn’t exactly a unique scenario to face in high school. If you are wondering if you should explain a bad grade on your transcript, ask yourself these questions first: If the answer to any of these questions is no, think carefully before explaining the blemish on your transcript. You may want to discuss your decision with a guidance counselor or teacher first to gain some more perspective. Don’t use your personal essay to explain a bad grade unless there is another reason for doing so. For example, if you experienced a traumatic car accident during your junior year and your grades suffered because of it, you should only discuss it in your personal statement if it was also personally significant in other ways. If you grew as a person, learned about yourself, or developed new perspective, you might address the accident in your personal essay. Then, your discussion of its impact on your grades has more context in the bigger picture. On the other hand, if the only reason you are addressing the accident on your application is because of its impact on your grades, you should include this elsewhere. There are probably more important things you could discuss in your personal statement. Instead, it’s usually best to address the extenuating circumstances behind a poor grade in the â€Å"Additional Information† part of your application.

Critically iscuss how Best Practice HRM Can Contribute to Improved Essay

Critically iscuss how Best Practice HRM Can Contribute to Improved Organisational Performance - Essay Example Following this, the discussion examines the link between HRM and enhanced organizational performance. The paper examines the arguments and evidence that HRM policies and practices aid in promoting higher levels of organizational performance and studies whether the advanced arguments are convincing. The constantly evolving business environment coupled with the growing competition fuelled by globalization demands adoption of an effective human resource practice, which avails the organization a competitive edge. Human leverage is a significant contributory factor in attaining competitive edge through customer satisfaction and organization performance. Over the years, interest has been building in the notion of â€Å"best practice† human resource management (HRM). The overriding idea hinges on the notion that a certain bundle of HR practices bears the potential to contribute to enhanced employee attitudes and behaviour, ultimately decreasing the degree of absenteeism and workforce turnover. In the last two decades, a number of publications have explored the links between HRM and performance (Guest et al 2003, p. 294). Organization performance encompasses indicators such as financial performance and excellence and productivity, as well as outcomes in aspects such as competence, commitment, and flexibility. Enhanced organizational performance refers to enhanced employees attitudes and behaviours, minimized degree of absenteeism and labour turnover and enhanced degree of productivity, quality and customer service (Armstrong 2012, p.56). Ultimately, enhanced organizational performance has the capability of generating higher levels of profitability. Literature Review Human resource management (HRM) deals with the personnel policies and managerial practices and systems that control the workforce. HRM details a strategic and coherent approach of an organization’s most dear assets-the employees, who personally and collectively add to the attainment of the org anization’s set objectives. Human resource correlate with business performance, especially â€Å"best or high performance† HRM practices, whose goals is to enhance employees’ abilities and motivation (Sturm 2007, p.3). Nevertheless, the correlation tends to be relatively minute in statistical terms, besides the fact that literature does not agree on the reason why, on implementation, some human resource practices fail. This raises a critical question as to whether human resource systems bear the capability to create a competitive edge by themselves, or they must be continued or reinforced by with other variables. Performance in the context of the organization applies and is synonymous with productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, and competitiveness. HRM theorists have attempted to establish a causal link between HRM and performance. High performance human resource practices bear a positive effect on organizational learning, which impacts positively on organizat ional performance. Nevertheless, it has been complicated to institute a direct linkage of human resource practices on business performance (Lopez, Peon and Ordas 2005, p.147). As a result, there has been growing interest in studies examining the potential contribution of effective human resource policy in aiding enhancement of organizational performance. This has made the impact of human resource management on performance an essential research issue in the field of HRM. Similarly, there has been a continual search

ANALYSIS A&P supermarkets VS Shoprite Research Paper

ANALYSIS A&P supermarkets VS Shoprite - Research Paper Example The company operates around 435 supermarkets all over the United States. It is being operating as a subsidiary of Tengelmann Group, which is a based in Germany. A&P is only operating in the market of USA and has around 45000 employees. Once known to be the biggest supermarket retail chain in the country, A&P is now facing several financial issues and challenges. In the year 2010, the company reported a decline of around 7.4 percent in the overall revenues. The operating loss was reported to be around $600.6 million in the same year and the net loss in the year 2010 was around $875.6 million. Shoprite Holdings Limited is serving in the retail industry through different subsidiaries and provides the customers with fast moving consumer goods retail services. The company has being operating a vast network of hyper markets, outlets, and stores. Apart from this the operations of the company are expanded into 17 different countries and have well constructed supply chain network. Shoprite ha s been reporting considerable financial results and performance from several years and has been able to survive in the time of economic recession. It is offering significant dividend to its shareholders. The strategic and financial analysis carried out in this report, suggest that Shoprite is a better option for investing the money as the company is reporting increasing profits and revenues. INTRODUCTION: Retail industry is a recession proof industry and the industry has been growing even during the time of recession. The main reason for this is because of the fact that people have to eat, drink and wear clothes despite of what the situation of economy is. Because of this reason, a lot of investors choose to invest in companies within the retail industry particularly grocery stores. OVERVIEW OF A&P: The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Inc. (A&P) is a US supermarket chain; the company was once one of the biggest companies in the US but it has been reduced in size. A&P runs 435 supermarkets in eight eastern states and the District of Columbia (AP Freshonline). In late 2007, A&P acquired its longtime rival, Pathmark Stores, for about $1.4 billion, reversing years of decline at the grocery company. A&P is a subsidiary of Tengelmann Group, a German Retailing Group which owns about 40% of A&P. A&P operates only in the US and is headquartered in Montvale, New Jersey. It employs approximately 45,000 people (Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, 5). OVERVIEW OF SHOPRITE: Shoprite Holdings Limited (Shoprite) is an investment holding company that operates through its subsidiaries and offers fast moving consumer goods retail services by operating a range of hyper markets, stores and outlets. It operates through 1,394 stores, including 265 franchised outlets and 1084 corporate outlets in 17 countries. Shoprite is headquartered in Western Cape, South Africa, and primarily operates in South Africa, the Indian Ocean Islands and various other African Countries. It employ s about 88,000 people. PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Both companies offer a range of products and services which mainly include