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SDSU  /  Essays  /  Prompt 1

SDSU: Optional comments / extenuating circumstances (Cal State Apply)

Optional; roughly 550 words (about 3,500 characters in the Cal State Apply comments field)

If there is any additional information you would like the admissions committee to know about you or your academic record, you may include it here. This section is optional.
What it’s really asking

This is a paraphrase of the open optional field inside Cal State Apply, since SDSU publishes no supplemental prompt of its own. SDSU is asking, in effect, is there context behind your record that the transcript alone does not show? It is not asking who you are as a person or why you love San Diego. It wants the missing fact that helps a reader interpret your grades, your course load, or your circumstances fairly. Note that specific performance majors (dance, music, musical theatre, television and film, theatre arts) and nursing carry separate audition or prerequisite requirements handled outside this box.

Why they ask it

SDSU does not score essays and is test blind, so admission turns on coursework, rigor, GPA, and the context of obstacles overcome. This optional field is the only written space where you, not your transcript, get to speak. Readers use it to make sense of anything unusual: a hardship semester, heavy work hours, a school with few advanced courses, or first-generation status. Because most applicants skip it, a clear and specific note can meaningfully reframe a borderline record.

Three ways in
Explain a specific dip

Name the term, the cause, and the recovery in three plain sentences. Point the reader straight to the grades in question so the context lands where the evidence is.

Surface invisible labor

Hours at a job, caregiving, or a long daily commute that shaped how you spent your time. This reframes a thin activities list as a constraint, not a lack of effort.

Add structural context

Courses your school did not offer, a lack of counseling, or a college-prep program that prepared you. This tells the reader your record reflects your environment, not your ceiling.

✕  Weak opening

“Ever since I was a little girl, I have dreamed of attending San Diego State and becoming the best version of myself.”

✓  Strong opening

“My sophomore-year grades dropped because I worked 25 hours a week at my family's restaurant after my dad's surgery; by junior year I had cut back and pulled my GPA from 2.9 to 3.7.”

✦ Annotated example · Sophomore-year dip explained: a parent's illness and the recovery that followed. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
My transcript tells two different stories, and I want to explain the gap between them rather than hope the committee overlooks it. 1Freshman year I earned a 3.9 and took the most demanding courses my school offered. The middle of sophomore year, my grades fell off a cliff: two C's in chemistry and Algebra II, and a D on my first-semester history report. 2That January, my mother was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer. She is a single parent, and I am the oldest of three. For five months, our household reorganized itself around her treatment. 3I drove my younger brothers to school before the late bell, cooked dinner most nights, and sat in the chemotherapy waiting room doing homework I was too tired to absorb. I did not tell my teachers what was happening, partly out of pride and partly because saying it out loud made it more real. That silence was a mistake, and my grades paid for it. 4By summer my mother was in remission, and I treated the fall like a second chance I did not want to waste. I asked my chemistry teacher to let me retake the unit tests I had failed, and I rebuilt the fundamentals I had skated over while exhausted. 5Junior year I earned a 4.0, including A's in AP Chemistry and Pre-Calculus, the two subjects where I had stumbled the year before. I scored a 4 on the AP Chemistry exam. I am not offering this as proof that the hard part is over, only as evidence of what my work looks like when my home is steady. 6I am also the reason I want to study nursing at San Diego State. Those months in waiting rooms taught me to read a nurse's calm as a kind of competence, and I decided I wanted that competence to be mine. 7I am not asking the committee to discount my sophomore record. I am asking you to read it as one difficult chapter inside a larger pattern of someone who shows up, recovers, and finishes the work. If you give my full transcript a fair reading, I believe that is the story it tells.8
  1. 1Opens by naming the exact problem the reader already sees. This field rewards context over polish, so addressing the weakness head-on builds instant credibility.
  2. 2Gives the reader concrete, verifiable numbers. Naming the specific grades shows the applicant is not hiding the dip but accounting for it honestly.
  3. 3Provides the genuine extenuating circumstance with restraint. Stating the facts plainly, without dramatizing, keeps the tone honest rather than pleading for sympathy.
  4. 4Shows responsibility and self-awareness in one move. Owning the choice not to ask for help ('that silence was a mistake') signals maturity rather than blaming circumstances entirely.
  5. 5Pivots from obstacle to evidence of rigor, which is exactly what SDSU rewards. The recovery is shown through specific actions, not vague claims about working hard.
  6. 6Closes the loop with hard numbers in the very subjects that dipped, proving the C's were circumstantial, not a ceiling. The modest framing avoids overselling.
  7. 7Connects the hardship to a concrete academic and career goal, turning the explanation into something forward-looking and specific to the school's programs.
  8. 8Ends with a clear, dignified ask. It reframes the whole application as a pattern of resilience and trusts the reader to judge fairly, which lands better than a hard sell.
Stuck? Start here
  • Is there anything on my transcript a reader could misread, and what is the one fact that would correct it?
  • What did I spend my out-of-school hours on that does not appear anywhere else in this application?
  • Did my high school limit my options (few AP or honors courses, no counseling), and can I state that simply?
Before you submit
  • Does my first sentence contain the actual fact, not a wind-up?
  • Have I tied the context to specific evidence in my file (a term, a grade, a missing course)?
  • If nothing here genuinely needs explaining, have I considered leaving the box blank instead of padding it?

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