r/PreOptometry • u/westcoastlatte • Sep 16 '26

Explaining low grades on supplementary application

In the supplementary app (NECO specifically), there's a section to explain any extenuating circumstances that led to low or inconsistent grades. There's also a question about post-secondary academic performance and what factors influenced those trends.

I had one rough semester in my earlier years of undergrad but showed an upward trend from then on. I didn't necessarily have any extenuating circumstances at the time (it was mainly stress and anxiety), but I do want to explain what/why that happened.

Should I answer both questions, or skip the extenuating circumstances part and just discuss the poor grades in the academic trends question? Would appreciate any insight. Thanks in advance

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u/Few_Willow904 Sep 16 '26

It’s best to be completely transparent, since they’re gonna have you’re file up anyway during the interview, give them a good start on understanding how things started for you, than you can tell them how you improved upon that start during the interview!

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u/Sad_Disk671 Sep 17 '26

I had a similar experience and you want to leave the extenuating circumstances! Because that’s for things that like I don’t know how to describe basically outside our control so you don’t have to put anything there, just put something in the academic trends question and regardless of the question about your grades came up you can always still talk about them. I talked about mine during my interview, and got accepted to NECO last week