Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern;

My name is Nick Ryckman and I am submitting this letter to request an academic appeal for MICR360, a course that I had taken in the Fall 2019 semester. This semester was quite debilitating for me as I suffered significantly from mental health issues. As a life sciences student that is accustomed to the large workload and stress of the Life Sciences program, I initially brushed the mental health symptoms off and attributed it to stress. However, this was not the case. I proceeded to see several doctors about the issue and was eventually diagnosed with depression and anxiety, an illness which runs in the family. The reason I am appealing this grade instead of the other courses from this semester is because I already struggled with microbiology as it is and found this course to be very difficult. In addition, MICR360 consisted of two midterms and an exam worth 60. Although I managed to do well on the midterms, I struggled tremendously when studying for the exam as I was not in a healthy mental state to do so. This explains why I did not drop the course by the deadline. Since I did well on the midterms, I assumed that I could get through the rest of the semester and still do well in the course.

I would like to also highlight that my goal was to apply to medical school this year. My top choice is Western University, and their cut-off GPA is a 3.7 in two of your best undergraduate years. My first semester GPA was a 3.67, however I was not upset about this because I knew I could bring it up in the second semester. I was willing to overlook the fall semester since I knew I would still be eligible to apply, however now that medical schools are not accepting the Winter 2020 grades, this puts my year GPA back to a 3.67 instead of in the 3.8 range. I find this to be extremely frustrating as I know a ¿B¿¿ in MICR360 does not demonstrate my academic capabilities. Considering I paid full cost tuition in Winter 2020, I strongly believe that these grades should be of use. Since I cannot use these grades, I believe I am entitled to a tuition refund or an appeal of my grade in the previous semester which does count towards any professional school applications. This is also the reason as to why I am considering doing a fifth year, so that I could give medical schools another year that is well above a 3.7 GPA. In other words, this course is the only thing preventing me from applying to medicine and the consideration for doing the fifth year. If I can get this grade appealed and have it as a Pass/Fail grade, this will grant me eligibility to apply, as well as save me the cost of another year as this puts quite a heavy financial constraint on me.

I would also like to emphasize the fact that when the winter semester began, I had felt a lot more like myself, which was clearly demonstrated in my grades that semester. I hope that you can consider my request carefully and that you understand that this grade is not a good representation of my academic performance. If you feel that I have not provided enough information of my mental health, I would be happy to meet with someone either in person or over video chat to discuss it further. Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.