COVID-19 reshaped a few application cycles in ways that admissions offices genuinely accounted for, but the shelf life of a vague reference to "the pandemic" as an explanation has mostly expired. Here's how to think about it now, and how to write about it if it still genuinely applies to your record.
Does it still apply to you?
By the 2025-26 admissions cycle, most applicants were in upper elementary or middle school during the sharpest disruption of spring 2020 through the 2020-21 school year, not high school. If your high school grades, activities, and testing were largely unaffected because the worst closures happened before you started ninth grade, there's usually nothing to explain, and reaching for a COVID reference anyway reads as grasping for an excuse rather than providing real context. This section is for students whose high school record shows a specific, identifiable effect: a documented grade dip that coincides with an actual closure or remote-learning period you experienced in 9th grade or later, an activity or opportunity that was canceled during your high school years and genuinely never resumed, or significant family hardship, job loss, illness, a caregiving obligation, during that specific window.
How to write it, if it genuinely applies
Keep it to three to five sentences in the Common App Additional Information section, not the personal statement. State the specific circumstance, not "the pandemic affected my studies" but what actually happened: a school's remote-learning transition coincided with your family's job loss, requiring you to work to support the household during a specific semester, and grades in that semester show it. Then state what came after: the recovery, the return to stability, the trend since. A reader's actual question is whether the dip was circumstantial and temporary or reflects your ongoing academic capability, so your last sentence should answer that directly with evidence, not reassurance. "Since returning to in-person instruction in [semester], my GPA has been a consistent [X], reflected in [specific evidence]" does far more work than "I have since recovered."
What reads as a vague excuse
"The pandemic was hard for everyone and affected my performance" explains nothing specific and applies equally to every applicant in your cohort, which is exactly why it doesn't work: it gives the reader no information to weigh, while implicitly asking for a pass every other applicant is also implicitly asking for. Readers who've read thousands of these can tell the difference between an explanation that names a specific mechanism (a closure, a job loss, a caregiving role) and one that names a shared circumstance as if it were a personal one. Specificity is what makes an Additional Information entry actually function as context rather than as a generic appeal for sympathy.
A student I worked with
A student I worked with had a genuinely rough sophomore year: her district's extended remote-learning period in 2020-21 coincided with her mother's job loss, and she took on significant childcare responsibility for two younger siblings while attending school remotely, which shows clearly in that year's transcript. We wrote four sentences: the specific circumstance, the caregiving load, and then the recovery, that by junior year, back in person and with her mother re-employed, her GPA had returned to and then exceeded her freshman-year baseline, with the specific number attached. It read as exactly what it was: a real, temporary disruption with clear before-and-after evidence, not an excuse.
Mistakes students make
- Referencing "the pandemic" generically instead of naming the specific disruption that affected them personally
- Using COVID to explain a weakness that predates or postdates the actual disruption period
- Writing the explanation in the personal statement instead of Additional Information
- Ending on the hardship instead of on specific evidence of recovery
- Assuming every reader still weighs COVID references the way readers did in 2021, when the relevance has narrowed for most current applicants
Need help framing a hard chapter honestly and effectively?
The Admissions Essay Getting Started Guide shows you exactly what belongs in Additional Information versus your personal statement, and how to write both so your record and your story line up.
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