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Please help!! Mitigating circumstance??

Hi everybody,

So I'm aiming to study Zoology and my firm choice is Southampton and insurance is Belfast.

Basically, about a month before my exams started, my dog passed away. He was run over by a bastard who left him on the road to die.

To give you some background, I've had this dog since I was 7 years old. I love animals (which is evident by me studying Zoology) and this dog was my best friend. For the past 3 years, my brother and sister have been at university and my mum works in the evenings. So I don't see her from 5.00pm to 11.00pm. So these 3 years, in a house with just me and my mum, where for half of the day she isn't even at home, my dog was the only real company I had (I live in a quiet area and all my friends have gone to university.)

The incident was traumatising. I saw my best friend be hit by a car and stared at his mangled, barely recognisable face whilst I sat with him crying and panicking and not knowing how to get to a vet as my mum was at work. Eventually my neighbour took us. He didn't make it.

This whole thing hit me horribly hard. I wasn't ready to see him go before his time, and I definitely wasn't ready to see his face crushed and watch bubbles of blood come out of his nose as he struggled to breathe. I cannot, to this day, get the image out of my head.

I feel like my studies were majorly affected. I felt lonely without seeing the face I was used to seeing every day. I felt especially lonely in the evenings when I would be alone at home (my father's dead so its only me and my mum who live in the house.) Concentrating during revision was so hard as all I could think about was how he wasn't here anymore and how silent the house was without him. My mind became consumed by these thoughts and I really feel like I've spiralled into depression since it happened.

Here's what I want to ask you,

I'm not too concerned about Belfast, if I don't get in I'll go through clearing. But Southampton is important.

I want to call the admissions tutor for biosciences and tell him what happened, pretty much everything that I've just told you. Luckily I've spoken to him before and I feel like 1) I've made a good impression on him and he considers me as articulate, well-spoken and an enthusiastic, high-energy character and 2) we've built up somewhat of a rapport, albeit nothing major.

The phone call will be hard, any time I speak about what happened, I cry. However (without sounding crude and calculating) I think that if he hears the change and sadness in my tone of voice then that will really drill home how badly this traumatised me. And hopefully that will really make him consider things when results come out.

What do you guys think about this? Will this help? Is it just going to sound like a sob-story (Believe me it isn't) ?

Thank you in advance for your help

Reply 1

Nif

Also, if this makes a difference to your answer, I'm not in sixth form anymore. I'm resitting exams during this "gap year"

Reply 2

Carnationlilyrose

This will get you no extra marks.

Reply 3

Nif

If you read it properly you'll see I'm not trying to get extra marks on my grades. I'm trying to ask people how they think the admissions tutor will respond to the phone call.

Reply 4

Carnationlilyrose

Original post by Nif

If you read it properly you'll see I'm not trying to get extra marks on my grades. I'm trying to ask people how they think the admissions tutor will respond to the phone call.

Any communication requesting consideration of any kind needs to be done via your referee.

Reply 5

Nif

It doesn't "need" to be done. That's just the norm. Doing something out of the norm (like going to the effort of making a direct phone call about a topic which I'll find extremely difficult to talk about) will leave a more lasting impression on him than the countless number of emails he gets from students begging for leniency with extremely minor "mitigating circumstances"

And hopefully when my results come through and he's going through the huge numbers of applicants he'll see my name and stop for a moment to consider my application properly given the circumstances under which I took my a levels

Reply 6

LadyEcliptic

If it's had an impact on you you might (I'm not a doctor or anything) but you could have post traumatic stress (not disorder) because something happened and you are traumatised by it. It would be well worth talking to your referee about it because as far as it goes for extenuating circumstances I'm not sure what happens or what they look for specifically as they judge it on individual cases,

Please help!! Mitigating circumstance??

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