UT Austin SOP - experience of moving from a private school to a public school

I am applying to UT Austin and need to write an essay.

I am going to write about my experience of moving from a private school to a public school. I chose this because even though I made all A's and B's throughout high-school this move ruined my GPA. The private school was not a state school therefore, the grading system was much different. When I transferred I was in the bottom half of the class. When I graduated I jumped 60 people.

I want UT to know I am not just an idiot, and there is reasoning behind my high-school transcript. I also don't want it to sound like an excuse.

PLEASE HELP!!!

You made a great point in your question: that you do not want to make it sound like an excuse. Keep in mind, though, that that is exactly what you are doing. You walk a fine line and because of that need to be very aware of the diction that you use.

The thread is called "need help for an opener" so I am assuming that you know exactly what you want to talk about in the body of the essay. For the intro, you could cite examples in which standardized methods of evaluation, like GPA and class rank, can often be misleading. If you've ever talked about BMI in phys ed, you've probably heard the famous fact that Shaq is considered to be morbidly obese, despite being a world-class athlete, because of his high weight : height ratio. I'm sure that if you brainstormed, you could come up with some similar examples. I feel that such an intro would be a unique way to introduce the topic and show some outside research on your end as well as creatively relating to your personal circumstances.

mmcnulty25, thank you so much for your feedback!
I actually loved your Shaq comment so much that that is the example I decided to use. I thought it would be so different and attention grabbing!