<p>I got 3 B's during my freshman year; one B and one C during the first semester of my sophomore year. Second semester soph up to second semester junior I have straight A's. It goes like this:</p>
<p>Honors Bio: B
Spanish I: B
Alg. I: B
Honors Chem: B (first semester)
Geometry: C </p>
<p>The rest straight A's in all honors/AP classes. For schools that don't count freshman year, I'll have a 3.94/4.4 GPA; and for schools that do, I'll have a 3.8/4.1 cumulative. </p>
<p>Am I all right for the Ivies grade-wise? Particularly Penn, Princeton, and Cornell?</p>
<p>They do count freshman year. I would say you need to first compare to the other applicants from your school. If another applicant from your school has always gotten straight A’s, has a 4.5 or 4.6 weighted, then you may be out of luck. Of course, essays, recs, Extra Curriculars, test scores, and many other factors are a part of the application process. But these grades are key! Three kids applied from my school; only I got in. I had nearly a 4.60 (weighted GPA) when I applied ED, and the other two had a 4.40-4.45 (weighted GPA). We all had similar scores, though some argue I had better ECs/recs/essays. But bottom line—that transcript is key. As an admissions officer I spoke with once said to me, “The transcript is the first document we look at”.</p>
<p>^^ I don’t think your application is compared with others from your school like that. I bet the other two applicants from your school weren’t accepted because of some other reasons. A 4.4 GPA is fine for Penn, you could say that they passed the GPA part of admissions, but they were rejected for some other reason.</p>
<p>To OP: People from my school have gotten in with 3.8 (w) GPAs (I go to a very competitive public school, top 5 in my state). I’m sure they made up for their grades in other ways, be it test scores, or the grades were explained in the recs. It IS possible, but you are at a bit of a disadvantage. If you got those grades for a reason it will be explained in your counselor rec. I think Princeton may be out of shot though…</p>
<p>Hm :/. Well thank you hardworking21 and dfree. Maybe I should keep my sights on one of the SUNYs or CUNYs. Do you think that I have a shot at those schools?</p>
<p>Also, note that plan on majoring in Psychology or English Literature (not sure which one.) If you notice, most of the poor grades were in math/science (the Spanish one is stupid…I didn’t do the homework or pay attention but got 96-100’s on every test…only thing that saved me there.) I do know that Princeton doesn’t look at freshman year…so to them, I’ll have a 4.0 uw Humanities GPA.</p>
<p>Um what classes it’s in vs. what major you are planning to apply to doesn’t matter too much. Ex. One of the three applicants that applied from my school never took AP Science because she said she wasn’t good at science, and wanted to avoid those classes as they’d lower her GPA. She thought that she could get away with that because she was applying to Wharton. Answer = no. They want to see you challenge yourself in all fields, not just the one you are going to major in, so I don’t think what classes you got the B/C in makes a difference.</p>
<p>And dfree124, it sort of does. The admissions rep that came to my school said the first thing she does is “look at how you compare within your school”, and when someone asked her during the Q & A if applicants are looked at against each other, she said that it is a real possibility. After all, if 20 people from the school apply to Wharton, not all 20 are getting in…unless a miracle occurs. And the past accept-ees from my school have just been the valedictorian, RD. I am in the top 10 rank wise (out of 800ish kids), but not the valedictorian, but I did apply ED. Essentially, if you aren’t a URM, athlete, legacy (basically, if you’re just a “regular” Joe), your grades do need to be at the top.</p>
<p>^^ That’s definitely true, but in a grade such as yours with 800 students, any college (perhaps except HYPS) would be okay with accepting 3 students. I go to a competitive public school with about 180 students per grade, and a few years back we had 4 kids get in. I don’t know whether they all applied to the college, or Wharton, or whatever, but 4/180 got in, so assuming you go to a moderately competitive high school, 3/800 is not a stretch by any means.</p>
<p>Colleges will often accept more applicants from schools that are more competitive, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t compare you with your classmates. For my school specifically, a highly competitive public school with over 30 kids going to Ivys/MIT/Stanford each year, course rigor seemed to be very important in admissions. All of the “unhooked” kids who got into Ivys including myself had taken the most demanding curriculum in comparison to other students.</p>
<p>@Poeme - even if I apply after taking a gap year? The most competitive student in my grade is applying to a state school in Florida (our state.) Will the affect me at all? Our school doesn’t rank at all. </p>
<p>Do you think that my upward trend is strong enough? I mean, even with the C in 10th, it was still higher than my freshman GPA (up 0.4 points for unweighted, and up 0.3 points for weighted.) …Am I completely screwed?</p>
<p>and hardworking - I don’t agree with you. I know someone who got into Columbia with standard math courses all throughout high school (unhooked), and someone who got into Yale with standard pre-calculus in their senior year (also unhooked). It’s not like it’s a death sentence as you make it out to be. Ivies don’t want you to take a class that you’re not interested in just to bump your GPA or impress the adcoms. For example, say SoandSo’s (let’s name him Joe) high school’s highest math course is AP Calculus (or just Calculus in general.) Joe is more humanities based, and plans on becoming say, a psychologist. In this case, Joe should take Statistics instead of Calculus. </p>
<p>“Um what classes it’s in vs. what major you are planning to apply to doesn’t matter too much” >>> I have read in numerous threads on here that it does matter.</p>
<p>From what I have seen, to be competitive for Ivys you should have taken calculus and the highest level science. I am a science major and my two classmates from high school at Penn with me are both humanities majors. Nevertheless we all had taken ap calc (although one took AB instead of BC) and an AP science (one took physics c, one took chemistry, I took both and Calc BC). People accepted at places like Brown and Yale had similar schedules.</p>
<p>I think it is more than fair to say that you should take the most demanding possible course load at your high school. If your school offers APs in math, science, the humanities, english, and foreign language, it will be to your advantage to have taken an AP-level course in all of those fields. At the end of the day, admissions stresses time and time again, “The transcript is the most important document in your application”. And yes, if you can take Calculus, you should take Calculus. Nothing against Stats—I took it last year (with Honors Precalc), and my mom has a Masters in Stats. It’s just that Calc is tougher than Stats, and a majority of majors in college require it (ironically, in Stats, we did research as to how many majors need Calc vs. Stats—Calc was overwhelmingly present).</p>
<p>I’m in Alg. II now, so they won’t allow me to take Calculus by senior year (can’t take it online or over the summer or anything like that.) The only way I can have Calculus is if I self-study it and then take the AP Exam. Would that be ok? </p>
<p>I’m a year ahead of all the other juniors in science and spanish, in AP Euro now, Honors British lit (toughest possible) …just regular math. nothing I can do about that now. trust me, I tried.</p>
<p>work HARD HARD HARD. self-study, dual enrollment, etc. to get your gpa up. show colleges that that was a mere flaw that will NEVER happen again. and good luck!</p>