<p>How much does a bad freshman year affect you for ivies & other really selective schools? I've had As all throughout my soph and junior year (and maybe my senior year too I'll have too wait and see). But my freshman year I had a few C's, a few B's, with a bunch of A's. Excellent ec's/SAT. My freshman year is my problem =/</p>
<p>As long as you've improved and have a nice reason why you were messing up, they shouldn't matter. If you have to get bad grades at the start, improving them drastically is always the best way to go. Additionally, sometimes colleges don't even consider freshman year.</p>
<p>It matters at most schools, so look at schools that don't count freshman year like Princeton and Stanford. Unfortunately, even when they don't count 9th grade, class rank is still effected. The thing is, ivies can fill up 10X with kids who didn't falter any year. I w3ould look hard at schools ranked between 25-50, they really are far more likely to care about trend and forgive a bad year.</p>
<p>I don't think my school looked at freshman/sophomore year as much as the other years. I also didn't do great, I had a 92.88 UW and an 89 UW at an average public school with a few C's and B's. I did awesome Junior/Senior year. You should probably be fine. And like the OP said, some schools don't look at freshman year at all. GL!</p>