<p>Happynow, please understand that the majority of the comments on this thread are valid, but within their own context. Now, if it is true that 1 person recieved A’s, this is what you need to do: you need to make sure your counselor knows that only 1 person recieved the A. He or she must include that information in order for you to salvage the B. Clearly all high schools are different in their competiveness, so one school that does not fall victim to grade inflation should not penalize its students for lower GPAs. Ask your counselor to include this information in his/her letter to the college.</p>
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You may have liked my earlier post, you’re probably not going to like this one. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>You need to take responsibility for this grade. In a perfect world every teacher does a great job of motivating students, reaching out to those who need a helping hand, explaining difficult subjects, and so on. A Mr. Kotter and Mr. Chips (from the old TV series and even older movie) rolled into one. But life isn’t like that.</p>
<p>If you breathe a word of your attitude towards this class/teacher in your essays or interviews you are going to surely sink any chances you have of getting accepted at elite schools. Adcoms there know the world isn’t perfect. And so they seek out the students who own responsibility for their lives, who have goals and figure out what it takes to get there. The Princeton’s and MIT’s of the world are not looking for kids who wait for the path to be paved for them; they want kids with the potential to be leaders and pioneers, who show they can create their own opportunities. What you’ve been saying so far reflects a passive approach; it is the school’s responsibility to deliver a good teacher, and if they don’t then its not your fault at all that you didn’t do better. I think you really believe this. You’re entitled to your beliefs no matter what they are, but these aren’t the ones that top schools look for. </p>
<p>You could have taught yourself the material. No rule or law prevented you from self-studying the material. There are tons of websites that explain calculus, you can watch the exact lectures used to teach intro calculus at good colleges (MIT has theirs at [MIT</a> OpenCourseWare](<a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-01Fall-2006/CourseHome/]MIT”>http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-01Fall-2006/CourseHome/)), there are lots of books like “Calculus Problem Solver” that have thousands of worked examples. The students that elite schools look for would have done this instead of making excuses. And to be honest you passed up an opportunity for a shining essay about how you learned calculus that would have had adcoms saying <code>I want this kid at my school</code>.</p>