<p>My daughter is a junior at a very competitive public hs. She's taken all honors classes (when offered) since freshman year. She's planning to take 4 AP courses next year when she's a senior.</p>
<p>Her courses this year and grades through mid-term are as follows:</p>
<p>AP CalcAB (A)
Physics H (A+)
Spanish 4H (A+)
Latin 1 (A+)
American History H (A)
English H (B+)</p>
<p>Obviously she's doing well this year. Last year her unweighted GPA was 3.97.</p>
<p>Freshman year was in her words, "a disaster." Final unweighted GPA was 3.54.</p>
<p>Question is: How do the good colleges (not ivies) deal with a kid who didn't do well freshman year but consistenly brought her grades up?</p>
<p>Also, admissions officers are always saying the kids should take as rigorous a program as possible. Will it be a problem that she's waiting till senior year to take most of her APs?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>Well, it depends. It always depends, doesn't it?</p>
<p>An upward trend is a good sign. Some colleges will look at it as "who am I getting now?" instead of "how did this kid do over her entire high school career?" A very few throw out 9th grade scores.</p>
<p>Look, for the VERY most elite colleges, they can get kids who are at or near the tops of their classes at very competitive schools. They tend to prefer those kids over the ones who took fewer weighted courses and didn't perform as well in GPA. But, of course, there are exceptions. If she's a top athlete or has some particular, high-level skill that fills a huge need, that would be good.</p>
<p>I wish there were something definitive to say about this, but I just don't think there is. It's better to have taken a backbreaking schedule and gotten all As than to take a less-backbreaking schedule and gotten some Bs and Cs. That's life.</p>
<p>But there are many, many fine schools where she will be happy that would love to have her. She appears to have done very well.</p>