Hi! I am a rising high school senior who is looking to apply to the Wharton School of Business for undergraduate studies. I got an A-/A- in Honors Algebra I, an A-/B+ in Honors Geometry, and a B/B+ in Honors Algebra II. However, I did well in Honors Pre-Cal (A/A+) and even better in AP BC Calculus (A+/A+, and a 5 on the exam).
Will my early bad grades in math kill my chances of getting into Wharton?
@mirawan68 your grades are not terrible but def not impressive, i.e there will be many applicants with better grades and wharton does look for high grades in math. i cant really chance you until you give me your other stats like SAT breakdown, GPA, ECs…
OP,
My son had Bs in trig and pre-calc, both taken at the community college, when he applied to Penn. He got in (as a Fine Arts major). I think your test scores and upward trend would somewhat mitigate a few Bs in math, but I don’t know what Wharton looks at in admissions.
That is a really unusual grade pattern! I am not certain I have ever heard of someone going from a B in Algebra II to A+ in Calculus BC. Is there a story there?
In any event, the A+s and 5 in AP Calculus BC pretty much wipe out any concern about math ability, provided the math SAT I score and Math 2 SAT II are consistent with that. They don’t, of course, wipe out the effect on your overall GPA, but if those are your only “bad” grades the damage won’t be that significant. Elite colleges, including Penn, want students who will be doing great work in the next 5-10 years. They care about your 9th grade grades only insofar as they help predict that, which is not very much where someone’s more recent grades are radically different.
If there is a good story, it may help to tell it. Not to explain your old bad grades – that’s weak and grade-grubby – but to show how you discovered you loved math, something like that.
(By the way, when did you take all those courses? Five high school math courses in three years, with at least three of them dependent on having completed some or all of the others? Did you take all of those courses in high school? Did you take Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus at the same time? This doesn’t quite hang together.)
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you will get into Penn, even if everything else on your resume looks perfect. But I wouldn’t worry too much about old Bs where you have done really well in more advanced courses.
@JHS I actually took Algebra 1 in 7th grade, Geometry in 8th, Alg2 in 9th, Precal in 10th, and BC Calc in 11th! I didn’t really take school seriously in middle school, and I had an Alg2 teacher that was notorious for being one of the hardest in the school (she took off 7 points on one of my tests because she said my 0 looked like a theta- and we were being tested over asymptotes which didn’t have anything to do with theta), but tbh it was mostly my fault- I didn’t really do practice problems or anything, but started studying a lot once I got to precal. That’s actually a really good idea though! Maybe I should write my essay about how I hated math but then loved it after working hard at it and stuff…
Thank you so much! 
If your transcript makes clear that those grades were earned in 7th-9th grades, I wouldn’t worry about it at all. you should ask your guidance counselor.
Also, you should plan to take some more math your senior year. Not AP Stats, something that follows on calculus, if you can.
@mirawan68 OP, I agree with @JHS. If I were you, I would try to find a way to take multi-variable calculus, if possible. AP Stats seems to be viewed as a much easier class. You can take Stats in college.
@Much2learn @JHS That would’ve been such a good idea… my school doesn’t offer it but I could’ve signed up for dual credit or something. I’ll try signing up for an online multivariable calc course! Thank you guys so much for that tip!
I would add that Stats will probably be more useful to most people, but right now I think you are not really trying to choose the more useful class. I think you are trying to impress top colleges, and differentiate yourself from other students.