My whole life I have always had good grades. However, last year (my freshman year of high school), I moved quite a few states away and had to restart at a new school. Keep in mind it was halfway through the year. Anyways, my freshman year was going okay. I had high A’s in most of my classes (I had a high B in Honors Biology, a low B in Algebra 2, and then a 75 in Algebra 2 for the 2nd marking period). However, when I moved to my new school, my grades were not the same. I had a weird mix of A’s, B’s, C’s, and lastly two F’s. I completely failed the second half of my year of Algebra 2 at this school, and it dropped my gpa drastically. I also had a D in History, which I didn’t have at my old school. I ended up ending the year with an unweighted gpa of 3.1 and a weighted gpa of 3.3. My grades from my previous school were not counted, and I had an extremely hard time trying to catch up after missing half the year. My new school taught different material than this school, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t do well on my final exams/state tests either. So what I’m asking here is simple- are my chances at a good college ruined? Can I get into any college with a 3.1 gpa freshman year? Would my chances change if I worked harder for the next 3 years and received way better grades? My heart was set on NYU before I came to this school and I’m very upset about this.
One thing everyone learns over time is that setbacks happen. It would be great if we could all rely on ourselves and circumstances to be 100% in our favor all the time, but then how would we learn the coping skills we need for real disasters?
You are clearly a motivated student because you are not in denial about the impact your bad semester may have on your college choices. It’s a reality. You know it and therefore can face it.
Moving forward, just make sure to keep an upward momentum to your GPA from now on. I can think of several ways you could handle that semester’s blip in your essay as a narrative in which you didn’t just despair & give up. --As long as you don’t despair & give up.
That said, I tell those I’m responsible for not to get stuck on any one school: You’re really not in charge of where you get in, you’re only in charge of yourself. Compose a list of matches, reaches, and real safeties–make sure they’re all schools you’d be pleased to attend. Whether or not you get into NYU was never up to you, either way.
So don’t give up. Keep motoring. There are many possible schools at which you can be productive and happy.
You have two years to go before you apply to college, and much can change. And there are thousands of “good” schools. If you mean HYPSM and the like, probably your chances won’t be great, but it’s hardly as if those schools are a good shot in the first place.
You had a rough year. Move on. When the time comes, focus your energy on creating a balanced list of schools to apply to. Avoid falling into the idealized dream school trap, because that’s a good way to set yourself up for disappointment.
Getting into a good school shouldn’t be your concern right now. Just focus on your sophomore and junior years of high school and worry about it later before your senior year. Yes, your GPA is really low for top colleges. However, stressing about whether you are going to get in or not won’t help at all. If you are having trouble at your new school, worry about your classes and grades, not your college application.
You just wrote your college essay. One question is usually something like what obstacles did you have to overcome and how did it affect you? . Usually a counselor will point this out to the colleges also. Just do the best you can. A lot of colleges will discount the freshman year. Upward trends are key… Do that!
It sounds like the new school wasn’t the whole problem. Being in Algebra II as a freshman is an accelerated track that it doesn’t really make sense to be on if you’re getting low B’s in math, which was the case even before you moved. It seems as if you were already moving forward too quickly at the expense of a solid foundation, and then it really caught up with you when you changed schools.
IMHO the important thing is not so much your freshman grades, as the question of whether you’re adequately prepared to go forward from there and be successful. You’re at least going to repeat the whole year of AlgII, right? And there’s probably some kind of grade recovery available for the history class? The important thing is that you don’t want to be playing catch-up for all of high school. Step it back and make sure you are really solid on the basics, or you will struggle unnecessarily for years to come. The way you describe your grades, I’m actually finding it hard to picture how they end up averaging as high as a 3.1 (are you sure that’s right?), and I can’t help wondering if a fresh start on the entire 9th grade year might not pay off tremendously in the long run, especially if you’re young for your grade. But if that option isn’t on the table, then just be clear-eyed about what it will take to do well going forward.
NYU may not be in the cards (and tbh, so many hang onto that dream until senior spring when they realize the financial aid is terrible and they can’t actually afford it https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/the-expensive-romance-of-nyu/278904/ ) but there are few bridges burned here if you do well from now on. But you may need to put some supports in place, like tutoring to help backfill any gaps in your previous preparation. Whatever you do, don’t overload your sophomore schedule to try to make up lost ground. Start where you really are, keep your course load reasonable, and allow for the time and support to work on any weaknesses you come across. If you are diligent and don’t cut corners, you can do great going forward and have many excellent college options.
You can defintely get into a good school if you do really well for your rest of your school career.
Also try to see if you can redo the classes you failed for a better grade.
Your chances are not ruined by any means.
When Tufts (a pretty good university by most people’s standards) held an event in our area the representatives explained that one of the things they liked to see was a steady increase in gpa. They showed examples of successful applications and explained how they looked behind the numbers to see if there was a reason for any lower grades.
Do not throw the trowel in. Apply yourself moving forward and keep your chin up.
Show that you turned it around by knocking it out of the park for the next 3 years… Moving is really hard and lets face it 9th grade is still middle school territoryish…lots of stresses and changes without factoring in a move. Colleges know this. You’ll be fine.
With A’s, B’s, C’s, and F’s, there is no way that your GPA is 3.1, it’s simply mathematically impossible. Are you sure it’s not 2.1? You may actually have a GPA lower than that to be honest. Take all of your semester grades, obviously from both semesters and do the math yourself. An A gets 4 points, a B gets 3, a C gets 2, a D gets 1, and F’s get nothing. Add that total number up, and then divide it by how many grades you have (aka how many classes you’ve taken). A 3.1 is a B average, so clearly thats not you. The only way it’s 3.1 is if your school computes GPA In a different way, if so it would need to be translated to a 4.0 scale anyway because that’s the standard scale that colleges use. So let’s assume you have a 2.1 on a 4.0 scale. It’s going to be near impossible for you to ever raise your GPA to above 3.6, which honestly won’t even get you into a number of schools (if you’re thinking like Ivy, Michigan, Norte Dame, Clemson, Duke, North Carolina, Illinois, Georgia Tech,etc). NYU is extremely competitive and they only accept around one third of applicants. If memory serves me, the average high school GPA of NYU students is around 3.7, maybe even the upper 3.6’s. Which, is pretty low for a school with that acceptance rate. For example, Georgia Tech only accepts about one third of applicants, but their average high school GPA is 3.98. Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that in a year or two, NYU won’t even be on your mind. You’re only a Freshman, so you have a lot of time to think about colleges which creates a very fluid situation. Most of my freshman year I wanted to go to Northern Illinois University, then at the end of that year and the summer I wanted to go to BYU, then all of sophomore year It was Clemson and maybe even ole Miss, and finally now I’ve decided on either Indiana Univeristy or Clemson. And that’s not hairbrush me, that’s every high school kid. Anyways, You are really going to have to do well these next two years (senior year grades really don’t matter as you’ve already applied/been accepted to college). You are definitely going to want to get pretty much all A’s, which honestly isn’t all that difficult if you manage your time properly. You really don’t have to be a brainiac to succeed in regular high school classes. I was once in your position, sort of. I had a 3.77 after Freshman year (10 A’s and 3 B’s) and then first semester sophomore year I got 3 A’s and 3 B’s. That sunk my GPA badly to around 3.69. But then I came back next semester and got 6 A’s. So just because you have a bad semester, doesn’t not mean that your incapable of having good semesters in the future. Just try your best, that’s really all that’s important.
I agree with others. The main thing that you have to focus on right now is to try to be prepared to do well your sophomore year of high school.
I am concerned that math is an area where what you are going to learn in September depends a lot upon what you were supposed to learn last year. If you have jumped ahead to a level that you couldn’t handle then you have a gap in your knowledge that you are going to need to fix quite quickly to be prepared for September’s classes. Repeating algebra 2 seems like something to at least very seriously consider, but even then you should make sure that you know the prerequisites.
A similar issue can occur in language classes, and to some extent in all classes.
As others have said, you can definitely get into a very good university if you can pull up your grades for the rest of high school. Whether it will be NYU is something that it is too early to even think about.
As a rising soph, you sure you want NYU or it’s really about NYCity? Lots of other options there. And there are lots of fine colleges across the US, even a thread on CC for B students.
I changed hs a month into jr year, the differences were equally striking. Though I kept a good gpa it was nowhere near the prior. It did mean my college ideas shifted, but I never have regretted the move, for the higher level of education and other positives. You’ll figure out your best college options in a couple of years. Meanwhile, catch your breath and try to do your own best.
Are you retaking the classes you got D and F in through summer school or online school?
What classes are you scheduled for in the fall?
I think it might’ve been the other classes that I took that made it up to a 3.1. I took a few other classes (electives) that I earned 100’s in so maybe that’s why it was at a 100. The only grades I received that weren’t A’s last year was one semester of algebra II.
Are you retaking the classes you got D and F in through summer school or online school?
What classes are you scheduled for in the fall?
Some schools (coughstanfordcough) don’t even calculate your freshman year. You can look at what programs in your school let you retake/replace bad grades, or focus on showing growth.
Except that a D or F are expected to be ‘repaired’.