<p>So, its looking like a might get a B this marking period in yearbook. I have A's in every other class, all AP, and am #1. My SAT is 2300, have good EC, etc. Literally, this B could be the only blemish on an otherwise near-perfect application. </p>
<p>Will schools like MIT, Caltech, Harvard, Princeton, Penn, and Brown care about this one B, or throw it out because it is in an unimportant class. Don't give me the whole one B doesn't matter spiel, because I know it does matter, even if only a little bit. What I want to know is, will a B in a BS class tarnish my application at all? If so, how much?</p>
<p>my god, everyone makes such a big deal about the horrible B’s!! colleges know you’re not perfect. they don’t expect everyone to have straight A’s.</p>
<p>That B does matter, even if only a little bit.</p>
<p>Obviously higher grades are always better, but a single B in a non-academic class is not going to even get close to destroying your chances. Do realize though that at the kind of schools you listed, near perfect stats don’t guarantee anything anyways.</p>
<p>Yearbook, newspaper, art, and chorus require very different skill sets than those required by “academic” subjects. You may finally have encountered something that you aren’t naturally good at. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and is not going to wreck your admissions chances anywhere. The places you listed want to see that you do occasionally step out of your comfort zone.</p>
<p>However, you need to figure out what the A students in that class are doing that you aren’t. Is it really that you don’t have the skill set, or is it that you walk into class every single day with the attitude that you expressed in the title of this thread? If you think the course is not important, and you don’t put in the effort, a good teacher will see that and all the native talent in the world may not be enough to get you an A.</p>