Hey, I have been getting all A’s but one B up until my senior year. In my senior year I got 3 B’s 2 A’s and a P. My courseload has always been hard. I applied to mostly top 20 schools and a couple safeties. All my other factors are great. Would colleges reject me just because of my senior year first semester? (The bad grades are mainly due to my ilness and missing so many days of school)
Have you already been accepted?
If you have not been accepted to the schools yet your senior year mid-term performance could hurt your applications. Nobody can predict the impact as it may vary from college to college, from admission officer to admission officer.
If there is a legitimate reason this year’s grades are lower (ex. an illness that caused you to miss a great deal of school etc.) then you may want to ask your guidance counselor to send a short note explaining the issue along with the mid-term reports.
What do you mean by “just because” of those grades? An application has 3.5 years of grades, ECs, test scores, etc., etc. No one single item solely determines acceptance/rejection of an application.
Grades are, however, one of the most important factors in college admissions. First semester Senior year are your most recent grades, so they are probably, along with Junior year grades, the most important. I’m sure you realize that at Top 20 schools, this would be below the level of your fellow applicants, most of whom also have hard schedules. So yes, it likely would negatively impact your application. Whether it doesn’t affect an accept, doesn’t affect a decline, or flips an accept to a decline is impossible to know.
If there are serious circumstances that impacted your school performance, it would be worth a factual communication to the schools. Your GC should have information on how to best handle this.
Thanks, yeah, I basically missed 40% of school this semester and missed the whole finals week due to my illness. This whole semester I was always trying to catch up with my classes, and that’s why my grades are lower than usual
Then I’d definitely ask your guidance counselor to write a brief note explaining your situation and send it along with the mid-term reports.