Bad Senior Year grades... affect admission?

<p>So I received one of those emails from UCLA (the supplemental application) stating that they wanted more information and all that jazz. I filled out the application (2 essays) but it also included a request for senior year grades (first semester) and second semester classes. I know my essays were good, but will my grades jeopardize my chance at admission?</p>

<p>ap calc-c
ap lit-c
ap comp sci ab-b
ap gov-a
ap physics-c</p>

<p>thats 3 c's one b and one a.</p>

<p>If they are interested in me, and I wrote very compelling essays, will my grades be a big enough factor to deny admission?</p>

<p>is there anything I could do now? perhaps email my school's ucla representative and give reason for my lower grades, such as taking a job senior year in october or personal problems in my family? what do you think</p>

<p>ouch... it probabyl wouldnt have been that bad had u not recieved the supplemental thing</p>

<p>but since u did and u have to report those ur kinda screwed unles u hace a good reaso</p>

<p>Just give up. It's over! :rolleyes:</p>

<p>


...the hell is this? Can you not read? How difficult are Chaucer, Shakespeare, Beowulf (Anonymous), Milton, and 19th century monsters like Dickens, Austen, the Bront</p>

<p>Geezus calm down guys. The OP seems to have slipped "a bit" senior year and what's done is done. xxfly4lyfxx, all you can do now face the fact that you received bad grades and send in that supplemental application with possibly a reasonable explanation for the the drop in grades. Just don't give up yet. It's not over until 5/1 (that's when SIRs are due) Best of luck!</p>

<p>Calm down? This is about success! We don't need glorified mediocrity! :rolleyes:</p>

<p>this is CC dagnabit!</p>

<p>This....... is.......... SPARTA</p>

<p>sorry couldnt resist.</p>

<p>but you were borderline so getting the supplemental meant your app could have gone either way. you shouldnt have slacked and you may pay the price but the damage is done so not much else can be said except to wait it out and hope for the best while expecting the worse (what other cliches can i toss in? suggestions? advice? mucho gracias and #$%@$ my essay is due at 8 am tomorrow im so #$@@#$ @#$@#)</p>

<p>oh yeah, for your essay, dedicate some of the words to explaining your grades and i hope you either have a good explanation or do a better job selling it than you did in ap lit. nevermind you did say why it could have dropped. i hope you do a good job selling it since a lot of other applicants also had jobs and maybe family problems but were able to persevere nicely.</p>

<p>see the problem is i already submitted but now that I think about it, i should have justified the grades in senior year. however, i didnt, and now im regretting it. in the part where they ask to explain hardships, i talked about hardships throughout my whole time in high school, not specifically senior year. So now im thinking that I should send UCLA an email. Do you think thats bad?</p>

<p>also, i suck at english, so cant blame me there. i slacked off now i need to find a way to justify it or make up for it. i WONT give up, UCLA is my #1 choice so come on guys positive criticism/help plz</p>

<p>Ok, if this was the run of the mill "I screwed up senior year will it affect my provisional contract" thing, I would say you still have a shot. But this is involving a supplement, and, when you get a supplement, you're usually borderline. There's no "help"ing what's going to happen. 3 Cs is not impressive, and there's nothing more you can do now than wait for the results in March. Quite frankly, you have nothing left to lose whether you send an email to UCLA or not, because no one on this forum is going to reasonably say that you can get in with those sort of senior year grades.</p>

<p>but will this be enough to deny admission to ucla if my EC and other parts of my application are good? If so, what I want to know is what email will be most effective, and whether they will even take it into account because i heard they dont but im not sure</p>

<p>You asked for opinions, and people are just being honest. If you don't weight your GPA, you have a 2.6, and even if its weighted, it's a 3.6. That just simply isn't good enough and shows that you aren't able to handle difficult AP courses. I don't care how rigorous your school is and more importantly, neither does UCLA unless it's top 10 in the state.</p>

<p>Unless you personally devote 15 hours a day to saving babies in Africa and are the captain of three varsity sports, the math league team, the academic decathlon team, and the forensics team, your ECs and volunteer work won't do anything for you now.</p>

<p>If you want to send a letter, go ahead. But outside of a death or fatal illness in the immediate family (and even that isn't too strong an excuse), nothing you say is really going to help to "justify" your lackluster performance this past semester.</p>

<p>Also, if you really do "suck at english," why did you decide to take AP Lit? That is your fault, so yes, we can blame you.</p>

<p>NOTE: all of the above can be voided if you are being recruited for a sport.</p>

<p>Jump, jump, jump! :p</p>

<p>First off, maybe you should consider going to a community college. Before you start foaming at the mouth, community colleges can help your chances of getting in (you must help yourself by getting great grades and possibly entering the honors program and Alpha Gamma Sigma - if there is a charter at the college). My reasoning behind all of this is that universities like UCLA are more inclined to offer admission to someone who has finished two years as opposed to an incoming freshman. Why, you ask? Well...they think it's a better investment. The community college student has already invested the time and dedication. It's a 99.9% bet that they will graduate. A freshman could drop out the next semester. There goes a spot that someone else could have had.</p>

<p>I can't speak for all community colleges, but the one I go to has 100% acceptance rate to UCLA in our Honor's Transfer Alliance Program (not to mention 8 people who went to Berkeley and the student who got into Stanford). So...rethink your options.</p>

<p>Sooo....that's my advice.</p>

<p>In general, it's best to go to the school that accepts you. You might not do well at UCLA. ECs are not everything, essays are not everything. It's the total package that counts. You are already a borderline case and your senior year grades do not help you. You might be ok with lower tiered UCs.</p>

<p>"but will this be enough to deny admission to ucla if my EC and other parts of my application are good? If so, what I want to know is what email will be most effective, and whether they will even take it into account because i heard they dont but im not sure"</p>

<p>Ok, what else besides grades is there to go on from senior year? Tacking on an EC in senior year is not showing commitment or dedication, so how would that affect it significantly? If you did do it throughout high school, then they'd know already anyways, so that's nothing new. An "effective" email would grovel for another chance in second semester with a weak excuse and promise to take 100000 classes in JCs over the summer, but I doubt that's going to be effective at this point. It's much better just to resign yourself to waiting for a month to get your decisions, stop worrying about college, and enjoy the rest of your senior year (you'll miss it soon). It's better to learn not to slack off early (undergrad admissions) than realize it later (grad/med/law/business school admissions)</p>

<p>thats some of the best advice i've heard yet. i'd kill myself to go to the CC in my area because any dumbass can get in, and to be around people like that again would just devastate me. I always wanted an upper tier UC but i guess i may settle. I heard UCSD has no social life though, and i only applied to UCB, UCLA, UCSD, and UCI. I think that making some excuse will just be dishonest, even though i spent the whole day thinking of what I could say. Perhaps i'll email UCLA and ask if it'll be a big issue in my admissions, hopefully it wont. But do you think I should email them asap, or wait until friday, when a UCLA representative will be at our school (to meet with juniors) thus giving me an opportunity to talk with one face-to-face.</p>

<p>My son didn't do very well his first three years of high school, then made honor roll his senior year (very competitive public hs). He was accepted at several of his top-choice schools (strong LACs). Luckily, he had good SATs....</p>

<p>the strong sat's probably helped, but good grades toward the end shows initiative and will to succeed. lower grades like mine probably show slacking off. wow, i wish i could redo this last semester : (</p>

<p>^It's not slacking off. You over committed with AP classes. DD said senior year is 10 times harder than junior year. She thought she could relax.</p>

<p>will UCLA know that my demanding schedule of 5 AP classes and a job caused my lower grades? if not, is it too late to communicate this to them?</p>