<p>thanks for the opinion.</p>
<p>my thought is that schools don’t take only grades into consideration and i do have legitimate reasons for the sudden drop. the grades will definitely be a negative thing but it won’t kill me.</p>
<p>It’s not really a downward trend because second semester I got straight a’s again.</p>
<p>bump 10 char</p>
<p>bump 10 char</p>
<p>bump 10 char</p>
<p>bump 10 char</p>
<p>Wow, I just read the first few posts and it seems like having a C is the end of the world. Just out of curiosity, is getting a C as a junior suppose to be a million times worse than getting a C as an underclassmen (frosh + sophomore)?</p>
<p>it’s worse because it’s sort of a downward trend rather than an upward but people have told me since I do have a long story to tell that colleges will consider this though the C obviously won’t help me unless I show my improvement from this ordeal or w/e</p>
<p>Everyone’s got dead grandparents and divorced parents. In fact, just under half the marriages in the US end in divorce. And I don’t even know the statistics on children with dead great uncles, but it has to be pretty high. </p>
<p>compete with your grades and your scores. don’t bother trying to line up your troubled home life next to the kids who are applying from inner cities and truly impoverished situations.</p>
<p>Hey thanks for the post. First off, my grandparents and great uncle aren’t dead. They’re currently fighting cancer. Second, I AM competing with my grades, scores and EC’s. I’m just explaining to the colleges why there was a drop in junior year first semester (which I think is better than letting them speculate about what happened). Third, are you one of the children with dead grandparents, great uncle, and divorced parents all combined that was hit with all of this in a short period of time and had to help a little brother who was going through puberty completely failing in school because he was confused? (sorry, run on sentence)</p>
<p>No? I didn’t think so. Thanks for your thoughts anyways.</p>
<p>PS if you feel up to it can you find the statistics on how many people belong in that last category? I want to see how many other people this has happened to. Thanks</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Crimsonuser is just trying to explain why his grades dropped. That explanation is perfectly fine, although i can say i have gone through worse throughout my whole life and i’ve never let my grades drop…maybe i just learned to adapt.</p>
<p>Haha thanks llazar…you’re just smart I guess.</p>
<p>yeah…did I mention that my mom is in depression to the point where she thinks about suicide? She won’t get help so I really have/had to take care of family.</p>
<p>^Suicidal moms for the loss. I know exactly how you feel. Hardly ever gets out of bed, I have to do grocery shopping and drive my siblings to soccer practice, make sure the house doesn’t get too dirty. I’ve been doing this for the past three years. I even drove places before I had a driver’s license to help her out.</p>
<p>But I’m afraid these hardships won’t help us get into college. Everyone has their own challenges to overcome, and the adcoms know this. You don’t want their sympathy, you want their admiration.</p>
<p>She was veryyy involved in activism about Kashmir (India).She was a Kashmiri.You know about the political turbulance there??She was on the committee deciding which steps next to take,what programs to next hold,and what protests to organise,etc to create more awareness about their situation(which didnt have much to do WITH the pol. turbulance…it was a different pressing matter altogether,which shall be difficult to explain to a non-indian)…
Problem is.normal people dont really get a chance to do that isnt it?She had her whole family involved in this stuff i think.Its kinda not fair about that…</p>
<p>@PioneerJones: I know right? Well, I most definitely don’t need their sympathy…I’m just going to tell the story so I can tell them a different story about how I’ve matured and to explain for the drop in grades (which I’ve heard won’t hurt me because I’ve serious reasons but won’t help me either and that I need to show what I learned and so on)</p>
<p>@Perfectpixie: I actually do know the situation in Kashmir…that’s very admirable of your friend. Not sure how much of a plus that would be though.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>“Third, are you one of the children with dead grandparents, great uncle, and divorced parents all combined that was hit with all of this in a short period of time and had to help a little brother who was going through puberty completely failing in school because he was confused?”</p>
<p>The sheer number of people who have gone through experiences as traumatic as this is mind blowing. If you think you’ve had an especially impoverished childhood - even compared to the self-selecting group of kids who apply to top tier colleges - then you’re incredibly self absorbed. </p>
<p>I’m sure it was tough, and I’m sure you can get someone to write about it to “explain” your “bad” grades, but all I’m saying is that people at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and so on and so forth aren’t going to look at your situation and be like, “oh wow this guy had it tough.” You have to remember that the same admissions committees that look at your application will look at apps of kids who grew up in the ghetto, at apps of kids whose parents never even dreamed of college, at apps of kids whose parents never even dreamed that their kids could go to college.</p>
<p>It seems to me that you have a very good chance at many top tier schools - without any of the qualifiers you’ve applied to your situation.</p>
<p>But the truth is that it’s better to explain it on my part rather than let the adcoms speculate why the grades went down. It’s only logical.</p>
<p>bump 10 char</p>
<p>bump 10 char</p>
<p>Your Calc scores suck. Other than that, you are set for some of the lower ivies. The ECs are perfect, and the testing is good. Ap scores aren’t good. Pushing the limit on recs, making you look a little desperate…DON’T SEND IN 5! Definitely a downward trend with grades; which is not good. If you assume that you can pull off straight As in 5 ap classes after the previous years’ records, than you are insane and somehow found some major determination after it was needed…junior year is when that would have been most helpful. Anyways, wait 'till 1st semester grades to send the transcript (only if you think you will get straight As)</p>
<p>Overall, I think you can get into cornell, penn, brown, etc. Columbia is pushing it; and Harvard/Princeton are a HUGE reach. Good luck, but you need some fall-backs in case you don’t get into any of them.</p>
<p>AP scores don’t count in admissions</p>
<p>it’s not really a downward trend, really. I had a drop in one semester and that was it. And I have a reason fit that. Thanks for the opinion</p>