<p>Sorry, but those freshman grades kill any chance you could have had at Columbia and Brown. Students with 4.0’s get rejected easily at such colleges so it’ll be almost impossible for you to compete with them. Don’t worry, however, as there are still a couple methods you can use to get into a top 25 college. I know this because I used these methods myself.</p>
<p>I had the same problem as you when I was applying. My freshman grades were bad (had around 4+ B’s) but my sophomore and junior grades were (almost) all A’s. In fact, my UWGPA was actually .1 higher without freshman grades. In addition, the rest of my app was actually quite good (check this thread if you’re interested in my stats: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/carnegie-mellon-2017/1431553-official-carnegie-mellon-2017-results-thread.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/carnegie-mellon-2017/1431553-official-carnegie-mellon-2017-results-thread.html</a>). </p>
<p>I knew my freshman grades were bringing me down so I deliberately searched for colleges that didn’t consider freshman grades. By a happy coincidence, Carnegie Mellon, which was already one of my top choices, didn’t consider freshman grades at all. I applied to Carnegie Mellon ED and was accepted. Had I applied to any other school with a similar USNW ranking, I would probably have been rejected due to my low GPA. There aren’t many colleges that ignore freshman grades (Stanford and CMU are the only two I know of) but you should look for those colleges when applying. If you continue working as hard as did last semester, you can present a strong application to those schools and get admitted. Don’t give up yet; there’s still hope.</p>