Why is it I don’t get to use my freshman grades? I took Geometry and Lab Bio,which are typically soph classes… I got A+ in both and I don’t get to use in my GPA? I took Alg in 8th grade and got an A in that and I can’t use that either? Seems unfair. Am I get punished for being slightly ahead? Am I wrong about this?
You cannot use your Freshman grades for the CSU/UC GPA calculation but they are used to fulfill the a-g course requirements to apply to the CSU’s and UC’s, so they are not a waste. My son took Alg2/Trig as a Freshman with mainly Sophomores whom got credit as a Honors class, but as a Freshman he did not get that Honors credit. It is fair, no. Is life fair, not always. You just have go with the flow. Your HS course rigor will be noted so the schools are aware that you are ahead the many of your classmates.
Do you know why they do this?
No, I do not know why they do not include Freshman grades but there are several other colleges that do not consider them including Stanford.
I’m just guessing, but I wonder if the 10-11 grades is a holdover of the 60s and 70s, when many or most senior high schools ran 10-12. Many of us went to 7-9 junior high schools and then applied to UCs or CSUs out of 10-12 high schools. I do not think the CSU admission factors have changed much over the decades. I remember coming out of high school in the early 80s and the CSUs had a scale based on GPA and SAT score (lower GPAs call for higher test scores) and I see similar scales still around. Still no essays.
Yes, there were some school districts which had 9th grade in middle school.
Also, dropping 9th grade from GPA calculations implicitly captures the effect of an upward or downward trend from 9th to 10th/11th grade.