<p>I'm a junior in highschool, and it seems that everyone I've been talking to says that senior grades and classes don't really seem to matter. Any truth to that? Is first semester of senior year most important?</p>
<p>Yes, first semester senior year grades are VERY important. Senior courseload is even more important - you should have your heaviest courseload senior year, or at least match it with junior year. Colleges want to see you challenging yourself senior year.</p>
<p>That's why instead of taking Astronomy and Study halls like some of my friends in their senior years, I'm shoveling Physics, Pre-Calculus and AP English onto my plate. Hopefully the colleges I apply to will want to see my first semester senior year grades because I'll be as focused as I am this year.</p>
<p>19383 I agree from first hand knowledge with our D. Not only is strength of schedule important but be in a borderline situation your Mid Term grades come into consideration. Also all college attendance is contingent on submitting your final transcript.</p>
<p>I agree with 19382, almost all colleges ask for a mid-year report. I received an acceptance letter today from a top LAC that had a P.S. at the bottom stating they would request an end of year transcript and that my acceptance was contingent upon maintaining the grades/courses I have throughout the previous 7 semesters.</p>
<p>Okay I see this myth of the all-importance of senior grades needs to be put into perspective. I think this concept is so popular because there are so many students on CC who had mediocre grades their sophomore and/or junior year but managed to earn better grades their senior year (I was one of them) and optimism kicks in and there is a tendency to believe this is true. The reality is, it depends, although for the most part senior year grades are not that important.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the following analysis is for the purposes of admissions mostly.</p>
<p>Firstly, I will stress that sophomore year and junior year grades are the most important. That is almost indisputable. If I had to rank the years in terms of importance I would say junior year, sophomore year, senior year, freshman year. Now, how important senior year grades depends on the situation. From what I see, most colleges decide whether or not to admit you based on sophomore/junior year grades, and use senior year courseload/grades to make sure that you are still on-track and not slacking off. What does this mean? It means that if you have great grades 9-11, then you suddenly get a bunch of Cs, then that might raise a red flag and they might reconsider admitting you. In that case, yes I agree senior year grades is very important. If you are borderline, then having great first semester senior year grades can definitely help, but I'm not convinced how much.</p>
<p>But like I said, that's not most people I see on CC. Most people are like the ones I mentioned, who have decent grades 10-11 and great grades senior year (hint: senior year tends to be easier). For those people, the 4.0s senior year won't help too much in getting you admitted. It's not going to somehow "compensate" for your earlier lackluster grades. So I think it is a bit misleading when people always come on these threads and say "yes of course! Senior year grades are very important and you should take the hardest courseload possible!" For most students applying to college, senior year grades won't have much of an influence on the admissions decision. It's only under certain uncommon situations that they will come into play.</p>
<p>I'll end by saying last year someone on CC didn't send in a midterm report into Cornell and called its office. The office told him "don't worry about it; we don't really look at it."</p>
<p>what about getting admission taken away? most of this is talking about getting accepted, but would "getting a bunch of C's" senior year result in getting your admission rescinded?</p>
<p>
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I'll end by saying last year someone on CC didn't send in a midterm report into Cornell and called its office. The office told him "don't worry about it; we don't really look at it."
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whew... That's good... It's really hard for me to maintain all As this year, considering the stress of college applications, and everything else (clubs, etc)</p>
<p>my guidance counselors hand out an article about a kid who had great grades, got accepted into his top college, and then got his acceptance withdrawn because he got senioritis and did really really badly on his grades. He went to summer school or something, pulled them up and got reaccepted, but just be careful. They don't need to see all A's but a dramatic decrease in your grades indicate to colleges that you are being lazy.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider for those of us near/at the top of our classes: if you slack off 2nd semester, you risk missing out on val/sal at graduation. Personally, I'm keeping close tabs on the work ethics of 2-4 in my class because I want to be able to give a speech at graduation.</p>
<p>ye i could care less about that. I'm probably losing my sal. I was actually .01 away from teh val at the end of junior year, but alas, senioritis has gotten the better of me and I'll probably have 1/2 B's by midyear.</p>
<p>I applied to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and all the other top Ivies. I know I'm going to get a C in one of my classes this year. Am I screwed?</p>
<p>btw, I've kept a 4.0 unweighted so far and I'm valedictorian. But it's going wayyy down now.</p>
<p>It's just all the stress from college apps. And one of my classes is really tough.</p>