Does Harvard only care about final grades?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>I have a quick question-
In terms of grades and GPA, does Harvard look at each individual semester grades, or only the final grades at the end of the year? Like if I have a few A-'s but wind up with straight A's for my final grades, will Harvard only see those straight A's? Or will they care about any A-/B+'s in certain semesters?</p>

2

<p><a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Docs/DownloadForms/2013/2013MidYear_download.pdf[/url]”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Docs/DownloadForms/2013/2013MidYear_download.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Harvard, and all colleges, receive a mid-year report from your guidance counselor, so they will see your 1st semester senior grades. Do they care about them? You betcha! But, going from A+ to A- does not matter. Going from A+ to B+ might be an indication of senioritis, but will probably will not alter the outcome of an SCEA acceptance or jeopardize an RD potential admit. Going any lower than a B+ might warrant a phone call to a guidance counselor or a thin envelope.</p>

3

<p>To add to that, most high schools only post final grades to their transcripts, so Harvard or any other college isn’t going to see the individual semester grades other than senior year.</p>

4

<p>^^ Actually that depends upon the high school. At my son and daughter’s high school, grades were listed by semester on the transcript for all years.</p>

5

<p>^^ same at my kids’ schools. Both semesters shown. Mid-year reports are important at Harvard!</p>

6

<p>I agree with the others: Harvard cares a lot about your transcript, and they’ll care about all the grades they see. (I also agree with gibby’s point in post #2 that sometimes variation in grades is meaningful, and sometimes it isn’t.)</p>

<p>So for you, Katie, the relevant question may be, what does your school report on your transcript? Is it final course grades only (my kids’ high school does this), or is it semester grades plus final course grades (my high school did this)?</p>

7

<p>there’s a difference between your grades drop after you get into harvard and they drop when you are applying to harvard. For the former, as long as you don’t get mostly B’s or even C’s, you are fine. For the latter, man you betta keep that straight A’s or at most one or two B’s.</p>

8

<p>Hey thank you all for the responses. Just to clarify, I’m a sophomore and it’s my dream to go to Harvard, so I just want to make sure that one bad semester grade will screw me over if
Harvard looks at those.</p>