I am a high school senior writing my essays and one of the short answer prompts I have to answer is if my academic record gives a good representation of me. I have a 4.5 GPA, I’m in the top 4% of my class, and by the end of this year I will have taken a total of 13 AP classes. I have passed all my AP Exams except AP physics 1 last year which I got a 1 on. My teacher was TERRIBLE, only 3 people passed the mock exam, and he’s no longer allowed to teach AP Physics. I really really tried to understand concepts but I couldn’t because I was so lost. Despite this, I had a high A in the class all year because we got huge curves on the tests and got to do test corrections. I’m wondering if I should mention this situation in my response and try to explain or if I should just leave it out. Thanks
I would say not to write about this. IMO, it makes it look like grade inflation for the class and blaming a teacher for poor test performance is not going to get you very far.
If you ended up with an A, even though you got a 1 on the AP exam, then what you are saying is the following -
Yes, your overall academic record represents you well, but like you, it’s not perfect. You are a very hardworking kid and your grades reflect that. Other than the one small blemish of a single poor AP exam (for which you have a reasonable explanation of extenuating circumstances you’d prefer not to disclose), you are very proud of your academic record.
But then go on and address the other issues that your academic record cannot show - how helpful you are inside and outside of the classroom, how you’ve learned as much from other students as from the teachers, how you tie together topics/lessons from different, unrelated courses blah blah blah. Being a student is not just your grades, but its what you brought to the whole school community, that also matters blah blah blah
Find another topic. Focus on something positive. Colleges are not looking for complainers.
I wanted to add - This may be a time to ask a GC or trusted teacher to review this specific short-essay prompt for you, because you want to be sure you don’t come off as entitled or whiny. I think this may be the first time I respectfully disagree with @happy1, because you have to answer this short-answer prompt. You can’t find another topic.
You don’t want to say simply say “yes”, nor do you feel comfortable simply saying 'no", so I think you should say “mostly” and go on to talk about what else being a great student means to you, outside the academic record.
Don’t report the score. Done.
@3puppies Apologies if I was unclear. In no way did I mean to suggest that the OP not answer the prompt, I did want to suggest that the OP should not focus his/her short essay on complaining about a teacher and highlighting a low AP score. By saying “find another topic” I meant find another angle/a different story to tell to answer the prompt. I completely.agree that the short essay must be completed.