ED1 with D on transcript?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Vanderbilt University
1

I’m a junior in high school who is likely to get a D for the first semester grade in AP Calculus. I don’t know what it is about the material (reached out for extra help from teachers, online, hired a tutor) but I just can’t really seem to get it. But to be fair, I’ve never had an aptitude for math.

Anyway, I’m not blaming anyone for my shortcomings, they’re my responsibility and I take ownership of them. The question is how to recover from this so that I still have a shot at getting into Vanderbilt ED1.

I have good grades in all my other classes (I’m taking all APs, mostly As)

I have pretty decent ECs (lots of highly influential work on policy, not going to go too in depth, but I do a lot of work with government officials, both local and national, to implement effective projects in the community with regards to dramatically increasing voter turnout and city planning directly with the mayor; made it to nationals for debate, only two teams get sent from my league a year, very competitive; class VP for two years; and other than that I did an internship at Vanderbilt over the summer of sophomore year, lots of community service, involved pretty actively at my school, won some writing competitions, a lot of activism, etc.)

I also have pretty good test scores (1550 SAT, haven’t taken the ACT).

So if i somehow manage to get an A second semester of AP Calc, could it salvage my chances of getting in ED1? On top of that, if I write a killer essay and get great rec letters? Let me know. Thank you!

2

You’re probably fine, as long as it doesn’t completely kill your class rank, you’re able to do well the next semester, and then you get a good score on the AP exam (4 or 5). Honestly, as long as you get at least a B second semester, at least a 3 on the AP, and stay in the top 10% it really wouldn’t hurt that bad I don’t think (although I probably wouldn’t apply to the engineering school in that case). Your ACT is already pretty solid, ECs sound compelling, and as long as your grades/recs/essays are good, combined with the aforementioned things to demonstrate that you overcame the poor first semester calc grade, I think you’d still have a good chance.

You should probably wait until you actually get the grade before freaking out too much though. I don’t know the specifics of the situation/how grading goes at your school, but curves on semester finals + the addition of end-of-the-semester projects and homework often smooth things out. If this is based on perceived poor performance in a final exam, then keep in mind that your entire class might have found it challenging as well.