<p>Okay, so I transferred high schools during the middle of the school year and the counselor decides to place me into a photography class. This was because she saw on my old transcript that I had taken an intro to art class(which was required back at the previous school). The first class was okay, it was only an introduction into photography. There wasn't much artistic ability needed. However, come the next semester, she places me into photography 2 and that was where it went downhill. The teacher graded based upon artistic ability which I had NONE of whatsoever. I had no way of dropping the course during the year so I just had to deal with it. I barely managed to scrap past the course finishing with a 72 because every project I turned in came back with "needs to be more creative." It was like dropping an orchestra player into a band class and expecting them to be able to play well.
Do you think this will hurt my chances because all they'll see on the transcript is a 90 something in Photo 1 and a 72 in Photo 2.</p>
<p>You might want to explain to the college why you had a sudden and dramatic grade drop. Don’t explain it though the way you explained it in the post instead explain it something like my teacher graded me lower as she did not think the work I was doing was creative but I personally thought it should my creative ability to a maximum.</p>
<p>How would I do that though? I don’t think there’s an option to explain your electives.</p>
<p>You’re overthinking this. You have an unweighted 3.7 - it’s not a bad GPA. Colleges will most likely either think 1) you took chances with the photography classes, stretching yourself; or 2) just take out the grades for the photography class because it’s an elective. Many colleges will recompute the GPA with just the core academic classes.</p>