I got an f for geometry 3rd quarter. I am so upset because I have never gotten an F. Colleges don’t see quarter grades right? If I were to get a high C, B or A for 4th quarter, what would my semester grade be? I really am going to push and do good next quarter. I wouldn’t have to make up this quarter during the summer correct?
Thanks
Only you can know what they will see. Some schools only send final year grades and some will send two semester grades. Ask your gc. And study hard!!! Good luck!
Colleges will see the grades posted on your transcript. Do you get one final grade/class for the year, 2 semester grades or 4 quarter grades/class? If you get your grade up to a C or higher, then you should be fine.
Your teacher is probably a better person to answer that, compared to random people on the internet that don’t know your teacher or school.
How did the grade turn into a F? In a previous post from Jan you said you were a HS sophomore http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/1852119-im-so-upset-grade-help-please.html In that post you had a 69.88% in Geometry and expected a D+.
Since you asked for advice, here’s mine. Don’t worry about college admissions. You’re in 10th grade so even if colleges see this grade it won’t matter much! They’ll take your work junior year and 1st semester senior year as more reflective of the kind of student you are. Much more important than stressing over what colleges might think 2 years from now is figuring out why you are flunking the class and how to fix it.
A lot of HS kids (and college kids too!) have never learned good study habits and they suffer for it. Are you not spending enough time studying? That means in a quiet room, no texting or TV or music. Do you do practice problems? There is a series of books such as “Geometry Problem Solver” that has thousands of worked problems on the topics covered in a typical HS class; its like a SAT review book for geometry (they also have them for algebra, chem, you name it). Have you asked your teacher if she has noticed a pattern of what you get wrong?
Get to know your guidance counselor well. They will be more than happy to answer your questions.
@mikemac Yes, I had a D+ for first semester but she rounded it to a C-. Now it is the end of the 3rd quarter and I got an F. Math has never been my subject at all. All of my other grades are A’s and B’s and one C. So next quarter (4th quarter) I have to do better otherwise, I will be retaking 2nd semester geometry probably during the summer and my parents will kill me if I fail a semester! Thanks for your advice. I will also be emailing my counselor asking for math tutors. So you are for sure colleges won’t care about this grade? An F is a big deal to me. My overall GPA right now is a 2.8 which isn’t too well…
If F is your final grade, then the colleges will care. If F is your quarter grade and it is not posted on your transcript, then you should be fine as long as you get the final grade up to a C or higher. Definitively look into a Math tutor.
@Gumbymom yes, this F is just a quarter grade. I’m going to really try my best next quarter so I can get this final/semester grade up.
I wholeheartedly agree with the advice to get some one on one tutoring. If your foundation in math is weak, the problem will only compound over time if you don’t tackle it hard now.
Look, I know it’s hard and disheartening to struggle in a subject in school, but you can’t do anything about the past right now. It’s best to just accept the grade you got, and don’t waste any more time or mental energy worrying over it. It will be far more productive to pour yourself into shoring up your math weaknesses now. Colleges definitely will take note of someone who turned around a bad grade and saw an upward trend - use that as your goal!
Lesson 1: don’t trust things anonymous people tell you on the internet, verify L-)
But if you look back, I didn’t say “they won’t care.” I wrote “it won’t matter much”. The 2 sentences are not equivalent. Colleges will notice it if you fail a class (although you don’t know w/o checking with your GC if this quarter grade goes on transcripts they send out, or just end of semester grades). But if you’re going to fail a class its better to do it in 10th grade and improve in the future, than to fail one in a later year.
This is a fine example of what Carol Dweck at Stanford, a leading researcher in psychology, has called a “fixed mind set”. See http://mindsetonline.com/ And you ought to infer, from the way I’ve put this, that a fixed mind set is not a great thing. You don’t know if you can do better at math, but with that outlook you are building walls in front of doing better.
I won’t deny that some kids around you seem to have an easier time in math, maybe even actually enjoy it. But without a time machine and the power of invisibility to watch them you don’t know if its innate ability or the accumulation of thousands of hours over the past 10 years where they put in more work than you. I think there’s probably no argument that you haven’t done as much as you can to learn math if its just now you’re going to get a tutor. And let me try a few more: how do you study for a test? Do you review the book and your notes before a test? This is common, yet it is one of the least effective ways of learning new material. Better approaches are self-testing and distributed practice, both explained in a book you ought to get called “Make it Stick” that explains what research has shown about learning effectively.
While I hope you can get a tutor, hearing explanations is not alone going to fix things although if you’re completely lost you need some steering to get back on track. You’ll only learn geometry when you sit down and solve problems, frustratingly slow problem after problem, until it sinks in. The tutor is a start, but its only if you get that problem-solver book and spend time with it that you’ll start learning the material. Another resource to think about is a lecture by the Teaching Company that is on sale now: http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/high-school-level-geometry.html
This post is getting too long, but I’ll leave you with this. You wouldn’t expect to learn to play a piano or tennis by listening to someone talk about it and maybe practicing an hour or two. You understand that it takes regular practice, improvement is not daily but seems to come in bursts after plateaus, and that it takes discipline to get ahead. Math and science is no different. With math/science it’s not agility in moving your fingers and arms but proficiency in manipulating symbols. Both, in the end, reflect a mind at work, a learned set of skills. Yet somehow people think that listening in class and doing the homework (with repeated flipping back to the examples in the text to figure out the answers) will get it done.