<p>Hi,
I am currently a freshman in high school and i just finished the first semester. i am taking two AP's, Calc and computer science, and although my grades haven't come back, i am pretty sure that i will have finished both a B+. All my other grades are fine. I read somewhere that the more prestigious the college, the more detailed the evaluation would be. So, two things.</p>
<p>1) will this significantly hurt my chances, now that Stanford uses common app? They have to narrow 30000 applicants to <1800, so if two candidates are equally qualified, is the freshman year the "tiebreaker"? (ex: my unweighted/weighted GPA)</p>
<p>2) If I work as hard as humanly possible the next 3 and 1/2 years , test a 5 on the AP test in May, and show an upward trend, does my first semester still stain my application?</p>
<p>I had learned my hard, hard lesson on doing well at school and i am unable to enjoy this winter break because I have been thinking over my situation, and i would hate to think that this would completely skewer my chances at a top tier college. As a freshman, I do have good extracurricular/accomplishments, such as participation in math club, science club,science bowl, science Olympiad, JETS (junior engineering technical society)(captain of jv team), CSF, and Speech and debate, and i may be getting more leadership positions sophomore year. I have also previously finished SATII math and qualified for USAJMO, and a good record on local competitions, etc, etc..</p>
<p>I attend a competitive school, and if my freshman year is not so good compared to my classmates, have I ruined my chances already?</p>
Taking APs freshman year is impressive enough to begin with and your extracurriculars are great; if you’re qualifying for USAJMO already, then you have a chance at making MOP later on in high school, which will definitely help you. Additionally, many colleges discount freshman year. For example, Princeton disregards it completely when recalculating your GPA. Of course, you should definitely work hard and get As from now on, but this will not hurt you.</p>