<p>Ok so I have just started junior year and I am doing horribly compared to freshman and sophomore year. I am a straight A student, but for some reason I am struggling so much and I have 3 B's! Even though 2 of them are in AP/Honors classes and the other in an Accel class, I am freaking out. I know I can bring up at least one of them to an A, but I'm just really worried. Do you think having 3 or 4 B'a all together looks bad on a transcript and will ruin my chances to go to my dream schools - Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech? Other than these B's, I'm pretty much the "ideal" student in the top 4% of 1000 students with a ton of extracurriculars and blah blah blah.... </p>
<p>By the way, the B's are in Honors Pre-Calc, US History Accel, and English AP. I'm almost positive I can raise my grade to an A in either Pre-Calc and/or English, I'm not too sure about US History.</p>
<p>Instead of worrying about college, focus on your current classes and figure out why you’re having so much difficulty all of a sudden. Then figure out how to get help. Or, if you’re in over your head, find out if it’s too late to transfer into out of one of the classes that’s giving you so much difficulty.</p>
<p>If you have an advisor or guidance counselor at school, go speak to him or her, explain the difficulty you’re having, and see if there isn’t a way to fix things.</p>
<p>Thank you dodgersmom. This is very true and I need to focus more on school and change my studying habits. I guess I’ve just been so fed up with high school and ready to move on to college that I’ve spent to much of my time thinking about the future rather than sticking to the present.</p>
<p>It’s not unusual to see juniors suddenly struggle as the difficulty curve gets ramped up. Refocus on academics, without them, all the ECs in the world will be meaningless. Once you get that corrected, you can figure out the ECs.</p>
<p>FWIW, three B’s early in the semester are not horrible. (Could be three C’s!) You’ll undoubtedly be able to correct at least a few of them. Pre-calc is a known killer class, it’s where students start hitting the math wall, and you may need to study math for the first time in your life. History is just going to involve a lot of reading, and AP Lang is going to require some attention to detail that you may have never encountered before. </p>
<p>Welcome to HS, the training wheels are off.</p>
<p>1) Relax.
2) Figure out whether it’s work ethic or difficulty that’s causing these grades
3) Fix the problem by going to your teacher’s extra hours
your chances are not ruined till those grades go on your transcript.</p>
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</p>
<p>And your chances may not be “ruined" even if they do go on your transcript! Relax. :)</p>
<p>Thanks guys! I actually raised my English and US History grades up to A’s but they are both borderline :/. I’ve pretty much given up on Pre-Calc because I only have 7 more weeks left to bring it up from an 86% to an 89.5%… Do you think it’s possible?</p>
<p>You need to talk to your teacher to find out if it’s possible.</p>
<p>Are you instate for GT? IF so, you probably will still get in. If not, talk to your parents about whether they’ll pay for GT…it’s expensive for OOS and it won’t likely give you aid that you need.</p>
<p>I’m out of state for both GT and CMU, but I assumed I’d have a pretty good shot at GT… But should I be worried? I’m a minority, ranked 40/1000 at my school, have a lot of extracurriculars, have gotten a prestigious internship, and plan to score a 30+ on the ACT.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about it, a few B’s (in AP/honor classes) will not hurt your chances at GT, they don’t require a 4.0 uw GPA. </p>
<p>The Middle 50% of enrolled 2013 freshmen had a GPA range of 3.85 - 4.11 (GT gave AP/DE classes +0.5 points; this year GT will evaluate the weighted GPA listed on your high school transcript).</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>I do not think that a B in precalculus will have a big impact on you getting in. However, I would go see the teacher and get a good tutor in either case, because understanding the math is important, and there are many topics in precalculus that are going to come up again in engineering, and on your Math Subject Test, if you are planning to take that.</p>
<p>I would also want to show that you were able to get an A in the second semester, even if you didn’t get one in the first semester, so it does not look like a chronic problem.</p>
<p>JMHO</p>
<p>Much2learn</p>
<p>I’d have a pretty good shot at GT… But should I be worried? I’m a minority, ranked 40/1000 at my school, have a lot of extracurriculars, have gotten a prestigious internship, and plan to score a 30+ on the ACT.</p>
<p>Worried that you’ll get accepted? You may get in if you get a 30+ ACT.</p>
<p>But, will your parents pay for GT? If not, then getting accepted won’t mean much.</p>
<p>Thank you for the advice guys! And my parents are willing to pay a decent amount I suppose. Georgia Tech doesn’t give out merit aid/scholarships? I heard they were pretty generous with that kind of thing.</p>
<p>I believe in you :)</p>
<p>A little late… but as an update I only ended up with 1 B+ (in Pre-Calc) both semesters this year! Thank you so much for your advice guys.</p>
<p>Hey @engineering2015, what a great update. So you clearly put in the effort and it paid off - congratulations! </p>
<p>.>>
Thank you for the advice guys! And my parents are willing to pay a decent amount I suppose. Georgia Tech doesn’t give out merit aid/scholarships? I heard they were pretty generous with that kind of thing.
<<<</p>
<p>No, they are not generous. Dont know where you heard that. They do have some highly competitive merit awards for very high stats.</p>
<p>have your parent run the NPCs on your school’s websites to see what is affordable. GTs OOS cost is over 40k per year.</p>
<p>@engineering2015 </p>