<p>I live in Ontario, Canada and here I've always been told that only first term senior grades matter in college admissions (for Canadian universities). All of the counselors and teachers insist on that, saying that you can screw up as much as you want in the three years before. Reading CC (I'm applying to American universities), I've come to realize that it seems universities look at all of your grades whereas my school only emphasizes the importance of senior year grades. Is this true? Do they take a look at every class you take in high school?</p>
<p>Yes. In America the Junior year is typically considered to be the most important. However, Freshman, Sophomore, and first semester Senior grades all matter as well. I know some schools, like Stanford, don't care about Freshmen year grades. But most schools care about your entire high school academic record.</p>
<p>As Datkid said, while some schools look at your entire HS career, others will take a couple of shortcuts to help filter out anomalies and irrelevant grades. One of these is ignoring the freshmen year since this is when many students are figuring how this whole college thing works. The second method I have seen used is to ignore certain types of classes. The most commonly ignored of these are PE and Driver's Ed (where they are still offered!) classes as those courses are not particularly coorelative with the grades the college would expect a given student to earn.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, if your midyear senior year grades are good, you can still get into some of the less selective American Schools. THe most selective schools typically look at everything.</p>
<p>A lot of them look at everything. I think part of the reason I got rejected from one of my schools is because of two Ds my sophomore year.</p>
<p>Although I heard that most schools put the most weight on junior year.</p>