Hi! Thank you all in advance for any and all help.
So here’s my situation:
I got admitted to Harvard (yay!)
All the things that made my application ‘great’ such as co curriculars, skills, clubs havent changed.
However some of my grades have changed. My school uses a percentage system so I’ll use that here. I take eight courses (it’s a term school). 5 of the courses remain unchanged (high 90s, might have gained a couple percentage points here and there, but let’s just say they remain the same).
3 of them however have decreased somewhat.
95->89 (I did really badly on an essay)
93->88 (the 93 came from 2 minor assignments before the big ones came into play)
90->85 (a math final exam that destroyed everyone, I’m actually quite surprised my avg was only reduced to 85)
From what ive read 2 or 3 full letter grade downgrades merit a warning letter. My situation is like 3 half downgrades, would it merit such a warning? Also if i got one, any idea on how to incorporate (or not) my explainations into a coherent email response?
This might seem a bit paranoid but it’s really been eating up my mind.
Please and thank you!
On a sidenote: when would they usually send out such warning letters if any?
Harvard requires guidance counselor’s to send them a mid-year report on each applicant – that’s true for both SCEA accepted students and RD applicants. The report will include your final grades from your first semester (or first two quarters, if your school is on the quarter system). The mid-year report is usually sent around the end of January, beginning of February. So Harvard will become aware of your slip in grades by mid-to-late February.
Now, what possible explanation can you offer? Were you ill? Absent from school for a period of time? Experienced a death in the family? Did your parents recently go through a nasty divorce? All of those might be a reasonable explanation, especially if the explanation came from your guidance counselor.
Or, did you just stop caring because you were accepted SCEA? Were you indeed having senioritis? If so, there really isn’t a plausible explanation you can offer, other than “I was stupid and immature” and then pledge to re-double your efforts for your remaining time in high school – which you should do anyway!
Bottom line: Speak with your guidance counselor, as they might be able to write something against your slip in grades. Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait to hear from Admissions in March/April and take whatever comes your way!
One additional note: If you re-double your efforts and get an ‘A’ in every class your final semester (or two quarters) of high school, that my mitigate any possible repercussions from Admissions. However, your acceptance was contingent on your grades remaining the same in your senior year, as they were in your freshman, sophomore and junior years – so don’t let them slip any farther!
Do you have time to improve those grades? If so, I’d just work especially hard in classes 1 and 2 as those should be pretty easy to bring back into the low 90’s. Tbh though these are only slight decreases and should not cause too much worry. Do make sure to study hard next semester and get almost all A’s.
Well the decreases came from an essay and two midterms, all of which I did before december 15th, but didnt get marks back until like after december 15th, so obviously this couldnt get counted into the marks Harvard got.
I suppose it’d be easy to bring suject one and perhaps two into the low 90s (like 90-91), they both have a lot of mark-rich assignments coming up. Would that be enough? As for subject three, I don’t see how I can bring that mark up much since there aren’t many marks/assignments anytime soon.
Btw, the school is a cumulative term school, so to get an A (or 93 or whatever) in a term is to say that my overall year mark up until that point for the course is an A (or 93 or whatever). So I don’t think I could do that (if we’re talking about bringing back to a 93 that is), at least not during the 2nd term (with the 3rd term, perhaps).
Well it seems like Harvard got the impression that you were getting 7 A’s and 1 A- in your senior year. You’re currently at 5 A’s, 2 B+'s and 1 B.
If you get classes 1 and 2 into the A- range (and, preferably, classs 3 into the B+ range), I would be very surprised if you hear anything but positive things from Harvard. Even now, I don’t think there’s really any reason to worry.
In the first place, I highly doubt you’re going to get a warning letter. In the second place, don’t worry about things that may not happen. If you were to get a warning letter, then come back and ask what your response should be. Harvard wants you; they will not quibble over a B+ vs. an A.
Having said that, try to get the senioritis out of your system so that your year-end grades do not suffer.
I am curious, were the essay and midterms before your acceptance or after?
I wouldn’t worry about this too much. Chances are, your grades aren’t the main reason for getting in, and this is not a huge drop if they look into it, and it is also a very short period of time after acceptance, if it was after acceptance.
It is a good skill to learn how to delay worrying until it is needed!
However, I do want to ask you to think about the actual meaning of grades. They evaluate learning. Our system is so geared to grades, rather than learning, and to college admissions, that these external motivators are the focus for kids, teachers, parents and administrators alike.
A real sign of maturity is to develop internal motivators.
Before you step onto the new conveyor belt of Harvard headed to the next external motivator, whether grad school or Rhodes or a job in finance (etc.) think about the fact that once the external goal is removed (admission) your motivation to work sinks.
What are you authentically interested in, enough that you would work toward it grades or no grades? Ideally senioritis wouldn’t exist : )
Alfie Kohn has written some books on this if you are interested.
@compmom are you a mom? Because you’d be a cool one.
Yeah that essay and two exams happened before the acceptance letter (or electronic thingy or whatever).
I personally wanted to get into harvard so I could study under a psychologist there I really like (I have this dream of becoming a psychology professor and dokng research in the field).
As for grades, I totally agree with you, the way it’s set up is wayyyy too competitive. Personally, I think they’d be better off just using standardized testing when the need to measure academic prowess comes into play and keep the learning environment more relaxed (perhaps not remove the grade so much as softening it, i.e. fail, pass, exceptional instead of the letters and percentages). Just myyyyy opinion.
Spock, you are very tolerant of my post. Your dip in grades was before acceptance, and for that and many other reasons you do not fit the fictional character I was addressing : ) I can see why Harvard accepted you…you are way ahead of the young man I was writing to.
Good luck at Harvard, where I am sure you will be. It’s a great school. Don’t fret about grades, just keep on doing what you are doing. Like I said, you have a lot more to offer than your GPA.
Don’t get any Ds or Fs and you will be fine. I also know a boy who harassed someone on social media after admittance and got rescinded. It was apparently bad enough that the gc notified Harvard
