<p>Hi! I am interested in applying to Columbia or Amherst, but I am worried about my terrible junior year grades. I received straight A's in both semesters of my freshman year and in the first semester of my sophomore year. The second semester I received two B's, in chem. (regular, no honors chem at my school), and in APUSH (5 on the test). All of my core classes were honors for both my freshman & sophomore years. My junior year grades are as follows: </p>
<p>S1
IB Physics HL: B/B
IB Math SL: A/B
French V: A/A
AP Chem: C/B
IB English: A/B
IB music theory: A/A
IB World History: A/A
Overall GPA: 3.77 uw, 4.03 w, 17/405</p>
<p>AP Chem was a struggle because of the insane amount of homework that my teacher gave us, and because of everything I was doing I rarely found time to study for the tests. In math my teacher only gave us 2 weeks to complete our IB math explorations, and she ended up making it our final; since it was right before finals I rushed to complete the exploration and ended up with a mediocre product. Even though I got high A's on all the tests, I ended up barely getting a B in the class:(
As for my English class, my teacher was constantly asking me to help other students with their writing, and as a result I spent 6-7 hours per week editing people's papers. I ended up not having time to finish my own final paper & got a crappy grade on it, which brought my grade down to a B :'( when I spoke to my teacher about it she told me that I shouldn't have helped other people and should have focused on my work instead. Grrr. I'm a very strong writer & have won a couple of national writing awards, as well as many local & state writing awards, so this B makes me absolutely furious. I can't help but feel used:( </p>
<p>Does anyone know of any Hispanics with similar grades who have been accepted to schools of the same caliber as Columbia or Amherst? I'm not sure if it's worth applying to such schools if I'm almost sure to be rejected because of my awful grades, considering that I can only afford to apply to a couple of schools (family income is right above the cutoff for waivers, fingers crossed for Questbridge). Btw, I'm a Mexican-American girl (U.S. citizen) from a very underrepresented state, and my parents are both uneducated immigrants. My awards and ec's are very solid (went to nationals this year for several of them), my SAT score is a 2250, and I'm quite sure my recs will be excellent. My senior year courses will be pretty much the same, but I have learned my lesson about focusing on my own work. </p>
<p>Also, should I explain the situation I found myself in to interviewers? Is there somewhere on the Common App where I can do so?</p>