<p>Okay so heres the deal, my freshmen year of high school i took all honors classes but i got bad freshmen grades (all B's except for 2 A's and 2 C's :( i know, its really bad)) my extracurriculars were science olympiad, orchestra, and debate. Im taking all honors, science research, and the one AP class that is available to sophomores. I really want to go to a good college and my dream college would be MIT because of their amazing brain and cognitive sciences department. I've been getting a lot of mixed responses on this one, but i have to ask, if i seriously IMPROVE my grades for the next three years and stop ******* up my grades, do i have a chance of MIT?? I know this is probably a dumb question and that just by asking people in forums won't gonna be 100% accurate, but if i get myself on the right track, will my freshmen year screw up become less relevant if i apply??? Does MIT actually look at freshmen year grades? Thanks so much you guys!!!</p>
<p>naa bro your good im in the same spot as you i got a 2.6 freshman year and i turned it around and im getting letters from notre dame nyu all the good colleges if you just explain to the colleges the truth then they well understand and see you have matured</p>
<p>It will definitely hurt you (don’t listen to mwatson, the letters you get are based on psats and your self-reported gpa, and they really mean nothing- they just want your application fee unfortunately), but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a chance! If you work really hard to get your grades up, and maybe spend some of your app writing about what you went through to make the improvement, you’ll still be in the running for many elite schools, though keep in mind that this will be a factor working against you and make sure you pick a few safeties when the time comes to build your college list.</p>
<p>Don’t worry your not completley doomed. This just shows, that you need to work on time mangement a little bit. Work really hard in Sophmore and Junior, because those grades will REALLY count.</p>
<p>no they really dont because i have been at business camps at stanford and upenn but im not going to argue with you its not worth it</p>
<p>got a 2.6 freshman year and i turned it around and im getting letters from notre dame nyu all the good colleges</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>That is probably because of your SAT or ACT scores. How would these schools know what your frosh grades are???</p>
<p>Mwatson is right… sort of. Obviously, great grades all around are better than poor grades during any one period, but you can get into great schools. In college I had a very average freshman year (about what you had) but excelled the final three years and got into every law school I applied to (Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Michigan), and 4 years after that I entered a Ph.D. program at Yale. Moreover, I work with a lot of high school students who struggled early in their careers with grades similar (or worse) than what you got, but still got into schools like Amherst, Columbia, Cal-Berkeley, and even Yale and Penn.</p>
<p>Here is the issue, though. You need to construct a narrative via your personal statement and extracurriculars where you explain and contextualize your struggles. Take the issue head on, and make the clear, powerful and explicit case that you are the person who got great grades in their sophomore and junior years, and not the person who struggled early on.</p>
<p>Remember, admissions counselors know that the applicants are -no offense intended- kids, and kids make mistakes. Someone who shows that they’ve taken one on the chin, gotten up, persisted and excelled is someone that can get into a top school, provided that the rest of the application is strong. So, your mission now is to get to work, excel these next few years and make it absolutely 100% obvious to the admissions people that you are a top student. If you do that, then even if you don’t get into MIT, you can get into a great college that will position you to do great things in your career. And, if I might add a bit of personal advice, this is not the time in your life to listen to nay-sayers and haters. As long as you are working hard and sticking to a strategy, don’t let the past hold you back, and don’t listen to people whose harsh words would seek to hold you back. Just kick butt and move forward.</p>
<p>If you want to talk to me about your academic journey (I definitely empathize with you, and I am myself an example of how early struggles don’t have to limit or define you), please feel free to message me.</p>
<p>Check to see whether your state universities are like UC or CSU in counting only 10th and 11th grade course grades for GPA purposes (though they still require academic courses taken in 9th grade to have a C or better).</p>