Horrible GPA at Cornell as a Freshman...

<p>I am currently a Cornell freshman majoring in BEE, bio and environmental engineering. Now I have much concern about my first year GPA. In the first semester of my freshman year, I got ****ed up on an STS class, in which I earned a C- on, and this makes my GPA look unreasonably horrible, being a 2.7... This semester, it is probably even worse. Engineerin courses are so hard. I do not know my grade yet, but I think it will be at most around 3.0, and this is even under the circumstance that I am very lucky that I did well on my CS test and will do will on the remaining finals. Say I have a 3.0, making my overall GPA 2.85, but this is still very bad-looking, not to mention the fact that I am trying to transfer to AEM next year and GPA is a big part. Now I have the following questions:
1. When I apply to a grad school or looking for a job, do I have to provide only one cumulative GPA, or detailed GPA of every semester? If the latter one is the case, does first year lame GPA hurt very much?
2. Anyone who is familiar about AEM, do you have any idea of how important the role GPA plays in transferring? It is specified on the website that the lowest GPA accepted is 2.7. However, is this just a limit, meaning after this they do not care whether you have a 2.8 or a 4.3, or the higher the better?
I really appreciate your assistance.</p>

<p>Not sure what AEM is, but in general when they say minimum XX GPA, that means a GPA below that has low chance (probably zero) of being accepted and the higher the GPA, the better. </p>

<p>Grad schools look at cumulative GPA and ask for transcripts. They will see every grade in every class. But, an upward trend is a good thing to show.</p>