<p>Though this is a more complicated story, I'll keep it short.</p>
<p>During my sophomore year I had some personal problems and also a teacher who was new to teaching Algebra 2 Trig (it was his first year). I'm not trying to make excuses, but he seriously sucked.</p>
<p>I ended up getting C+'s both semesters which is obviously very disappointing.</p>
<p>However, my math grades other than that have been great, I've gotten A's in Geometry, Pre-Calculus and AP Calculus. I also got a 760 on the Math SAT II and scored 720 on the Math SAT 1.</p>
<p>Since this math grade obviously seems out of place, will it hurt me that badly? Is there a way to communicate this anomaly on my application?</p>
<p>I'm just worried about this mark hurting my chances to get into the top UC's.</p>
<p>Overall, with these 2 C+'s, I have a 3.75 unweighted GPA for my 10-11th years.</p>
<p>If he’s sucky, does that mean he wasn’t able to teach and thus you did poorly on his tests (which you should have been able to study for by yourself) or he graded unfairly?</p>
<p>As Shubham92 said, excuses are irrelevant and inexcusable.</p>
<p>A combination of both, and I’ll just say that my maturity level along with the personal problems didn’t allow me to do well in that class.</p>
<p>Also, these both happened sophomore year, I had 4.0’s both semesters junior year so is that showing an upward trend in grading? That will help as well no?</p>
<p>It will help, but the C+'s look at C’s unless the application this year shows +'s and -'s. UC’s will calculate your weighted GPA with allowing a five point scale on 8 semesters worth of AP classes which will help you.</p>
<p>i really hope that personal problem of yours is not breaking up with a girlfriend
I’d feel bad for posting this if the personal problem was a death in the family.</p>
<p>Thanks, so as long as my un-weighted and weighted GPA’s are still relatively high, and I show that that class is an anomaly compared to my normal math skills (showing that through getting A’s in more advanced classes and standardized tests) it shouldn’t be THAT big of a problem?</p>
<p>I have a very similar situation to you. In my sophomore year I got two Bs in pre-calculus because I would always sleep in class, and just had a teacher whose style did not really excite me. </p>
<p>Since then I’ve turned it around by getting an A in AP Calculus and scoring an 800 on the math SAT. I didn’t really mention it in my application… I don’t really have any valid excuses, anyway. What am I gonna say? “I liked naps”? I’m just hoping my good performance since then will make up for it.</p>
<p>Nah it wasn’t a girlfriend… My dad who is the only one who works in the house (a doctor) was incapacitated by Hepatitis and was on medication for the year… We didn’t have money and we didn’t know if he was going to be okay… just a quick summary.</p>
<p>So I shouldn’t worry about this too much if my GPA is still high enough and I score well on the Standardized tests?</p>
<p>Alright thanks man, I really hope it doesn’t seriously affect my admissions chances since I’ve been working really hard to get 4.0’s and score highly this year.</p>
<p>oh…sorry about that last post.
But thats an absolutely valid excuse for a slight dip in grades. As long as you emphasized it in your essay, its no biggie.</p>
<p>Calm down. You seem like an otherwise strong applicant. That’s the beauty of holistic admissions-an anomalous bad grade won’t kill your chances.</p>
<p>A couple of stray grades will obviously affect your application but it will never make or break your chances as long as you’re a strong applicant, which you seem like you are (and this is coming from someone who had a C basically every semester starting soph year in hs and still got in). </p>
<p>Man I had the same problem with algebra 2… I had a teacher that hadn’t taught the subject in 14 years and was using lesson plans from a teacher that was fired the next year for being horrible.</p>