<p>My dream has always been to get into a great college but I got a B second semester of freshmen year in math. I go to an extremely competitive and highly ranked school. I plan to major in business admin / economics or double major with philosophy / writing. How will this affect admissions? Theoretically, let's say I never get a B again in high school. My extracurriculars are fairly strong but I'm worried.
Thanks so much!</p>
<p>It won’t affect admissions that much. Stop worrying about it. Doing well in extracurricular activities is more important. I’ve known many people who’ve gotten several B’s junior year (most important year for grades) but got into top 5 schools because they were stellar leaders in their activities.</p>
<p>It doesn’t.</p>
<p>My unweighted 100 scale GPA throughout high school was 99.6207, and I’m attending Penn in the fall. I can’t claim a causation since its an observational study, but I can point out the correlation. Of course, I’m at the upper end of what an Ivy accepted. After my admittance I received a letter saying I was in the top 15% of all admitted students and an automatic acceptance into a science scholar program, an invitation to apply for another scholars program, and an invitation to apply to the Civic Scholars Program (invite only). I turned down the program, applied, interviewed, and was accepted to the Penn Civic Scholars Program because volunteering is extremely important to me. However, I know someone who was extremely qualified (more qualified than many of the incoming Penn students I can safely assume since Penn told me I’m so much better than a vast majority of the accepted students [some of that 15% will choose other Ivies or certain circumstances will keep them from coming to Penn so on campus I can assume I’m well above that 85th percentile, which I quite possibly could have been anyway {lack of data}]) that didn’t get into any Ivies.</p>
<p>TLDL: unweighted 100 scale GPA throughout high school was 99.6207; I’m going to an Ivy League university.
*note for the statslovers: correlation can only be determined if a couple other admitted students grades are looked at too.</p>
<p>It doesn’t, especially freshman year.</p>
<p>@goldenboots: I must have missed it but how does your discussion of your results do anything to further the discussion about our worrying Freshman poster here? Are you saying because you might have gotten a B that he/she *should *worry or should not worry? </p>
<p>Plus, whatever your conclusion, how does the discussion of a single case bolster/disprove your conclusion?</p>
<p>@OP: stop worrying. One B won’t get you rejected. All As won’t get you accepted. It’s the whole package.</p>
<p>lol @goldenboots. make a thread if you wanna brag about how great you were in HS.<br>
@OP one B is nothing and shouldn’t stress over it.</p>
<p>Goldenboots, you’re “better” than other Penn students? You need to get knocked down a peg or two. Thoroughly obnoxious.</p>
<p>A grade of B for one semester is meaningless. Your GPA will be calculated on the basis of your full-year grade, and even a B for the year will not by itself torpedo your chances at admission to a “great” college (whatever that term may mean to you). Relax.</p>
<p>Goldenboots, for future reference, don’t report your GPA four places past the decimal point on your resume or anywhere else–it’s trivial and tacky. You had a 99.6 average–not that it’s relevant to the discussion here…</p>
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<p>Penn should be really good at this. If you spend four years at a place like Penn always thinking you’re the smartest person in the room, it’s a really good bet you’re wrong. And it’s also a good bet that nobody else thinks you are.</p>
<p>Goldenboots may take awhile to reply. Had to go to emergency room: threw out his shoulder patting himself on the back profusely.</p>
<p>It won’t affect your chances. But trust me, it’s a lot easier to say “that’s the only B I’ll ever get” than it is to accomplish that. Focus on what’s ahead now, and do as well as you possibly can.</p>
<p>Topic should have ended on the third post. It won’t affect you, just don’t make a habit of it.</p>
<p>No, it won’t affect you. But one sentence in a response above:</p>
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<p>Is just wrong. You won’t get into a highly selective college without a stellar academic record. (That doesn’t mean you can’t ever get a B.) But all the extracurriculars in the world won’t help if your overall academic performance is not top-notch. Academics get you into the stadium - extracurriculars may put you over the top. (To mix a metaphor, badly.)</p>
<p>^ Pretty much. Generally extracurriculars only become really important at top colleges because nearly all of HYP applicants have near-perfect test scores and grades, so they need another factor to determine who to accept. But if you aren’t at that near-perfect academic level (unless you’re hooked), you won’t be accepted no matter what kind of ECs you have. If you look at the importance of ECs by individual college, you’ll notice they generally become less and less important as you go down the rankings. This is no coincidence.</p>
<p>Freshman year is the least important (and at some schools isn’t considered at all). And changing any B (even in junior year) to an A, all other factors equal, is almost certainly not going to change the admissions decision.</p>
<p>Adding a new twist, how bad is a C?</p>
<p>^
I’d hazard a guess that a C in a core academic class could change things, but I doubt there are very many applicants with straight As except for one C.</p>
<p>^What do you mean by that? What about all A’s, one B, and one C?</p>
<p>And I heard that to apply, the colleges look at your OVERALL Gpa, then my semester. Is this correct?</p>