<p>Heya everyone!</p>
<p>What types of Universities/Colleges would look "kindly" upon my situation of having poor grades early (and I mean poor) on in my high school career but doing progressively better each year?</p>
<p>Here are my GPA's for each year:</p>
<p>Freshman: 2.0
Sophomore: 3.5
Junior: 3.9</p>
<p>ACT: 31
SAT: 2050</p>
<p>Thanks for any responses!</p>
<p>Your state flagship would probably like it. Most schools like an upward trend, though top schools have many applicants who have a flat 4.0 trend that is better. What is your home state?</p>
<p>Hopefully, I hear some Small Liberal Arts colleges look at their applicants “hollistically” and that might help me. I live in the state Illinois</p>
<p>I think its amazing that you’ve gone up so much…congrats. I’m kind of the same…I got a 3.55 freshman yr, then a 3.85 sophomore year, and finally a 4.0 for junior year. My counselor has assured me that colleges will be impressed with a strong upward trend. He said they “love” it. Your SAT score is solid and so is your ACT. I think it will matter slightly, but it won’t end your chances at a great school.</p>
<p>Colleges will appreciate yet but most overlook it because they don’t have enough time to literally look at each and every grade so they will either go based off your cumulative grade or recalculate it based on their scoring system. Therefore, you must must must somehow mention it in your application so they CAN’T overlook it. You can either mention it somehow in one of your essays or just write one of your essays about and how you didn’t take advantage of school until half way through your school career, etc, etc.</p>
<p>Consistantly top grades > upward trend ending in top grades > downward trend</p>
<p>Thanks for the info guys but how would I go about mentioning it? I don’t know if I can hit it on it in my essay without detracting from my focus. Is there something along the lines of submitting a paragraph or two talking about it with the application as an addition?</p>
<p>BabyRudy: Yes there is, it’s called the “Additional Information” portion of the Common Application. You can write about anything in this section, including scores that didn’t fit under “Academics” or extracurriculars that weren’t pertinent enough to be mentioned.</p>
<p>I remember that some posters on CC have talked about schools that actively ignore freshman grades (I think Michigan used to). Maybe someone will remember some of those names and pass them along or you could search/post another thread asking that question.</p>
<p>@n0vad3m0n Thanks for the info and I just want to ask your opinion on something regarding that. I wasn’t originally intending to do the Common App as I am only applying to 3 schools (that I feel I can get into) which are:</p>
<p>Illinois Wesleyan
Lake Forest College
Carthage College</p>
<p>These schools all require supplements so I was just planning to fill out the school specific applications. (Also applying to UChicago and Middlebury but those are just "let’s see what happens applications)</p>
<p>So I was wondering if you think I should just fill out the Common App since there is a space set aside for explanation and 2 of my 3 colleges do not offer said space?</p>
<p>@vinceh Thanks for that idea, I’ll probably search a little for that info!</p>
<p>Bump: Sorry would like someone’s advice on my above post =)</p>