OK, it seems that I have a problem here. In my freshman and sophomore years, I was a major slacker… But my junior year, I picked up grades, as shown:
Asian Male, 2060 (will hit 2250, really! :P)
Freshman Year:
slacked… ended with a 3.4 GPA avg (3.333, 3.500)
H. Bio B/A
H. Alg II B/B
Geography A/A
Spanish I B/B
P.E. A/A
H. English B/B
Sophomore Year:
slacked again… ended with 3.5 (3.667, 3.333)
AP Chem B/B
Drama A/A
H. Pre-Cal A/B
H. World History B/B
H. English A/A
Spanish II A/B
Junior Year (this year)
stopped slacking and picked up my pace with hopefully a 3.92 (3.833, 4.000)
I’m anticipating a 4.0 second semester because that is what I received my third quarter…
AP. Calc BC A/A
AP. Physics A/A
ROP Virtual Enterprise A/A
Spanish III A/A
APUSH B/A
AP English A/A
Senior year (next year)
AP. Statistics
AP. Bio
AP. Spanish
AP. English
AP. Government/Econ
Anyways… my overall GPA is like a 3.6 but my weighted GPA is well over 4.0
How important are upward grade trends? I really want to go to like Cornell, Columbia, Harvey Mudd
<p>theres a whole lot of anticipated scores and grades. Wait until you actually have REAL scores and grades to make that upward trend, then we'll talk. But yeah, upward trends are important.. but a 3.4 and 3.5? thats kinda pushing it...</p>
<p>^ irock1ce, cmon, dat upward trend is awesome. like me, i had a 3.5 weighted in first semester freshman, then went to 4.0 weighted in 2nd semester and got straight A"s ever since. upward trends look reeeally good.</p>
<p>rexrun - upward trend definitely looks good... but a 3.4 and 3.5 is mighty low for any year. as far as admissions will see, they'll see a year of 3.4, a year of 3.5 a year of 3.92 (if he gets straight A's second sem)... which is definitely nice, but that 3.4 and 3.5 are definitely a little O.O. Personally, i went from 3.6 to 3.9,3.9 and colleges definitely liked it. But eh, you never know. I wish you the best of luck!</p>
<p>of course upward trends are good. they are 10 times better if assosicated with a reason other than slacking off...(tragic event, life style change, homelessness, job employment to support family, etc)</p>
<p>irock1ce- please, that was his freshman year. my first semester freshman was Sh1t and still i got into good colleges. yea i agree, a 3.4 or 3.5 is a low gpa for any year, but its better to be earlier in high school than later</p>
<p>rexrun - he got a 3.5 his sophomore year as well. that was my point. getting a 3.4 in his freshman year doesn' matter. if he started with a 3.7-3.8 his soph year and ended at a 3.9 in his junior year.. now that would be really awesome. anyways, u should be fine. an upward trend is always good, althugh getting a constant 3.9 or 4.0 isnt bad either...</p>
<p>upwards trends are important but not to the point of overriding your overal gpa or test scores. I myself had a huge upwards trend (9th to 12: 3.332, 4.001, 4.096, 4.4) but my sat 1's werent that great so as a result i got waitlisted at a couple of schools.</p>
<p>The upward trend is really good as long as you keep in mind you're competing with people who have kept their grades in the A range for their entire high school career. However grades aren't everything and you've taken hard classes and proved you can do well in them so I don't think it disqualifies you from the schools you listed. Trying to take a really hard senior year schedule helps as long as you don't kill yourself in the process and do well. The SAT score is pretty strong and I think doing well on that as well as on the SAT II's and AP's your taking junior year will help balance out the gpa. On that note, to get into a really good college you usually need an EC your passionate for and some other ECs to round it off and some strong essays/recs so what do you have in regards to that? </p>
<p>For suggesting more colleges, I think first we need to know more about what you want in a college ie location, size, atmosphere, etc to see a fit. Do you have a major in mind that you'd like a strong department for? I'd find what your hook would be and see if you can find any schools who would be looking for that and are a match what you're looking for. </p>
<p>I sympathize with the slacking off bit, I'm in a similar position myself and it is frustrating to not be able to repeat the past and change your freshman/sophomore grades but oh well, just have to worry about doing better in the present.</p>
