<p>I am currently nearing the end of my junior year,
but am worried about my grades..
Till sophmore year my marks have been pretty good, 90+ (dont have grades in school, where im from)
And ranked in top 5 always..
Yet this year grades have slipped up terribly due to personal reasons...</p>
<p>MY question is, is there still a chance to get into good universities like the ivy leagues, or stanford, if I show an upward trend in grades, combined with SAT score of 2220 and many ec's? after explaining the personal issue of course..</p>
<p>In general, junior year grades matter a whole lot. The difficulty of your courses increases: this is a broad generalization, but in many cases, it’s in junior year that your course work starts to resemble what you’ll do in the first years of college more than it resembles what you did in middle school. Besides that, when you’re applying to college, your senior year grades won’t be in the book yet, so your junior grades are the most recent indication on your transcript of the kind of academic chops you have.</p>
<p>If you’ve had some kind of staggering personal problems interfere with your academic achievement, you should talk about the matter with your guidance counselor at school. Although you can address the impact of these personal problems on your school work in your college applications, it’s more persuasive if this explanation comes from a third party. On the other hand, if the personal problems that have gotten in the way of your academics are the garden-variety things that most teenagers face, and your grades have really “slipped up terribly,” you may have a real problem getting into the country’s most selective colleges and universities.</p>
<p>Some time this spring, you ought to have a meeting with the college-placement person at your school anyway in order to talk about where to apply. I hope you’ll be able to get some good information about which schools to target then.</p>