<p>See title.</p>
<p>I’d imagine it would hurt a lot at top schools. Getting 1 C in high school is one thing, but getting 3-4 Cs in one year is not good at all if you are looking at top schools. Don’t give up hope though, try to create an upward trend from now until you graduate!</p>
<p>I was talking about hypothetically “what if.”</p>
<p>Oh ok. Well that’s my hypothetical answer then.</p>
<p>It would be a significant negative that you would have to counteract. You might be able to do so if your grades improved markedly after that, and especially if there was some outside factor (i.e., illness, divorce in family) that explained the lower grades.</p>
<p>what are we considering “top schools”</p>
<p>Unless you have a significant feature in your application that works to help your case, 3-4 C’s will make an acceptance at any of the most selective colleges almost impossible.</p>
<p>My top schools would be Princeton, Penn, Carnegie Mellon (top choice), Duke (?), WashU in Stl. UCLA, WPI and there’s too many more too mention.</p>
<p>I’d doubt UCLA since you’d be OOS</p>
<p>Those schools (especially Princeton, Duke and Penn) would be close to impossible to get into with several C’s on your transcript, unless you had a documented medical illness. But some liberal arts colleges consider applicants more holistically, so EC’s and good grades (straight A’s or at least A’s and B’s) after that could get you in.</p>
<p>All of those schools would be highly unlikely with 3 C’s on a transcript except maybe WPI.</p>
<p>^ Not even Carnegie Mellon? What if you apply ED and you’re also a URM, have stellar SAT scores, recs, ECs etc.</p>
<p>What if you get all A’s junior year…?</p>
<p>^ good question. I was about to ask that.</p>
<p>Being a URM certainly will help. If everything else is steller I can see CMU, especially with strong math grades and scores.</p>
<p>Yeah a C won’t look terrible if it is one, and if you get it Freshmen year. But for Sophomore year it isn’t helping. If everything else was perfect, then I guess you can get into schools that put GPA on the “important” column on college board or LAC’s that are more holistic.</p>
<p>I had 0 C’s on my transcript and was rejected by a school or two on that list of yours. 3-4 C’s will RUIN your GPA</p>
<p>You’d be screwed. I wouldn’t even consider four year college at that point, let alone top colleges. Hypothetically speaking of course…</p>
<p>The fact is you cannot do anything about it now, just try to get the best grades you can for the rest of your high school career.</p>
<p>These people have absolutely no insight into the admission process, so take their speculation with a few handfuls of salt. </p>
<p>I had a 2.4 freshman/sophomore year, pulled up my grades in 11th/12th, and gained admittance to multiple top 40/50 schools. </p>
<p>Granted, I didn’t receiver any money, my ECs/recommendations/essay were pretty good, and I did have the “hook” of being Hispanic, but really, none of the posters here know much of anything about what actually goes down, and that’s not an insult. </p>
<p>Schools like Princeton are obviously out of reach, but you’d think that CC is the only way to go judging from the majority of these responses.</p>