My grades dipped a lot junior year.
Freshman Year >>> 4.0
Sophmore Year >>> 4.0
Junior Year >>> 3.6 (5 Bs out of 12 semesters)
Cumulative: 3.88 UW
I was one of the only students in the grade to take 6 APs Junior Year and that led to a dip in my performance.
How much will this downward trend hurt me for reach schools?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by 5 Bs out of 12 semesters. How many A grades did you receive during junior year and how many B grades? No one can answer to what extent your dip junior year will hurt you, but I can imagine that ultra selective schools (if that is what you mean by reaches) don’t like to see your grades go down as the difficulty of your classwork goes up. That being said, you still have a strong gpa so many schools will find your stats very appealing - reach schools are a long shot even with a perfect/near perfect gpa.
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Probably means 12 semester grades (6 year long courses with 2 semester grades each), so 7 A and 5 B grades.
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Talk to your school counselor. You want her to check highest rigor, and she could write something stating that you had aggressively pursued the highest level of education that your school offered, by taking 6 AP classes in 11th grade, to put the several B grades into context.
Frankly, I admire you for seeking out the best high school education that you could get. With the counselor putting it into context, it is possible that the admissions committees could see it in that light, too. I don’t think it would adversely affect your applications much.
6 APs is a lot.
It looks as if you just took too many tough AP classes at the same time. You have learned a very important lesson: Take things at an appropriate pace, and know what pace is right for you. It is possible to overload yourself.
This might be an issue for admissions at a small number of very highly ranked reach schools. However, these are the same schools where admissions is unlikely even for students with perfect GPAs.
To me this is more of a learning opportunity for you rather than a problem. You are learning that you need to pace yourself. Be aware that a few of the top universities (MIT, Caltech, Chicago come to mind) are academically very challenging. However tough it was to take 6 APs at once, be aware that there are a small handful of universities that might be even tougher.
However, there are still going to be a lot of very good universities that you can be accepted to (like, most of them).
Perhaps my main recommendation is that you look for universities that will be a good fit for you, and make sure that you apply to safeties.
Also, do not worry about this. You have just learned an important lesson a bit earlier than some other students will learn the same thing.
This GPA is just one aspect of many parts of you. A gpa alone is not enough to assess.
You are who you are. If you want to do a chance me, we can assess.
Good luck.
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