Hi - I’m a mom and graduate of 2 top 3 schools. I think your record is fantastic. It’s obvious you are a talented student and that your junior year, which was not bad, is an outlier. I definitely think you should explain the move and how it adversely impacted you. 11th grade will be the elephant in the room, and I think it should be addressed - by you and backed up in at least one of your recommendations. I would apply to every school of your dreams. You are qualified for admission, so don’t knock yourself out of the game. Finish strong, address the weak points directly, with dignity and maybe even some humor.
Good luck, you are going to get into a great school.
I agree with this. Many many academically strong juniors receive their first C in APUSH.
DO NOT use your main common app essay/personal statement to address this. If we can’t get you away from the idea of addressing the move and the drop in grades, use the Additional information section of the common app. But the additional information section is best used for other things.
As others have said, you might talk with your HS GC to see if they would address the transfer and grade drop in their LoR.
I agree you might consider LACs and women’s colleges. I second the Stevens rec. Adding Dayton, DePaul, U Delaware, James Madison.
OP- make sure you aren’t doubling down on another stressful year. You need to keep up with your regular HS classes-- that’s much more important than taking classes at a nearby university.
There are so many colleges that would LOVE to have you- focus on those, and not on finding a way to explain “my grades dropped but I’m still a great student”. Any adcom can see that! Use the application to talk about what makes you special, not to make excuses…
You are fortunate to live in Virginia where there are many many fine public universities. Please take time to look at these. You might find that UVA isn’t the only public school in VA where you can be successful…and at a very modest cost.
Thank you all for the helpful replies! It has really helped me calm down more and think more logically on how to proceed. For one, I think I’m going to focus more on what makes me special on my college apps. I should own up to my faults instead of making artificial excuses.
That is a really good point. I haven’t really thought of this since I registered for courses in mid January when my grades were not as bad. I think I’ll try taking one of the two courses. I already have a decent knowledge of differential equations, so I may take this one instead for an easier A. Or I could take discrete mathematics because I know a lot about it from Math olympiads. (To be truthful, I wanted to take complex anal the most, but this can wait until college.)
The rest of the courses I’m taking are AP Physics 2, AP Physics C (these two courses should be easy for me as I have a lot of knowledge in physics), AP Lit (I’m thinking of making this regular literature to get an A), and World History (my school has a policy where you need to take 2 years of world history and I’ve only taken AP World so this freshman class should be easy for me to pass). I hope that this shouldn’t be too bad.
Apart from UVA, I am thinking of applying to Virginia Tech and possibly GMU/JMU.
I don’t want to give exact numbers, but I am fortunate enough where my parents would be more than happy to pay for all 4 years at most colleges. Please suggest me any college (as in you don’t have to worry about the budget) and my parents and I could discuss the costs from there. Once again you all have helped me so much in so many ways, so thank you a lot!
Make sure your HS will allow you to take freshman world history AFTER having taken AP World!!! At my kids HS that would not be allowed. No doubling back…
Yeah it was kind of weird when I learned about this. The thing is that I took their senior course class in freshman year (honors civics), so it’s either I take AP Gov or World History and I REALLY don’t want to do the former.
The UK option seems really interesting. I will definitely check it out as I think I have a chance to get good score on the MAT. The only problem is that my parents may not be completely into the idea as they want me to stay in states, so I would have to get into a really good school like Oxford or Cambridge for them to consider it.
@Sonakii Agreed on RIT as an option. Don’t worry about the location for internships - my middle son just finished his second year there and has been able to get internships in the NYC metro area for both summers. The entire interview process was telephone/video.
My oldest had a great experience with the Maths/CS program at Oxford. As @collegemom3717 suggested, review the past papers on the Mathematical Institute website to see how comfortable you are with the material.
The MAT is on November 2nd this year. There are only a handful of approved test centers in the US, so you will need to do some homework on that front. Looks like Philly and Raleigh NC are the two closest options for you.
Unless you can get your school to agree to be a test centre (challenging but achievable), or have a British school near you that will accept you (NYC & DC- impossible during Covid, but may be possible now)
I made some recommendations already. Some other posters have concurred. Meat grinders as in large colleges like the ones you have listed typically do not give a darn about why your grades are low. That is because they have waaaay more than their fair share of candidates to choose from that meet their exacting standards. In other words, they are not holistic.