<p>I completed Freshmen year with a 3.125 GPA. My parents wants me to go to Columbia College in NYC. You know, that Ivy League school in Manhattan. I made a commitment to get straight As for the rest of my high school career. I know, call me crazy. But i really mean it because I've already started preparing for Chemistry and the SAT this summer. Do you think I still have a chance of gettin in?</p>
<p>a lot of schools don't even look at your freshman grades. not sure about columbia however.</p>
<p>Don't just do what your parents want you to do silly!</p>
<p>RELAX you are only going into sophmore year. You have five semesters to turn this around.</p>
<p>well. i wouldnt mind gettin into Columbia. I'm trying to find out what Columbia likes. I heard their wrestling team is real good. I was in the top 10 of my wrestling team during freshmen year so I hope that helps.</p>
<p>Yes you still have chance! And a very strong one!</p>
<p>If you indeed get straight As (or almost) throughout the next years, college adcoms will realize the effort you put in it and how you improve yourself. Do everything else you would like to do in high school. Don't worry you're not at an disadvantage at all (I went through the same thing). Only of course, I messed up worse. lol.</p>
<p>dude dont worry if u know u can do it its definetly possible. i went from having 3 Bs my freshmen yr to get nothing less than a 98 my junior yr. alot of ppl mess up freshmen yr and improving would definetly get a favorable nod from admission officers.</p>
<p>Colleges like an upward trend in grades</p>
<p>Don't worry about it. I got two B's for both semesters of my freshmen year, and after that, I got straight A's my sophomore, junior, and senior years. Also, it's a lot easier to raise your GPA than to lower it. Just put extra effort into your work and tests: come in before and after school, schedule a study session, and be confident in yourself. Good luck.</p>
<p>Ya know, just on the off chance colleges look at freshman grade, one COULD engineer their freshman grades to be so-so, and then engineer an upward trend. Yah?</p>
<p>I hope no one does that.</p>
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I heard their wrestling team is real good. I was in the top 10 of my wrestling team during freshmen year so I hope that helps.
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eh, that's nothing compared to the competition that you will face if you apply to columbia... Many ppl who apply are nationally ranked, just to give you some perspective.</p>
<p>Tough luck... Ivy league schools will always pick kids who consistently get straight As over those that have very discernible deficits on transcripts.</p>
<p>^Not necessarily. As long as the curve points upward, there is more growth to come.</p>
<p>Investment bankers from Columbia do that for a living.</p>
<p>Heliu I promise you you still have as great a chance as anyone else. Just believe in yourself and work towards it. :)</p>
<p>Upward trends are looked upon very, very favourably.</p>
<p>CC is just as kooky as freerepublic.com. The scary thing: I once drank the Academic Performance Cult Kool-Aid back in the day. The scarier thing: Although I've long since defected from the cult, people today drink FAR MORE of the Kool-Aid than I ever did.</p>
<p>I graduated from high school in 1992 as salutatorian. I was a National Merit Finalist, and I took Honors/AP classes to the hilt. I vied for admission to Stanford and MIT. I was the equivalent of a typical CCer back then. But compared to today's students on this board, I was Ferris Bueller or Zack Morris. No, I didn't grow up on the backroads of Mississippi.</p>
<p>I am disturbed by the rise of the Academic Performance Cult, and the irony is that this mania has bubbled up years after I defected from this cult. (I didn't get into Stanford or MIT. I also noticed in college that NOBODY cared about my previous academic background.) I would not have survived undergraduate school if I had continued my intense attitude from high school, because I would have been up all night every night instead of sleeping at least 7 hours per night most nights like I actually did (and this was in electrical engineering at UIUC). The same applies for graduate school, where I earned my Master's Degree in electrical engineering at George Mason University.</p>
<p>I have (by CC standards) skeletons in my closet. Some "lowlights":
1. I was the first casualty of AP US History in the 1990-1991 school year at my school. The workload was TORRENTIAL. The class had more assigned work than all my other classes combined, and I was taking Honors/AP classes to the hilt. This forced me into the regular US History class. Of course, nobody in college cared which US History class I took.
2. As an undergraduate student, I was in the bottom of my class for a few classes. I wasn't firing on all cylinders (GPA of "only" 4.13 on a 5-point scale, or the equivalent of 3.13 on a 4-point scale). Nobody at work cared.
3. I just barely earned my MSEE (GPA of 3.03) and graduated at or near the bottom of the class. (This was because I studied a different area than my undergraduate electrical engineering specialty and also because I did a time-consuming independent study project and an even more time-consuming research project when it would have been easier to simply take two classes.) Nobody at my workplace today cares about this.</p>
<p>So in the long run, whether or not you were a perfect student won't matter.</p>
<p>Just sit back, relax, and be content to be one of the top 10% of students in the nation. Even if you are the PERFECT student, Ivy-type colleges can still reject you. College admissions is a 2-tiered system: There's the normal tier where having sufficiently high stats gets you in automatically, and there's the crapshoot tier where having sufficiently high stats merely gets you considered, and most of those considered don't get in. None of the colleges in the normal tier have Ivy-level stats. The obvious conclusion is that once your stats meet a certain level, doing better doesn't really open up additional options. This is the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns at work.</p>
<p>Just as an example, I know for a fact that Stanford specifically prefers not to see any student record from freshman year, i.e. grades, GPA, extracurrics, etc. Columbia does want to see your freshman year, but you should still visit Columbia sometime and talk to an admissions officer there, generally AOs will answer your questions straightforwardly.</p>
<p>It's actually freshmAn year. with an A. </p>
<p>Haha.</p>
<p>I didn't read the thread by the way, I just thought I'd spread my unimportant knowledge. Kind of smartass-ish of me, but eh, you don't mind I'm sure :D</p>
<p>^I wish I could be the proofreading police on CC. Everyone makes so many annoying mistakes that just HAVE to be corrected.</p>
<p>I have a friend that didn't do well his freshman year either but did amazingly well the rest of high school. It messed up his rank and cum. GPA a little but not too bad. He goes to Notre Dame now, which isn't ivy but prettyhard to get into none the less.</p>
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^I wish I could be the proofreading police on CC. Everyone makes so many annoying mistakes that just HAVE to be corrected.
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<p>I know right. :D</p>