<p>I'm currently a Junior at a public high school, and I got my first D this year. It's been a tough year, but I really don't have anything to say for it besides the fact that I was very very overwhelmed, and I'm not going to drop the class. Instead, I'm going to bust my butt 2nd Semester and pull an A. </p>
<p>Stats: </p>
<p>Freshman Year:
AP World A/A
H Bio A/A
H Algebra II B+/B+
Spanish 2 A/A
H English B+/A
Business Ex A/A</p>
<p>Sophomore Year:
AP Euro A/C+
Trig/AP Calc A A/C+
H Chem B+/A-
Accounting 1 A/A
H English A/A
Spanish 3 B+/B+</p>
<p>Junior Year:</p>
<p>AP Psych A/?
AP Physics A/?
AP Lang A/?
AP Calculus BC D/?
AP US History C/? (My teacher HATES my writing...)
Spanish 4 A/?</p>
<p>AP Scores: WHAP 3 , Euro 5, and Comp Sci (Self Studied) 5
ACT Composite with writing: 34
GPA: 3.1 UW/4.1 W</p>
<p>EC's:
Theatre 3 years, all 3 productions
Interning at a Doctor's office
Scholastic Bowl
Speech Team Captain (and won State 4th place as a Sophomore)
Debate Team Captain
Model U.N. (Captain and Founder of the club at our school)
NHS
Thespian since freshman year</p>
<p>Also, the end of my sophomore year, I had a family member fall terminally ill, explaining the two C+'s.</p>
<p>Schools I'm looking at:</p>
<p>U Mich, Ann Arbor
Northwestern
Harvard (Yeah, I know)
UofC
U of I
WashU in St. Louis
Stanford
Cornell
Duke
UCB</p>
<p>Safety:
UIC</p>
<p>Should I work even harder? I will...I don't want to drop, and I understand the material really well...</p>
<p>U Mich, Ann Arbor: low reach
Northwestern: reach
Harvard (Yeah, I know): don’t even think about it
UofC: don’t even think about it
U of I: don’t know about this school
WashU in St. Louis: reach
Stanford: don’t even think about it
Cornell: high reach
Duke: high reach
UCB: reach (they care so much about GPA, it’s insane)
All of the schools you are applying to have students with much higher GPAs. A high GPA is pretty much the norm these days. If you don’t have that, it’s basically over. A 3.1 is not good for any of the schools in your list. A 34 at the ACT is great, but your GPA will inhibit you from reaching many of these tbh. If you can get straight A’s this semester and straight A’s in the first semester of your senior year, your chances will be greatly improved. Sorry if this was a little bit too candid.</p>
<p>One D <em>may</em> be overlooked. Obviously, the odds are against you, but if you bounce back, it may just look like an ‘anomaly.’ That’s just my opinion though; I’m just another student.</p>
<p>It is ok, I just re-checked it, it’s a 3.4/4.3.
I understand, but will they look at course rigor at all?
I forgot that I took Health and Consumer’s Ed. as a Supervised study class (Finished both by 1st Quarter).
I also Interned for Google this past Summer.
So should I drop BC? The way I see it, what’s done is done.</p>
<p>Can you get some tutors to help you for BC? Course rigor is important, but not when you are not entirely successful in the courses that you are taking. Your EC’s are great; there is no doubt in that. If you can get some tutors and pull of straight A’s, your chances will become a little bit better. Also, look into some lower tier colleges. I would suggest UCI, UCSD and UCD. They are great schools, but they don’t have a lot of name (name doesn’t mean much honestly). At this point, you kinda have to forget about name and start looking at lower tier.</p>
<p>@Classof2018app
I actually just got one for BC this morning!
And I would prefer going to a UofI (73% acceptance), which is basically a safety much over those schools due to locality if I am to go to a lower tier school.
IF I manage to pull off an A, do you think it would possibly get overlooked?
Or maybe a 5 on the Exam?</p>
<p>It is true that colleges look at the difficulty of the course, not just the grade earned. However, taking all of those hard classes is not worth it if you can’t pull high grades to maintain your GPA.
Just keep in mind when you’re applying to schools like Harvard and Stanford that you’ll be going up against an extremely qualified applicant pool.</p>
<p>Harvard, Stanford and maybe even UChicago you probably have a ~1% of chance of getting in, but what do you have to lose applying other than $75 and 30 minutes of filling out the application? </p>
<p>Duke, Cornell, Berkeley, and WUSTL are a little easier though.</p>
<p>I have a pretty compelling story regarding my soph. year end troubles.
In addition to this, I have 3 years of Varsity Tennis under my belt, 2 years of swimming (don’t know why I forgot to add that), am a BPA state officer and have a 36 on the ACT without writing, which is pretty much useless…still a less than 1% chance? I mean, does anyone ever have more than a 25% chance of getting into those colleges?</p>
<p>I’m just wondering how you got 36 on ACT and then mess up so much in your courses. You probably prepped with a lot of prep classes to get a 36. Sadly, colleges see that you just cant survive in their classes. Your academic record just makes the colleges wonder if you can pull yourself together in their tough classes. Unless you can get all A’s, your chances are, as mentioned by others, 1 percent or so for many of the colleges that you have mentioned.</p>
also can you chance me back?<a href=“