<p>So I'm a senior in high school and I applied to cal, ucla, ucsb, and ucsd.
Things were going fine until today when I got back my first semester grades and realized that I got a D in calculus...so I was wondering: How badly is this going to hurt me and what should my next move be? Should I write a letter explaining this grade now, or wait and see if they accept me first or if they ask for an explanation on their own?
Please help because I'm freaking out.</p>
<p>P.S My number one school (and most likely acceptance) was UCSB so if anyone has gone through this, either at UCSB or with any of the UCs I've listed, pleaseeee help.</p>
<p>Entirely depends on your overall grade trend. I mean, if you have a 3.8 UW and A’s in other math courses most likely they’ll look at it as a fluke. Since you’ve already applied and therefore missed your opportunity to explain a bad grade I, personally, would wade it out to see if they’re even interested. If you’re on the edge of being accepted/rejected the school might send you an email asking about the bad grade. But, unless that’s the case the best thing to do would to be to get an A/B on this semester’s Calc class. Schools are known for their fickle mindedness when it comes to accepting students; they’ll accept you on the contingency that you maintain a certain GPA your second semester or whatever.</p>
<p>Do you need Calculus to meet admission criteria? That would be the major problem. Then, each UC has criteria for not getting rescinded. I think for Cal it is nothing below an unweighted GPA of 3.0 for each semester senior year.</p>
<p>This is from a 2008 thread. Not sure if its accurate.</p>
<p>"and ucsb is weighted… same with davis, irvine and san diego</p>
<p>ucla is 3.0 unweighted for the entire year and berkeley is 3.0 unweighted for each semester "</p>