So I was a freshman in highschool and i ended both semesters with a 3.7 gpa. I wanted to get ahead in the summer so i took a math course. For the first semester of that course i ended with an A!! The second one I ended with a D. I cried literally the whole day!
Will this one D affect my transcript and my chances in college? Im so worried because Im not this type of student. I read somewhere that college admission officers donât rally look at freshman grades? I will be a sophmore in august. HELP
SOME colleges like the University of California schools do not consider freshman grades. That being said, most do. Will it affect you? Yes. Is it really that significant? Probably not. Focus on getting good grades in the future and youâll be fine.
this made me feel so much better thank you!!! how do you think it will affect me in the long run? Thanks so much for your help!
To be honest, if you really arenât a D student, which your 3.7 GPA shows you arenât, then just keep doing what youâre doing. I donât anticipate getting a D in one semester of a class that you got an A in the other semester of affecting your GPA that much after 3.5 years in high school and if you feel the need to, all you have to do is explain to colleges the grade on the Common Application when the time comes with a quick blurb about how you learned from it.
I highly doubt that anybody really cares that much about freshman grades. Take the D as a learning experience and figure out why you didnât do as well in the class! Iâm sure that kids in the ivy league colleges have gotten bad grades before as well.
I could literally hug you right now! thank you you have no idea what this means to me! thanks for all your help!
Sorry to say but it looks like the summer after freshman year grades will count. See the 4th question. http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/q-and-a/calculating-gpa/index.html#4
Use the next years so prove that the one grade was an aberration.
Thanks for this! How will this affect my overall transcript?
Did you take a class for enrichment or for it to count so you can skip a math level heading into sophomore year? If it does show up on your transcript, youâll have to explain it. Even though many colleges donât count freshman year into their GPA, they will still look at your grades in 9th. And as happy1 posted, looks like summer before 10th grade will count for the UCs. At this point, thereâs no sense thinking about the grade, so try and move on from it.
There is an additional information section of the application. Keep the rest of the grades in the A-B range, and then write a paragraph explaining what happened. Hopefully there were extraneous circumstances that could not be prevented. Youâll have to ask more about it later. Just focus on keep the rest of the grades high.
I took it to be in a higher math level in sophomore year. thanks for the feedback.
yeah ill just write about what happened i guess just to be on the safe side. hopefully everything turns out okay. If i dont mention it do you think that is worse?
Well, either you explain it, or you let them come up with their own explanation.
I would recommend you come up with a convincing story as to why they shouldnât bother too much with it.
the college i was thinking of was u of i (for now) hopefully everything turns out alright! thanks for the help btw any ideas for a convincing story. The real reason was i think the class went a little faster pace second semester and I couldnt keep up. If i used that how would I counter that???
Doing an entire year of Math over the summer is intense, it is a tremendous amount of work and if a student doesnât âgetâ a couple of days of work, then they are way behind and it is difficult to catch up. Admissions counselors will understand the challenges in doing a year of new material in the summer. The Common App has a section for anything you want to explain that isnât apparent from your application â that is where you could have a few sentences explaining what happened and what you learned.
Going forward, identify the âlessons learnedâ from the second part of that class, both in terms of how to study and the substantive material itself. If the material from the second semester of the summer is going to be necessary to understand your 10th grade Math class, then perhaps some extra work on your own over the next few weeks, say Khan Academy etc., to review the material and gain more confidence with it, will help you be ready for the fall semester.
Bottom line, your transcript tells the story of 4 years of academic progress, and one early setback is not going to derail your future!
What math class are you scheduled to take this Fall and how will you be able to take it with a D in the preceding level?
@MYOS1634 It looks like OP got an A for the first half of the summer course but a D for the second half so the overall isnât a D
Many high schools wonât factor dual enrollment grades into the GPA. At my daughterâs school, they did not list classes taken outside of the school, but did include transcripts from colleges where my D took classes over the summer.
Ask your GC how your school handles dual enrollment.
thanks this really helped!