First a profile, I’m a Asian -American freshmen. Due to Freshmen PE being a participation based class and since I was gone on vacation my teacher gave me all 0’s for two weeks and from the looks of it I’ll be getting a B in that class for this semester. Will this hurt my chances of getting into a selective school? ( and please be honest)
Your dream school Stanford does not take into account freshman year grade in their admission decisions, so you are ok in that regard.
PE is not considered an academic core class so it will not be an issue when applying to any college.
As a Freshman, please rid yourself of the “dream school” idea. Just do your best and everything will fall into place once you are ready to apply to college.
What about other colleges?
To answer your question, a B in one semester of HS gym won’t negatively impact your college admission results.
But much more importantly…you are a HS freshman. It is way too early to think about specific colleges (especially the hyper-competitive ones). You don’t even have one full year’s GPA and you have no standardized testing.
You also need to recognize that HS should be an experience in and of itself – a time of learning and growth and not just a 4 year college application prep experience.
It is good to take school seriously and know that college will be on your horizon, but it is too early to start planning for specific colleges. I would highly recommend that you get off of CC (except the HS life forum) until your junior year.
For now you should focus on:
–Working hard, learning, and doing as well as you can in the most challenging curriculum you can manage.
–When the time comes study for standardized tests.
–Get involved in activities you care about and work towards making meaningful contributions to those activities.
–Enjoying spending time with your family and friends.
When the time comes (junior year) honestly asses your academic stats (including GPA, standardized tests, course rigor) as well as your financial needs and apply to a wide range of reach, match, and safety schools that appear affordable (you will have to run a net price calculator for each school you consider) and that you would be happy to attend. There are many many wonderful schools out there where you can have a great 4 year experience and get where you want to go in life.
No, a B in freshman gym isn’t going to be an issue. However if you continue to get B’s in gym in future years, that might send the wrong message.
Just make up the classes, for heavens sake. Yes, needing to make them up is silly and kind of a pain. But it is good for your mental and physical health.
Thanks, this was very good advice.
“You also need to recognize that HS should be an experience in and of itself – a time of learning and growth and not just a 4 year college application prep experience”
Once an Asian American says Stanford is the dream school, high school is already a 4 year college app, learning and growth are just empty platitudes at this point.
OP, I’m not trying to single you out or anything, in fact I hope you take some of the good advice in this thread.
Keep in mind. Even with perfect scores, grades, activities etc your chances to getting accepted to Stanford is slim for like everyone. Don’t live your life reaching for something that no matter what you do, might not happen. Follow the above advice. Take classes that you find interesting and challenging. Do activities that speak to you. Have some fun and get good grades. The rest have their way to working themselves out
Wow this is sad to read.
^^^ THIS!!
Keep in mind that Stanford has approximately a 4% admit rate. Please do not put all of your eggs in the Stanford basket
It’s nothing to stress over. 95% of applicants, with perfectly competitive grades and scores, get declined at Stanford. You can’t expect anymore than that, at least not without driving yourself into madness. Just get the best grades you can, then apply and see what happens.
You also might want to suggest to your family that taking vacations during the school year in high school might not be the best plan. Frankly, you are lucky your core class grades were not affected. Where I am, a family vacation taken during school time…all the days are considered unexcused absences and no work can be made up. There are plenty of school vacations that can be used for…vacation.
Re: Stanford. 95% of applicants get rejected. In that 95%, there are plenty of extremely well qualified applicants. The same is true for most top 20 schools.
As a freshman, you need to do well, and if you are thinking about colleges…you need to broaden your thinking…and ditch the dream school thing.
Go to school. Don’t go on 2 week vacations during the school year. I’m surprised all your other teachers didn’t give you 0s.