<p>I'm a sophmore(10th grade) first semester. I am failing English right now.... I'm getting B or higher in all other classes. Just English I am failing.... Do I have to give up my chances to go to college. During freshman year my gpa was 3.6 first semester 3.1 2nd semester.</p>
<p>Okay, don’t freak out. You’re only in tenth grade so, first off, if you do better in 11th grade, the colleges look at that more, plus your SAT scores. Secondly, you have time to improve your grade. Try to work with the teacher and see if there’s a way you can bring your grade up. If the teacher knows you’re trying, s/he may try to work with you. Mention that your other grades are good (S/he can probably find that out, but s/he may have assumed you’re just an overall bad student who doesn’t care), so you’re really worried about this class and how it will affect your record. Teachers don’t usually want to ruin someone if they think that student is trying. Finally, if worse comes to worst, some school systems have what is called “grade forgiveness,” where, if you take the class over again in summer school or online, they will count the good grade in your average rather than the bad one. My daughter had a situation where she did very poorly in Algebra 2, then switched from honors to regular and brought her grade up. But, because she’d done poorly the first semester, she ended up with a D (1.4!) for the year. Her school system let her retake just the semester in which she’d done poorly, in an online class, then averaged that with the semester where she’d done better. Since the online class was really mostly review of what she’d already done, she got an A, which they averaged with the C she’d gotten the second semester, and she got a B. Her transcript still shows she got the D, but it also shows she got a B when she retook the class, which shows effort and dedication. She’s been applying to colleges, and so far, she’s gotten in to every school that has replied, including two state universities and getting a scholarship offer from one school, Florida Institute of Technology (She’s into science) where I thought they might particularly discriminate against her because of her mediocre math grades (Her math SAT score, however, was pretty good, which I think was because she spent the whole summer before she retook the SAT, retaking Algebra 2 online – her math went from 470 to 620!). Failing one class is NOT the end of the world. Yes, it may keep you out of Harvard, but normal schools are more understanding as long as you have an overall good record.</p>