<p>There's been a general downward trend with my unweighted GPA from freshman year to now (junior), but my course load has been getting progressively tougher. I wonder how badly it will affect me in college admissions.</p>
<p>Freshman year, I went to a really bad high school that did not offer any honors/advanced courses, so I simply took a few regular courses with some upperclassmen and ended up with all A's.</p>
<p>Sophomore year, I moved and ended up going to a high school listed on Newsweek Top 100s. There, I took a couple AP courses, but I wasn't confident enough to do honors on everything. I ended up with all A's but a B+ for both semesters of AP European History.</p>
<p>This year, I finally requested an all-honors schedule, but two B+'s showed up first semester, and three B's are haunting me second semester. The first B is in AP US History, which I'm not good at. However, the second B emerged in Multivariable Calculus + Linear Algebra, which I attribute to an extremely difficult teacher. As for the third B in second semester, I simply had some really bad luck on some reading quizzes in AP-IB Honors English. Though, to make up for that, I'm getting A+'s in AP Computer Science A and AP Physics C.</p>
<p>I'm wondering - how badly will this affect me when it comes to college admissions? Should I just mention it somewhere in my essay? I plan to continue with a similarly rigorous courseload next year.</p>
<p>If your scores are good it won't be too bad. But they ultimately want students who take the hardest curriculum and excel. And, unless your school is graduating a consistent number of kids to top schools (something the Newsweek listing does not take into account if I'm not mistaken) they don't really care about the 'ranking' of your school.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the decreased GPA does hurt my class rank, as I go to a very competitive school. In fact, it knocks me down to the second decile.</p>
<p>The main difference is that I'm taking some challenging courses usually meant for people in a grade higher than mines, but they still get all the same weight.</p>
<p>So, my friends who are good in English and History but bad at Math and Science would usually get A's in English and History, but also A's in their Trig/Precalc Honors and Honors Physics. Meanwhile, I'm knocked down if I run into a bit of trouble with some of my harder classes. I think this is exactly why colleges look at your transcript as a whole, or why some people with a 4.0 UW GPA can get rejected (because they take Algebra II senior year along with two study halls which are calculated into the GPA).</p>
<p>colleges assign one or two people to certain regions of each state and it is the job of those two people to research the rigor, difficulty, and opportunities of the schools in their area. If your school is in the top 100 and is legitimately a difficult, highly competitive school, your school's API ranking will be really high and it will help explain and make up a little for your decreased grades. However, your SAT 1 must be fairly high.</p>
<p>colleges don't just look at GPA, they also look to see if you challenged yourself, and you used all the educational opportunities provided by your school. Especially at smaller schools, they will really look over what classes you take. They will see that your classes got harder, and you challenged yourself, and they'll like that.</p>