<p>UC's don't take into consideration hs freshman year GPA for the purposes of admissions. (They do look at the course load/quality of course load, but ignore the GPA in the mechanical formula of calculating total points assigned to a candidate). It is just Sophomore and Junior year GPA that matters there. </p>
<p>Question: Is it true of all colleges ? </p>
<p>Context: my d had a "hiccup" in the first semester of her junior year, and has otherwise consistent performance. I am wondering if her overall GPA (if Freshman year is included) will help dilute that. (UC answer is no).</p>
<p>I've been told two different things by my GC: one time they said freshman year isn't looked at and colleges are more concerned with sophomore, junior & senior years then another time they said colleges will look at freshman year along with sophomore, junior & senior years. Perhaps it depends on the college you are applying to.</p>
<p>It is considered and looked at. It could easily be a tiebreaker, but as far as calculating into GPA at top colleges it is not. At least for JHU I know it's not.</p>
<p>It depends a lot on the college. Even those that count it though, will often most closely scrutinize junior and sophomore grades. That being said though, colleges are powerless to recalculate class rank, which almost always includes freshman year, and often plays a fairly significant hand in admissions.</p>
<p>DCforMe wrote:That being said though, colleges are powerless to recalculate class rank, which almost always includes freshman year.</p>
<p>Actually, her hs lists rank two ways: including freshman gpa and w/o freshman gpa (only sophomore and junior). Both are unweighted ranks tho', but that is another story. </p>
<p>atrophicwhisper wrote: It varies from school to school. It's something you have to look up yourself!</p>
<p>How do I find out ? Is it described on the college admission form ? Do I go to each college of interest forum here in CC and ask around (UC sites have clear selection criteria. Do all colleges write how they calculate GPA's - holistics stuff aside).</p>
<p>@pita09, visit the college in question's admission site. You can even try Google if you want. I typed in "University of California GPA" and the first site that popped up was this one: </p>
<p>In my estimation, it's pretty difficult to find how each school calculates GPA. Schools that use the Common Application ask for GPA and class rank in the secondary school report, and even there it's not clear if the counselor should be filling in 9-11 GPA or 10-11.</p>
<p>Since you asked about UCs, you might be interested to know that the Cal States use the UC calculation, with the exception of Cal Poly SLO which asks for freshman year grades and then calculates its own version of the GPA.</p>
<p>I know Princeton and Stanford don't consider freshman grades that much. It's not that they don't look at them at all, but rather that they cut you some slack. But they'll still see your high school GPA. In general, junior year grades are the most important (for similar reasons to why they want to see recommendations from junior year teachers). In general, though, everything is important.</p>
<p>Oh in response to the last couple posts I think the standard procedure is to include everything since 9th grade, including the first semester of senior year on the mid-year report.</p>