Hi, I’m currently a sophmore and my dream college is uva. Uva requires very high overall gpa along with high sat scores but in my freshman year I screwed up a lot on history. I ended with a C+ as my final grade and that had a big impact on my gpa. My gpa is around 3.7 weighted and that’s only because taking several honors courses brought it up. I still have time to bring my gpa up since I’m only a sophmore but I’m wondering if the low letter grades will have an effect. Does the letter grades matter? or do they only look at your overall gpa score? thanks in advance
Colleges will get your HS transcript and look at that as well as your GPA. Admissions officers look to the transcript to see things like course rigor, how well you did in academic subjects etc. Some colleges even recalculate GPA based on their own criteria (ex. academic subjects only, unweighted etc.).
They will look at all of your grades. However, freshman year will matter less than other years and a few schools (including U.California’s and most in Canada) don’t look at freshman year at all.
If you have a 3.7 after one year with a C+, then the rest of your grades must be very strong indeed. Keep up the good work, try to do well in all of your classes, and you should be fine.
Also, when it comes time to apply to universities, don’t focus on only one school. UVA is a great school, but there are lots of other very strong schools also.
As a soph, lots of time left. A lower grade in a freshman humanities class can matter less whrn you’re headed for stem. But you’ll need more history classes, so be on top of those.
And know how competitive UVa admissions is, even for top instate kids. Learn what they look for, besides grades.