I am new to this site and my friend told me to go to this site for any advice. Right now…i need some advice…
My freshman was crappy…really crappy.
I only had 2 honors course throughout my freshman year because my school thought I was dumb. After taking reg. biology and honors geometry from AP Teachers, my grades weren’t so hot. a 3.4 weighted first semester and 3.8 weighted 2nd semester.
However, after negotiating with my counselor and assuring them that I was ready to take on a heavier courseload for soph. After learning stronger study habits and studying literally my ass off and used to studying far beyond the material (because my honors geometry teacher and reg. bio teacher who were AP teachers made me), I got 4.8 both 1st and 2nd semester in sophmore year.
My junior schedule goes like this:
AP Chem
AP English
AP USH
Pre calc. honors
Spanish IV honors
My ec’s are pretty strong with couple leaderships as well as being eagle scout.
also…will my low and embarassing freshman grades kill my chances in my dream schools-> UCLA, UCSD, Stanford, NYU, Harvard, Yale?
*i understand that YAle and Harvard does look and take into consideration freshman grades…so should i just give up on those?
<p>well...in my opinion...ur fine. huge upward trend is a huge plus. about harvard and yale... u are not out. just make sure you get solid SAT scores. you should be fine.</p>
<p>You sound as if you are picking your colleges solely upon prestige. Decide what you want in a college. Do you want urban/rural/suburban, university/LAC, large/small/midsize, public/private, and etc? Do you want a school with Division 1 teams? You do care about the effect of frats and sororities on the campus life? Don't get too focused on the USNWR rankings. At most reasonable schools, freshman year doesn't matter that much as long as you have an upward trend. Colleges care most about difficulty of curriculum, then gpa/rank, and then standardized test scores. Then they use the EC's, essays, and recommendations to select people from the group with strong academics. You want to show "passion" and long-term commitment to one/two EC's. The essay describes you passion, and the activity list of EC's supports the essay. You don't want a laundry list of EC's without much involvement in any of them.</p>
<p>well..im primarily looking at the UC's because of the $$$$. im really only shooting for UC's. Nyu and HYS are the colleges i'm just applying for the heck of it because my dad says I have nothing to lose except a hundred or more bux.</p>
<p>You mentioned $ and I was going to say something about financial aid. A lot of people wait too long to estimate how much financial aid they may receive. You can estimate (to some degree) how much FA you can expect at each college, and the guides say not to limit your college applications based on cost. Each college has an associated COA (cost of attendance). Each student has an associated EFC (estimated family contribution). Your NEED is calculated by subtracting EFC from COA, and the college may actually give you a need-based grant making up the difference between the COA and EFC. The bad part is that a person's EFC may be very high and that there is no guarantee that the college will give you a big grant. There are EFC estimator available on the web including one at CC. Once you know what your EFC will be, you can make better decisions about where to apply. You should still have a financial safety as well as an academic safety, although they can both be the same college.</p>
<p>well money is not a problem because I saved a lot of money from jobs as well as my grandmother putting a education account for me which as enough to pay for at least half the tuition. The rest is covered by my parents. killaerone ...im just assuming my cum. Gpa is around the high 4.2's or mid 4.3's. unweighted should be around the 3.7 area</p>