Hi! I have a few questions that I’d be grateful if anyone could answer. I’m currently in 9th grade, and I’ll be a sophomore next year. In middle school, I took French 1 & 2, and didn’t do great. I retook French 2 because I hardly learned anything the first time around, but I’m still getting Bs (to be fair, I didn’t prioritize the class at all, a mistake I now realize). Obviously I can’t do much about this except improve for the future, but for French 1, do you think it’s a good idea to retake the course online (during summer) too? Or will it look bad to colleges that I’m retaking both levels? If my language grades have given me 4 Bs, how bad is that for my GPA? Can I recover from my bad GPA in the future, or is the most I can get be a 3.8 for my cumulative high school GPA? I’m truly trying to work harder and to improve in French now, but I’m not sure if my past grades can let me get the GPA I want (3.92+ unweighted)
Another thing for the GPA is that for weighted GPA, my school weighs honors and AP classes the same. So when I took APUSH this year, and my friend took Honors U.S. History, they both contributed the same amount to our WGPAs. Will this negatively impact how colleges view my WGPA?
Usually the grade from 8th grade is not part of the high school gpa. The fact that you took the course is, but usually the gpa isn’t. Ask your guidance counselor.
Does your school do grade replacement for B’s? Most only do it for D’s and F’s.
Our school system counts anything in the “high school” track, meaning anything that can be taken in hs, toward total gpa. This includes kids who start early on Algebra (hurt my D a bit, gpa wise), Geometry, language courses, etc. You should check with your counselor to be sure, @probablyme. You can also typically find this in your schools program of studies book or online at the district school board website.
Taking AP classes instead of Honors classes would not negatively affect admission, IMO. AP are usually seen as more rigorous, and a high score is often rewarded with some sort of credit hours towards graduation requirements.
I wouldn’t recommend taking French I again, I doubt you’d learn anything new from it, and if it’s a paid course, just a waste of money. I would instead recommend looking for tutoring or finding self study programs online, once you pinpoint your issues. Is it grammar, conjugation, vocabulary? What gives you trouble? Does your school offer help? My D used to do free tutoring as part of her National French Honor Society duties. If you’re good at self teaching, buy a used French 2 textbook online (ebay, abebooks, thriftbooks), and make a little notebook and go thru it unit by unit over the summer. Make a vocab section, a conjugation section, and a section for new tenses, then do repetitive work. You may even find a used workbook that doesn’t have much writing in it.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/French-for-Mastery-Tous-Ensemble-Workbook-Teachers-Annotated-Edition/282933412793?epid=3004865742&hash=item41e02543b9:g:zlYAAOSw2iNZX~Wf For example, this is a teacher’s edition that has the answers for you to check, all you have to do is cover them with a sheet of paper while you work.
As far as your gpa, what’s done is done. All you can do at this point is ensure that your other grades are such that they cancel the B’s out as much as possible. My daughter got a C in Algebra (middle school) and a B in 2 courses in junior year (weighted), and had a 4.5 weighted gpa and got into several competitive schools. Keep in mind that GPA isn’t everything. It’s also important for you to do something that really interests you, so that you are able to write about it well and show some sort of spark in your application essays. Your summer might be better spent doing some sort of volunteering, working (if possible–even something like dog sitting or dog walking can provide interesting topics).
if you want to do a bit of review perhaps see if there is a free French class on couresa, edx etc. Since it is review it probably won’t take a lot of time and maybe you’ll feel a bit more prepared for French 3.
The colleges will probably not request your courses that you took in middle school. It doesn’t truly show how rigorous the student is. When I was in middle school, we had advanced level English and math, similar to that of honors. However, one student who could be acing those two courses may bomb if advanced science or social studies was offered. Similarly, a student who took both normal English and math may be extremely smart in social studies and want to do advanced if it was honors. High school is when they truly see how much you’ve challenged yourself. They won’t see that you’ve retaken your Spanish courses. However, retaking foreign languages can hurt your future plans if you hope to take higher level foreign language courses. In the scheme of GPAs, here’s what each letter really means:
A - You overachieved and did well above average.
B - You could’ve done better, but overall, good.
C - Meh. Your work is average.
D - You didn’t do well enough to earn credit for this course.
F - You failed.
The course I did the absolute worst in was my freshman year environmental science course. I pulled a C out of that course and was lucky to get out of that class. Had I not, it could’ve really made colleges reconsider me. However, doing poorly freshman year is better than doing poorly junior year. If you should get a poor grade out of any year, it would have to be freshman year (I’m not saying you should pull a poor grade freshman year, but if you do so, it’ll be better than pulling a bad one junior year)
Thank you all so much!! I’m a completely new member and didn’t expect such helpful responses so fast, and I need to make my decision next week, so I’m really grateful for all your answers. My school does indeed use middle school grades on high school transcripts (only for certain classes like languages and math classes that are Algebra 1 & beyond. I went through algebra easily, but French was so hard for some reason), so maybe I’ll just try to do better for French 3 instead of retaking the class. I’m still considering retaking it, but this will help a lot in deciding. But as for my weighted GPA question, does anyone know the answer?
Thanks again!