Hi. I am currently dying. We received our first semester grades today, and I got a B in AP Calc BC and in Math Team (our school reports grades only the letter). I have had straight A’s throughout freshman, sophomore, and junior year, and I have taken the most rigorous Honors/AP courses available (6 AP’s junior, and 6 more AP’s senior year). I also self-studied AP Calculus AB last year and got a 5 on the AP exam, and now I got a freaking B in the BC class first semester. To be honest, senioritis came a bit early… and I rue my life. I know I shouldn’t be having aneurysms over this, but I just want to be clear on how much weight colleges put on senior first semester grades. 1st semester grades are not important at my school, as they do not count towards GPA or class rank.
I know they are important to the competitive colleges that I’m applying to (Yale, UPenn, Columbia, Stanford, Duke, etc.), but will this be a huge red light for admissions officers? If so, if I get straight A’s third quarter and update them to colleges, will it make up for (or lessen the blow significantly) for the two B’s I got on the midyear report?
Relax. You will be fine. First semester grades from senior year do matter, but 2 B’s in your entire high school career do not. Even for the colleges you listed, your final admissions decisions will be the same regardless of these grades as long as the rest of your application is competitive. If you do not intend to major in STEM, then the consequences (if any) are even less.
It is not necessary to update colleges with your third quarter grades. However, if it will help calm your nerves, do so. (As a fellow senior, I understand your angst; personally, if I were you, I myself would update the colleges just to calm my nerves more than anything else even though it’s not at all necessary.) If possible, ask your guidance counselor to update the colleges so that it seems more official and does not look like you’re nervous. However, remember that depending on your high school, third quarter grades might actually have no effect if they come out only 1-2 weeks before the actual admissions decisions.
Thank you, I will probably try to update third quarter so I can sleep in peace lol. I am most worried about the B’s this semester, because I am afraid admissions will see that as a downward trend. Also, I’m majoring in Biochemistry for most of the schools I applied to.
Even though it is a STEM field and a solid mathematics foundation is essential, I don’t see it being as much of a problem as in the scenario in which you might have listed Math/Physics/Engineering as intended major(s) on your applications. If I were an admissions officer, all I would think is that you have proven yourself mathematically capable of succeeding in Biochemistry; I would not read much further into it than that.
Not again.
Let’s just say that if you are rejected from all of them, it won’t be the Bs on your transcript that is the reason.
Go to the list of what is most important to each school, and count how many items are Very Important. And see if Mid-Year Report is one of them, and see what percent it would be of those.