I know that it is a bit too early to discuss about this, but I got into the college that I wanted to go and began to slack off a little bit since December.
Although the college that I am planning to go did not look at my mid-year grade, I am afraid that my final grade will be a catastrophe.
Here is the planned final year grade by the time I graduate.
English Honors - B+
History - A- (I had A last semester so I do not really think that my grade will drop significantly)
AP Calc BC - B or B+
AP Gov - B or B+
AP Physics C (this is the real trouble) - C or C+
AP Statistics - C+ or B- (I will try my best to maintain my grade B-)
other electives - all A
I am really afraid that 2 possible Cs (APStat and AP Physics) will make college to rescind my application or to relegate me to other major that is much less competitive.
Do you guys think that colleges will rescind my application for having 2 high C+ (like 78 or 79)?
Your other posts mention Michigan, CMU, UCLA, and UCSD.
If an admission letter specifies a particular GPA or other academic threshold to avoid rescission, then you know what you have to meet. If it just says something about “maintaining your academic performance”, then you may want to ask the school specifically about whether your expected grades risk rescission.
@qpqpqp My justification for a bad grade in AP Physics will be the fact that my AP Physics teachers changed over and over.
First teacher taught us for first two months, then the other teacher substituted him due to his health issue. About two months later, the first teacher came back to teach us, but temporarily left his teaching again with saying that he has to do some surgery and will be back around on April.
Their radical differences in teaching style and testing format gave me a crazy headache and this headache obviously dropped my grade from 85 in first quarter to 81 at the end of first semester. Now I think that my yearly grade will be 78 or C+ as I have 75~6 as my second semester grade. Is this justification good enough for college to convince them that there was an “outside circumstance” for me to have a bad grade?
You presumably had nearly all A grades if you are a realistic candidate for admission to the schools you mentioned. It is not just one worse grade that you have to worry about – the schools will see a generalized drop from nearly all A grades to mostly B grades with a few C grades.
@ucbalumnus I am planning to go the college (University of Illinois as engineering major) that is not on my list.
They did not require me to send a mid-year grade on January and announced that they only look at my final grade. However, as I said before, this final grade is personally unsatisfactory (I never got C+ or B- as my final grade before) and I am afraid that UIUC will think that I had a terrible senioritis.
However, my school is well-known for being a challenging school and AP Physics and AP Statistics are challenging courses. In addition, I am not the only one who is experiencing a bad grade and there are some other students who are also receiving Cs in these classes.
I think you should just be honest if questioned. You had senoritis for a few months and then did your best to turn things around. I think justifications do not seem adult like. Just like third graders explaining the dog ate their homework. Colleges must be tired of hearing it.