Slacked off During Freshman First Marking Period....What can I do about it?

Hi, I know there are a lot of posts similar to this, but I just needed some sort of advice or feedback.

As a freshman, I went full virtual and did all my classes from home. But I totally underestimated the workload of my courses and finished with 3 B’s and 1 D in my first marking period(About an 86 UW).
I learned my lesson and I worked hard the past few months to increase my GPA to the best of my abilities, and I currently have a 93 UW gpa and 100.3 W(HS calculates on 100 point scale). I feel that I have improved, but I’m extremely worried that I’ve lost my edge in comparison to other students. Do my mistakes early in my freshman years ruin my chances at getting accepted into Ivy and T20 schools? What else can I do to improve my chances?

Thanks, any sort of help would be appreciated

How does your school report grades on your transcript? Where we are, it’s the end of year grades that are reported, not the midterm ones (except for seniors).

And please open your mind to colleges other than the Ivies and T20 colleges. These places have acceptance rates that are very low…and NO applicant is guaranteed acceptance even with a perfect GPA.

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Hi, sorry for the lack of clarification. At my high school, our grades are also reported at the end of the year on our transcripts. I also didn’t mean to say that I’m only going to be applying to T20/Ivy schools(I have a rough list of Safeties), I just wanted to know if my chances were harmed by my mistakes. Thanks again.

Yes, your chances were harmed. However, many applicants with perfect grades get denied from the Ivies each year.

There is nothing you can do about it now. Continue your studies doing classes and activties that interest you and show who you are as a person.

All you can do at this point is do as well as you can in the future. What’s past is past.

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First semester freshman year is the least important semester from high school, but it will still matter for admission at most universities.

From what you said in your post you should be competitive for very good universities. However “top 20” universities in the US are tough even for students who have straight A’s for every year of high school. You definitely need to have solid safeties on your list of schools to apply to.

If you live in California, then most of the Universities of California will not care about your freshman year of high school (UCLA and UC Berkeley might be “top 20” on some lists and for some majors). If you do not live in California, then the Universities of California will be very expensive. On some rankings the University of Toronto comes in as a “top 20” university worldwide, and it will not care about your freshman year. However, I would not go abroad or even to California to offset one single mediocre semester of high school.

You can get an excellent education at any one of several hundred universities in the US and about the same number of universities outside the US. If you look at the really top graduate programs, their incoming students come from a very wide range of universities. I got my master’s at a “top 3” university (for my major and overall), and the large majority of students in the same program did not come from a top 20 undergraduate program.

One bad semester at the start of high school is definitely something that you can overcome. I have seen people overcome much worse. However, it makes it more unlikely that you will be able to attend a “top 20” university for your undergraduate education.

This is exactly correct. We all make mistakes. The people who do well are the people who learn from their mistakes and who do better next time.

Exactly the right thing to do. Keep it up and you will do well.