<p>I heard from a friend (not a completely reliable one however) that colleges don't care/look at your grades from freshman year. Is this true? Or is this only true for non-competitive schools?</p>
<p>Some do. Some don’t. No shortcut besides looking at each schools’ criteria</p>
<p>Let’s say a top 20 school. Do they care?</p>
<p>Majority of them look at freshman grades. Top 20’s do look at freshman grades with the exception of Carnegie Mellon University.</p>
<p>PromotionMan</p>
<p>The top 20 schools will generally look at your freshman grades. (I didn’t know that about CMU – Great School, btw). However, have a holistic approach, and recognize that some people may take a while to acclimate to HS. So, if your freshman grades are a little below par, you may be able to overcome this. If they were terrible – it becomes harder.</p>
<p>Identify ‘terrible’. Let’s say 90 weighted (about 85 or something like that unweighted).</p>
<p>At mentioned by everyone else, the top 20 schools take these grades into consideration. Other colleges, and some of these top 20 schools, (in my experience) if they see great improvement in your grades after freshman year, and you somewhat introduce your improvements in your admission essays, they will view this as a success and that you are able to grow to your best as a student. It all depends on where you are applying and your stats (whether they complement or take away from your grades overall).</p>
<p>I’m laughing a bit, since I’m not on an admissions committee (so my opinion isn’t worth a whole lot).</p>
<p>However, let’s give it a shot. Your grades – B (unweighted), A (weighted). There is absolutely no reason you can’t get into an excellent school. Top 20 (whatever that means)? perhaps, but this will depend on the totality of your record – what were your grades Soph and Jr. year. What ECs? Any significan’t awards? What will your ACTs or SATs be? How good will your Essays be? How will your recommendations be? </p>
<p>I will say this – you do not need perfect grades, perfect scores, to be class valedictorian, All State Football or to have cured Cancer in order to get into top 20 schools. Do the best you can. Also, even if it comes to top 50, top 100, whatever, you can get an excellent education and be highly successful in life.</p>
<p>I honestly haven’t heard of anywhere that doesn’t look at your entire high school transcript, freshman year included. But keep in mind that grades aren’t everything.</p>