<p>Which grade reports do colleges look at? Do freshman year grades matter at all?</p>
<p>Kate, it depends entirely on the college ... for instance, the University of California system looks at grades from sophomre and junior years to determine eligibility, and then may look more broadly during their selection process. Stanford, for another, does not consider freshman year grades. On the other hand, the huge majority of colleges DO consider freshman year grades.</p>
<p>i dont think freshman year matters a whole lot. mainly sophomore and junior year. i think colleges also look at senior year to see if you start to slack off...if that helps at all.</p>
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i dont think freshman year matters a whole lot. mainly sophomore and junior year
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<p>Again, it depends on the college. It's clearly invalid to apply a universal generatlization for a scenario that is specific to a given school. This statement is also not accurate because freshman year grades DO matter to most colleges. Look to the admissions website of a given college to provide you with the answer. </p>
<p>Here's something from the Princeton Review website that spells out the importance of freshman year grades:</p>
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Your Freshman Grades Matter</p>
<p>The people who don't understand this fact as freshman are the same people who are most likely to panic during their junior and senior years. When you apply to college, the admissions committee will see your freshman grades and make judgments about you based on them. Poor freshman grades will pull down your grade point average, and that's definitely a bad thing.</p>
<p>Imagine that you sit on the admissions committee at a college. It's your job to decide who gets into the college and who doesn't. There are 1000 applications and only 500 seats available. That means that you're going to have to reject a lot of applicants.</p>
<p>You look over the application of Joe Bloggs. His grades are mostly Cs. He has a few Bs. He also has a few Ds and Fs. Are you going to want him to give him a seat at your college? Are you going to want to give him a scholarship? If he didn't do well in high school, how's he going to handle college? Why should you risk it? Why should you give the seat to Joe Bloggs when you have lots of other applications on your desk from students who made As and Bs in high school? Why should you have confidence in Joe when Joe hasn't demonstrated that he has confidence in himself?</p>
<p>Don't give an admissions committee any reason to believe you don't take yourself seriously. Life is all about opportunities and what you do with them. High school is an opportunity. It's a very convenient way to prove to the world that you take yourself seriously, or that you don't. If you don't make the effort to succeed in the opportunities you're given in high school, few people will want to give you opportunities after high school.
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<p>I'm just worried because I go to an extremely competitive school, and the "straight-A" is no longer easy to get.</p>
<p>Your guidance counselor will send a profile of your high school with your transcript/his/her letter of rec when you apply to a school. The profile will generally tell the adcom some things about how difficult/competitive your school is, maybe not directly, but it will do so. If your school is super competitive and it's very difficult to get an A, don't worry about not measuring up to an applicant from a different high school who has straight 100s in their classes because it is very easy to gain such grades. Also remember that the difficulty of your courseload is taken into account when your academic record is evaluated. From my understanding, colleges would rather see you get a B in a tough AP/IB/honors course than an A+ in a "regulars" course.</p>