I just finished my Junior year of high school. My concern is that I just failed Pre-Calc Honors last semester. Here’s some context so far. (My school does not offer any AP/Honors for freshmen, and only Science honors for sophomores)
FRESHMAN YEAR: Semester 1/Semester 2
Geometry (Accelerated): A/A (UC/CSU doesn’t recognize as Honors)
Biology: A/A
Literature: A/A
French I: A/A
Art: A/A
PE: A/A (Not an A-G course)
SOPHOMORE YEAR: Semester 1/Semester 2
Algebra II & Trigonometry (Accelerated): A/A (UC/CSU doesn’t recognize as Honors)
Chemistry Honors: B/B
World Literature: A/A
Worlds History: A/A
French II: A/B
Computer Science: A/B
JUNIOR YEAR: Semester 1/Semester 2
Pre-Calc Honors: B/D <-- NOTICE THAT I FAILED
AP Environmental Science: B/B
American Literature Honors: A/A
American History: A/A
French III: B/B
Basically, life turned south second semester but whatever I’m not here to make excuses about my grades and I don’t plan to write about any of it in my college apps because I know they’re tired of those stories. My life is just a mess and I just want to move forward.
What I’m concerned about is how my college admissions to UC’s and CSU’s will be affected?
I literally have to apply to college next fall, but my guidance counselor is on summer vacation and have no one else to talk to. So I’m screwed.
My plan so far is to retake precalc online over the summer, but I don’t know if I have to retake the whole year or only the second semester. Does anyone else know about this? If I retake and get a better grade, how will my UC/CSU GPA be calculated? Someone told me that CSU’s only consider the better grade if you retake the course, but I can’t find a source.
On top of that, does anyone know what my options are? I feel like everything is over, I don’t even know what to do.
Retake policies vary by school. If your high school offers summer credit recovery classes, there should be at least one counselor for that program even if it’s not your particular counselor. If you cannot reach any guidance counselor or anyone else to advise you, read your high school website carefully
Everything is not over. You have a deficiency that you need to correct. Everyone messes up at some point in life. The trick is to fix the problem and find a good way to move on. One good thing in this case is that your slip seems to be centered on one course, which implies that you only have one course to retake and get back on track.
Do you know what went wrong with pre-calc? Your Algebra II and Trigonometry grades are very good. To me pre-calc is pretty much the logical next thing after Algebra II and Trig. Thus a D or F here comes as sort of a major surprise after your very good grades up to this point.
The first step is to figure out whether to retake all of pre-calc, or just the second part. Math is something where what you learn today depends a LOT on what you learned yesterday and last semester and last year. Thus I would be inclined to retake the whole thing if you have time to do this in the summer unless you are very confident that you know the first half of this very well.
The next thing is to figure out what went wrong. I can certainly understand that students can sometimes be side tracked due to motivation, relationship, or family issues. Hopefully you know what happened and can fix it or get past it. If you don’t understand why your grades are slipping you might want to talk to a counselor of some kind (social worker or psychologist) and see if you might be suffering from some correctable issue (ADHD, depression, or something).
In terms of your B’s in Environmental Engineering and French, I don’t see this as anything that you need to re-study. You might want to know for yourself why your grades slipped, but there isn’t the same kind of absolute dependence on these subjects for your next classes going forward (although obviously next year’s French course might be slightly harder if you are not quite 100% up to speed). French can be helped quite a bit by watching French movies or TV shows which you should be able to find on-line, and there is a pretty good BBC French course on-line also. I used to watch hockey games in French but I am not sure where to find these in the US (particularly now that Les Canadiens are no longer in the NHL playoffs).
Someone else is going to need to help you regarding what this means for UC admissions. I would be a bit surprised if you have seriously damaged your chances anywhere other than UCLA and UCB. However, your slip in grades for your junior year might increase the chances that a university will wait for your mid-term grades senior year before making their final decision (not a problem, as long as you do well senior year).
UC’s and CSU’s will not use Senior year grades for admission purposes. They will evaluate your application based on your self-reported grades for the a-g course requirements from 9-11th grade and your UC/CSU GPA will based on the a-g course grades from 10-11th grade.
I posted some information regarding UC/CSU grades and repeating courses on your other post. If you do not pass a 2nd semester a-g course, you do not pass the whole course. You need to retake the whole year long course to replace your D grade. The CSU application will ask you report only the repeat grade while the UC application will ask you to report both, but the repeat grade will be used in your GPA calculation.
You can also Validate your 2nd semester D grade by taking a higher level of Math in your Senior year, but your D will still be included in the GPA calculation and you will not have your Senior year grades available until after graduation.
From the UC Application Information:
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Repeated courses
A student is allowed to repeat each “a-g” course in which a D or F grade was originally earned as many times as necessary until the rst time they earn a letter grade of C or better. The follow- ing rules apply:
• The replacement (repeat) course must have curriculum similar to the original course (the same content but not necessarily the same title).
• The new grade earned will be used in the GPA calculation. UC does not average the grades.
• All “a-g” coursework (original and repeats) must be reported on the admission application.
• A regular college-prep course cannot be used as a repeat of an approved honors-level course.
• An approved honors-level course may be used as a repeat of a college-prep course.
• College-level courses of high school content (remedial) may be used to repeat a college-prep course.
• College-level courses that are UC-transferable may be used to repeat approved school-created honors, AP and IB courses.
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Refer to page 20-21 of this link regarding repeat grades and validation
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/files/quick-reference-2016.pdf
@Gumbymom Thank you so much! This is literally exactly what I was looking for!
@Gumbymom Even though I took Pre-Calculus Honors the previous year, will taking regular Pre-Calculus serve as validation?
No to replace your D grade, you have to repeat the exact same class, so regular Pre-Calc will not validate the Honors Pre-Calc course or take a college level Pre-Calc course at you local community college.
Also find out if each semester is reported or just the final grade.
Also why did you get a D? What happened?