Will an F or Ds drastically hurt my chances at a top tier graduate school?

Graduate School
1

<p>Hey guys, so I screwed up my freshman year of undergrad and received 1 F and 1 D due to laziness and neglect of going to class. However, I still managed to pull a 3.3 cumulative GPA. </p>

<p>I hope to be able to accumulate research experience, and raise my cumulative up to a 3.5-3.7 by the time I apply to graduate school.</p>

<p>Will having an F and a D on my transcript severely hurt my chances at graduate schools such as Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Cornell, etc? or will it have less of an impact since it occurred freshman year and my grades have since improved and stayed close to a 4.0? What else can I do to make my application stand out more and mitigate the effects of my poor freshman year</p>

<p>Thanks for any input and advice.</p>

2

<p>they definitely dont look good but it depends on how the schools look at it i guess. If your school has a retake and replace the grade policy then do it. If youve just finished ur freshmen year then for sure you can get up to a 3.7 with a consistent 4.0 every semester. But this wont be easy at all. Your classes will only get harder, and if you only managed a 3.3 freshmen year then youre gonna have to work extra hard to get straight A’s. Good Luck!</p>

3

<p>No. If your trend is all away from those struggles, you’ll be fine.</p>

<p>Some schools don’t even consider freshman/sophomore year in GPA calculations for graduate admissions.</p>