Upcoming high school senior here. My school has a policy where they let you “GPA Exempt” a couple classes per year, which means that whatever grade you receive will have no impact on your GPA nor your rank. This also means that the letter grade will not be printed on your transcript, but the numeric grade will. Unfortunately, towards the end of last semester, my grade in two of these classes fell pretty far, and I got two Cs. Before this semester, I’ve been a straight-A student, and mostly A+ at that, but I guess online pandemic learning isn’t for me. (This semester I did also get a B and a few lower As, non-exempt.) Until recently, I wasn’t too worried about these grades, as I’d exempted them, but now I’m afraid that I’ve messed up severely and the number grades on my transcript will get my application tossed at any T20s and the like that I apply to. It also doesn’t help that both were math courses, and that I intend to major in C.S. (though I do feel good about my AP score for one of them if that’s any difference).
My question is, will the fact that these grades are exempted and that the letter grade is not printed help me at all in applications, or is this pretty much the same as earning two bona fide Cs? Should I even bother applying to more than one or two T20s?
For context, the rest of my application isn’t terrible. I’m top 2% of my class, scored a 1580 SAT, have a handful decent extracurriculars, and feel pretty confident in my LORs and essays.
Thank you for reading. I appreciate any advice I can get here.
Not sure I understand - but if, for example, you use Common App, you have up to 20 colleges - if you have the time, money, and stamina to do. The higher ranked schools will have more work up front, etc.
The reality is - if you have Reaches, Matches, and Safety Schools -you are ok - so if you want to reach on a few more, go ahead.
Your situation may be harder to label a safety but with a 1580 SAT, I’m sure you can figure them out pretty easily.
A safety means you’d be proud to attend and you can afford it - it’s just that you know you’ll get in. I’d have at least two - as a just in case - often times you can score good merit too.
If you have a few safeties, several target, and then you can do whatever you want in regards to the # of reaches. What’s the worst that can happen? They say no.
on the flipside, you might want to chase merit - and many top schools don’t provide it (just need based). You don’t list your finances here but just general advice.
Good luck.
PS - what’s the rationale behind that grading system? Not sure I understand.
Isn’t it the case for at least a few schools that you self-certify your GPA/grades and only send the official transcript in after the admission decision is made?
If so, you should be fine, at least to those schools that work like this. Your official GPA excludes the GPA Exempt grades, so that’s about it.
I guess you need to check the specific requirements for each school in terms of how the process works about the submission of grades. And apologies if I bungled my answer, as DD has not yet started to apply.
Like @skieurope, it seems a bit silly to do this: it should be P/F with no score/grade given.
If I understand correctly, the two classes which resulted in disappointing grades were not used in calculating class rank.
Top two (2%) percent class rank accompanied by a 1580 SAT score is more significant than two classes which were not “As”, although poor performance in math classes for a future CS major may make you a less competitive applicant.
Nevertheless, do not lose faith in yourself and in your abilities.
Worth repeating:
Top 2% class rank & 1580 SAT score. Based on this, I see college in your future. Don’t sell yourself short.
Prestigious schools are a reach even with a perfect gpa/top scores so I would still apply. Many kids did not do as well this year as they have done traditionally (my own son didn’t get any C’s but he did get a few Bs which is unusual for him - he’s another kid who found online learning sub-optimal). With your gpa/SATs there will be many excellent target school for you and I would concentrate on finding some you really like as well as some good safeties - not because of last year’s grades, but because top 20 schools reject so many fantastic students every year.
For most schools, you send the transcript with the application. Fir those schools that allow self-reporting of courses and grades, but don’t want the transcript until accepted, there should be no discrepancies between the 2.
I am pretty sure the OP knows that there is a college in his future. His worries are that there is not prestigious college in his future. And that’s what he is asking.
To me, a comment like that dilutes the discussion and changes the topic from the original question. Also, it is kind of disrespectful to think that the OP doesn’t realize these simple facts.
It is almost as annoying as when somebody asks for their chances to certain schools and somebody starts talking about how much will it cost and that there are better alternatives.
Yeah, I guess it is better to let people say the same thing over and over, instead of telling them it is annoying. Frankly I’ve given up on the cost nonsense, there is no any way some people will talk about anything else other than money.
As I said, I see a lot of disrespect to the students that ask questions, assuming that they are idiots and they don’t know what they are asking.
At sub 20% acceptance rates, it may or may not matter, no way to tell. It’s pretty unique to your school and will likely be explained in the school profile.
Take your shot, you have the basic stats required and, as you know, at that level, luck comes into play.
Of course, the top 2% is because the C’s don’t count. If I were an AO(I am not) and I recognized that these lower grades existed (they may not), it might make me wonder about the OP’s drive. At highly selective schools, you don’t want any doubt in the AO’s mind.
@Eeyore: More to the point is that the “Cs” are in math courses and the OP will be applying as a CS major.
Nevertheless, top 2% & a 1580 SAT score should get OP serious consideration at the most highly selective schools especially since the two “Cs” were from online classes as a result of the pandemic.
