Will my poor freshman year be the deciding factor?

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

<p>When I was a freshman I made a lot of bad choices, and was going through some hard times. As a result of this, I was in all on level classes and my GPA freshman year was 2.83. After that my grades greatly have improved and my GPA for my sophomore and junior years is ~3.8. Also I have done well in 4 AP classes (Calc AB, Physics B, Enviro & CS). And next year for my senior year I plan on taking even harder classes. Although, due to my poor freshman year my total GPA is a 3.45 and assuming I get straight A's this semester the highest it will get is 3.53. I am scared that colleges are going to overlook me due to my poor GPA, which does not truly express my academic ability. Leading me to this question...</p>

<p>When colleges are looking at my application and they see my GPA are they going to just glance and move on? Or are they going to look at my grades per year and see how I have improved academically, and if it is too low for their standards, could I still get accepted based upon my sophomore and junior years? </p>

<p>P.S. I would like to go to either GT or UMich</p>

2

<p>Colleges LOVE to see grade improvement. You should have many options available to you. I don’t know if your GPA will be high enough for Michigan (depends on whether you’re in-state or OOS) but you should be fine for GT. Also be sure to have good extracurriculars and standardized test scores! GPA is important, but it’s not absolutely everything.</p>

3

<p>Usually freshman year doesn’t matter</p>

4

<p>When saying freshman year does not matter - I thought that only some West Coast schools did not use freshman year when calculating GPA. Are there any East Coast schools that do not consider freshman year, and if so, which ones?</p>

5

<p>Thank you, I also would like to know which schools freshman year doesnt matter to.</p>

6

<p>stanford doesn’t use freshmen year gpa. and neither does mit i think.</p>

7

<p>Hmm, I actually would be very interested to see a list of colleges that ignore/underweight freshman year GPA. My own year was kinda disastrous…</p>

<p>I’ve tried googling and going through these boards, but I can only see that UC Schools and Stanford disregard. </p>

<p>Where can I find this information?</p>

8

<p>I got into Gatech (on Dec. 15) with a 3.4 gpa. Not as much of a noticeable grade trend, but my gpa did go up throughout high school (along with my courseload and rigor)</p>

9

<p>interesting, what were your SAT scores?</p>

10

<p>do u guys know if cornell, JHU, or any other ivies use freshman gpa’s?</p>

<p>my freshman gpa is pretty bad, but i would say my sophomore and junior year gpa shows great improvement</p>