Worried about grades for High School

Hi,

I am a freshman in High school right now, and I am not sure what my grades mean right now. My goal is to end up studying computer science with business at a very high level college, preferably UC or IVY. I am taking Honors Trigonometry/PreCalculus and AP Principle Comp Science. Both classes are very difficult and top of that our teachers don’t know how to teach the class properly. I have a 87% in both classes, my only Bs this year on my transcript. It has been a very stressful period because I cannot seem to pull my grade above a 90. This has been the first time I have gotten a B in a class which I have had trouble fixing by the end of the year. On top of that my parents have made it seem that I will go no where and not get into my dream schools if I have a B. They claim I will probably end up in community college if I cannot raise it. It has left me in a very difficult position and I don’t know what I should be doing right now. Is there someone who could help clear it up for me?

Thank you in advance!

So you’re gonna have to go to a community college because you got 2 B’s? I would hate to have parents who made me think that…
You’re life is not over. You’re in Honors Precalc and APCS freshman year. Most people don’t get to those until Junior or Senior year. GPA isn’t the only thing colleges look at. I know some people who have had perfect GPA’s, but didn’t get into ivies because they didn’t participate in anything else. What you do for your school and what classes you take is just as important (Maybe a little less important) than your GPA. I’m assuming your main goal is UCLA for the UC’s, so if you keep getting A’s and good test scores, you should have no problem getting in.

Firstly, getting 2 B’s is not bad at all! Secondly, freshman year grades are NOT considered in UC’s admission process (and has much less weight in other schools’ considerations)

Your parents don’t know what they are talking about and it’s awful of them to put you under so much pressure. A student like you can get into many colleges and you can study computer science and business at many colleges and go on to have a good career. Please don’t let your parents make you miserable in the coming years. You will be just fine.

So you mean to tell me that your parents think me and my two friends who all have sub 3.8 GPAs aren’t good enough to go to three top 30 universities??? Hm. We better call the admission offices. Looks like they made mistakes on us!

Your grades are good. Keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll end up somewhere great. If you shoot for the moon and miss, you still land among the stars. All your parents need to do is realize the night sky is a beautiful place as well.

As others have said, colleges won’t care about 2 Bs if you have other good achievements. Don’t stress about it, just make sure you get As in almost all your other classes.

Right. It is absurd to be under the gun about college as a freshman in high school. The fact that you are taking advanced classes and doing well in them is far more important than whether or not you have a couple of B’s. Many top schools are far more likely to accept a student with advanced courses and a couple of Bs than a straight A+ average and the usual progression of classes just like everyone else.

I got 3 B+s freshman year–that’s right, 3. The horror gasps. I’ve gotten into a summer program with an acceptance rate lower than that of the UCs and Cornell. You’ll be fine, chill. A lot of schools don’t even consider freshman year GPA (and thank goodness for that).