<p>Hi I am a high school student living in N. Cali....just wanted to ask a question to Yale admits about my chances......
So far in terms of grades I had managed fairly well, but what worries me are two things: a C in english elective class in first semester freshman year and a B in honors chemistry for first semester in sophmore year. Except for these two horrible mistakes, other classes are all As'. I managed to replace the C with an A from a comm. college course, but the C still shows in my transcript, although my high school cumulative GPA is raised. Would this C in freshman year, combined with the B in my sophomore year totally destory my chances to Yale? I am pretty strong in terms of test scores and ECs......but still, would these two bad letter grades kill my chances entirely...? Does Yale admissions take high school freshman grades seriously or just disregard them entirely? Any comment or feedback would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>Oh by the way if you've seen my other similar posts you'll notice i just copy&paste this because I didn't want to write a whole new Qs :-)</p>
<p>I got a D in fresman year gym. And a C in the math class i took in 8th grade during high school. I got in. As long as you show an improving trend (IE all As now) you should be fine. oh, and this semester (1st sem senior year) was the first time i ever got straight A's in high school, and that was after i was accepted. take hard classes.</p>
<p>I agree, take the most difficult classes possible. As long as your cumulative gpa, class rank, and test scores are real high, you should be ok. The B in honors chemistry definitely shouldn't hurt. I made a B in honors english my first semester freshman year and I was accepted. If you're a straight A student now, you shouldn't worry about it.</p>
<p>Get to know the counselor who is writing your school report. He/she can make a note of those letter grades and explain how you worked to improve them through community college classes.</p>
<p>Start panicking now! Your reject letter from yale is already sealed and ready to mail! Everybody knows Yale doesn't want anybody who screwed up FRESHMAN YEAR !!! It shows them you can't adjust to new environments effectively. Your local BOCES might be a more reasonable choice. Only a small step down. In fact, studies show that Yale grads do not earn an invaluably significantly greater amount of money than BOCES grads 85 years after graduating.</p>
<p>(This is ERITAS backwards, not to be confused with VERITAS)</p>
<p>Ds can really hurt class rank. I got one and now my average is 4.0, but it could have been a lot higher. That said, I don't think one D will hurt you. Three or four will, but one is not a crime, especially if you earned it in freshman year. As long as you showed improvement, you are fine.</p>
<p>On the same topic, if your class rank is like top 5-10%, but you got a D and without it your rank would be like 1-5%, do you think the adcom would take that into consideration and kind of "throw out" that one grade? (please say yes, ;))</p>
<p>i am 6/560. the d was freshman year, it was in gym, and our school when calculating 7thsem GPA only uses the top 45 credits, and i have upwards of 60. so I have a lot more As than I do anything else, they cancel out the bottom grades. now that i think of it the d might have been for a quarter, and the sem grade was a c, but still- it was gym freshman year. and actually, i'm in a performing arts academy at our school and our "gym class" consisted of us filling out exercise records (most people lied, i didn't have to cause i played lots of sports)... i just slacked for a little while. a few bad grades early on don't neccesarily impact anything as long as they trend upward.</p>