Catastrophic freshman year, But perfect 4.0 up to senior year

Chance Me / Match Me
1

I have been wondering how much my catastrophic freshman year will affect my GPA and chances at top schools.

I live in New Zealand, and at our school we take Cambridge International Exams (somewhat similar to IB) - in freshman year I took the external Cambridge exams along with our internal school freshman classes (like everyone else)
I scored A+'s (4.0) for all the external Cambridge classes (there were 4 of them), however for our internal school classes I got C’s and D’s (there were 4 of those classes) because at the time I was told they meant nothing and didn’t pay attention to them - now apparently they count toward my GPA and transcript

Now I’m a rising Senior, I have a perfect 4.0 GPA not counting those set of internal school classes - how would these top schools take to this?
My GPA for freshman year was 2.75 (lol), once I finish senior year it will be a 3.6 when you count those classes

Would they consider this as a positive upward trend, or do they see it as someone who doesn’t give 100% effort into every class he takes?

Note that the classes I took were very random, irrelevant classes to the ones I currently take (they were Music, Drama and Physical Education, while I take Commerce and STEM subjects right now) - the only relavent subject was economics which I got a D in (lol) - but I was the national winner for the New Zealand economics competition this year - does that redeem my horrible mark in economics in freshman year?
Are my grades for freshman year going to hinder my chances?

2

bump

3

It’s going to hurt but colleges love seeing upward trends (fingers crossed that they love mine since I’m in a similar situation as you). The point is, colleges know that some people aren’t born to go to Harvard and don’t pull 4.0s from the minute they enter high school. Rather, the reason why your junior year is the most important is because colleges look at that the most- they see the student that you’ve become and the student that is applying to their school. The economics competition is a very redeeming quality. Also, the exam marks coupled with internal school grades could just signal to the adcom, for all you know, that those classes were taught by a poor teacher but ultimately you did very well on the actual exam. Just for a point of comparison, I got a B+ in my AP European History class in the second semester of my sophomore year, but got a 5 on the exam. So this shows colleges that the class was difficult which is why I didn’t get an A, but I was good enough to get a 5 (funny thing is that the people that got As in that class got 4s on the actual exam). Overall, you’ll be fine.

Chance back: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1904474-chance-me-for-the-following-rising-senior-with-huge-upward-trend.html#latest ?

4

Thanks so much for the advice, and yeah I guess it could just be considered as an anomaly

5

I would consider that a feat worthy of admission to good colleges or universities because going from a 2.6 to a 3.6 is not easy at all kudos!