<p>@cortana431
I’m in the top 15% of my school (school does not rank, unfortunately, so I don’t have much of a gauge of comparison. But the percentile I am sure of.). I don’t know how much it would help, but my school is ranked first in the state, and has been ranked within the top 25 nationwide.
Yes, that is true I did well in honors classes freshman year, and dipped in sophomore year when I first started APs. The main issue with sophomore year is that I was heavily engaged in a research project both in school and out of school, and I did not balance everything in that year the way I should have been able to. As a result, I got two of the worst grades I had ever received on my transcript… which leads to my current uw gpa of 3.7, and 3.8 or higher for weighted.
If it helps any, though, I have taken 3 APs this year, gotten A’s in all of them and have taken all 3 AP exams, and have self-studied two others. I hope that it becomes clear as a trend that the fact that I was taking classes with AP curriculi was not the problem- it was the amount of strain I had forced upon myself in sophomore year and needed to learn to cope with. If the AP rigor was the problem, I would not have done well in 3 of those classes this year, nor would I have the will to self-study others.</p>
<p>Would getting 5s on these AP exams, however, contribute to showing that the grade slip in sophomore year was a once-ocurring personal mismanagement, rather than a glaring long-term habit as an applicant?</p>
<p>I appreciate the reality check, and I know that I will have a hard time applying with these grades, as it is most definitely a major setback; but do you think that there is anything I might be able to do about the situation?</p>