<p>Here’s the thing, though. Your grades for freshman and sophomore year aren’t even very good by Harvard standards, unless you went to a grade-deflating school. (Yes, there about on a par with that guy, but I didn’t notice that his great improvement sophomore year still left him with not very good grades when I was reading it. I skimmed and thought he had improved to great on any scale, rather than great-but-I-wouldn’t-say-so-if-it-wasn’t-compared-to-two-Cs-and-an-F scale.) Grades aren’t the whole application, though, and if you overcome this and achieve great things outside of school and get your grades back up to very high and get great standardized test scores, I think your chances will not be much less than the thousands of other applicants who achieve all of those things. (That sounds grim, but remember that there are like thirty people in this country who actually have an affirmatively good shot at getting in.)</p>