Hi, I am a Junior in High School, My grades for first trimester…
C in Physics A
C in AP Chem
C in AP Gov
A- in AP Language
A- in Spanish 2 A
Can I get into NYU or University of Michigan?
What I meant is that, are these grades going to hurt my chances tremendously?
Yes. They will. But the good news is that there are many colleges that will accept you where you can get a good education even if you don’t go to one of those schools. Is there any opportunity to move to an honors section instead of AP for the rest of the year in Chem or Gov? I think you are better off salvaging your GPA and giving up a little rigor.
Junior year is where academics really start ramping up. You aren’t the only student to hit an academic wall in junior year. You should consider whether you have strong study habits or whether you could improve them, whether you’ve over committed to ECs, or whether you might have a learning disability that you’ve been able to mask until now.
Do you have the option of switching from AP to honors in one or two of your courses? I agree with @intparent that you would be better off trying to improve your GPA.
@intparent is also correct that many students hit a wall at some point in their academic career. It is probably better to realize this now, rather than hit a similar but tougher wall as soon as you show up at university. NYU and Michigan are both very academically challenging universities.
I can’t switch to Honors Chem since I did that in my sophomore year…And I love AP classes since they are year long. I guess I was just over committing myself for Extracurricular activities, also I am a foreign who came to US about 6 years ago and before 3 years, I barely knew how to speak English!
What are you doing for ECs?
Are you taking advantage on all the help your teachers can give you in those classes, or are you just ducking your head and raching out at the end of the day?
Yes, you can turn your grades around, but you will need to change some of your study habits, and you will need to master some of the concepts that you didn’t learn well in the first trimester. Go meet with each of the teachers and with the resource and guidance teams at your school. Ask them to help you devise a study plan for the rest of the year.