D in art sophomore year- Ivy League chances?

Chance Me / Match Me
1

I am really hoping to get into an Ivy League/similar (ie UChicago, CalTech, etc) university.
I’m currently a junior and got the D in art III second semester sophomore year. Will this ruin my chances of going to an Ivy/similar?

Stats as of junior year:

-current unweighted gpa: 3.73 weighted: 4.87 (As and Bs only besides that one D that I loathe)
-(by the time early decision apps are due–>) 100+ hospital service hours and other community service
-stem-centered curriculum at my hs, AP Capstone diploma, Academic center (took 7th and 8th grade at my hs)
-Council member, GEMS club (stem club, just member), will join 2+ more stem clubs next year
-APs: Spanish Lang 5, Spanish Lit 4, APHG 4, APES 4, Lang 4, should I retake APUSH and Physics?
-SAT 1410/1600 (planning on retaking)
-Only regular classes were PE, all others were honors and ap (total of 13 by senior year including bio,calc,lit,seminar, research,
-I am first gen and a minority, public selective magnet school

I love biology (specifically neuroscience; neurosurgery is my dream) and I wish I had done more to incorporate that in my previous hs years (did one summer neuro program after freshman year)

Also reason for D: complicated situation in which my parents fostered two babies in my seventh grade year and one was returned to parents my sophomore year, it was a horrible end of year and summer for me (should I mention this?)

Some specific questions I have:
Should I retake the art class? summer school? Does that look bad?
Any recommendations for application “hooks”? Specifically medicine/biology centered ones? I can tell my ECs aren’t so good

Please lmk if you have literally any criticism/thoughts/advice at all, I would greatly appreciate it as I feel completely clueless.

2

any takers? again literally any feedback is great :slight_smile:

3

I am wondering how you have a 3.7 unweighted GPA with “As and Bs” plus one D. Where I come from if you get 97 in every class you have a 3.7 unweighted. As such I don’t have a clue what your grades are, which means that I can’t guess your chances at the most selective universities.

Can you give us some sense of how many A’s and how many B’s?

What is your home state?

Why do you want to go to an “Ivy League/similar”?

4

@DadTwoGirls GPA in 4.0 scale is calculated from letter grades. It is totally feasible to get 3.7 with OP’s grades. It is rather uncommon to give A- for 97% as in your district. In most schools, 97% would give an A and therefore GPA 4.0 if one get 97% in all classes. Of course, that is YMMV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_the_United_States

5

What is the real reason for the D in art? b/c no matter how crappy that year was, you got As & Bs in all your other classes.

No point re-sitting APs

What do you do with your time outside of school?

If you are headed to med school, also do some research on places where you are likely to be a star.

6

Thank you so much everyone who is responding!

Sorry for not replying sooner, I’m a newbie and didn’t know website links might prevent my comments from being approved.

Most of the reason for the D was the one I stated, but it also had to do with the general leniency of the class. You took it at your own pace and did whatever you wanted during class (all you had to do was stand in front of your easel looking productive), so I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have and spent most of that time in my head. The problem was that I was falling behind on one of my drawings and the teacher never told me that was a problem until it was too late to perfect that assignment. Nevertheless, I know it was 100% my fault and really regret not taking it more seriously.

That was also not my only bad grade that year, unfortunately. I got a C in AP Physics third quarter, but managed to raise it to a B in time for second semester grades. First time getting a C or D ever, and it was highly unlike me or anything I ever expected of myself. The only reason I got As and Bs in everything else was that there was no space for me to blow it off, and I knew core classes were off limits to mess with (especially bc of my stem curriculum, which I can only stay in with semester As and Bs in all core classes).

After school, I volunteer at a hospital and hope to snag a research internship/shadowing a surgeon soon. I’m a council member and in stem clubs, but hope to join a lot more next year on top of key club. I know my ecs are weak :frowning:

As for the stats the first replier was asking for:

I was accepted into seventh and eighth grade at my high school (in illinois) because of an academic center program that they offer (only about <100 students were admitted, we were a small class). According to my counselor, by the end of my senior year, I will have 10 more credits than a senior that was a regular incoming freshman. She basically said the D did not hurt my gpa significantly. I have 50 As, 12 Bs, and that 1D out of 63 semester grades.

I want to go to an Ivy league (or a prestigious college in general) because I always believed if I tried hard enough, I could make myself proud. My parents have also always had faith in me, and although they are not familiar with all of the aspects of college and college applications, they know Ivy Leagues are esteemed in terms of their reputation. Also, because I am so interested in biology and the medical field, I believe certain Ivies (especially Columbia, Cornell, or non-Ivies like Johns Hopkins and Northwestern) give me the best chance at a good med school because their pre-med programs are superb (they also have the highest med school enrollment percentages.

Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions :slight_smile:

7

Schools like JHU have good pre-med programs, and they have high enrollment %. But: 1) the % can be misleading (true of all schools). For example, some colleges make it clear that they won’t actively support your application if they don’t think that you are a good candidate, so only the strongest candidates go forward, leading to high success %); and 2) the weeding out along the way can be brutal. Getting the kind of GPA you need to get into med school is really, really hard at places like JHU. An argument can be made that a college where you can be a star, can clear the required pre-med classes with really high grades would give you a better chance of actually getting into med school.

Fair enough on the D (rings true / might make a worthwhile essay, btw).

By all means go for the big names- but it is easy to sell yourself on those. Work on finding some choices 1 & 2 levels down that you would actually like and be proud of (and that you can afford…).

8

Thank you for your help! I am definitely looking into broadening my list of potential colleges, and was wondering if you had any recommendations that would be a good fit for a pre-med student?

I have also been recently looking into Northwestern and I am extremely attracted by it; it’s becoming one of my top choices. I am aware it is still a reach, but do you think I have a better chance at acceptance there? I just feel like it is essential for me to become more realistic this year, but I’m hoping for the best!

9

Understand that adcoms at top schools will be looking at the transcript, see the rigor of courses and the grades. It’s not just gpa and your high school’s unique context is an example why they take this deeper look. And the competition for tippy tops is such that many, many kids apply with nearly every grade an A, definitely the cores, especially the math and sci related to a stem future.

The fact many colleges weed pre-meds means that even the early/intro courses can be impossible to master. We’ve heard tales of, eg, testing on material not covered, highest expectations to get a top grade. Many strenuously limit the number of premed wannabes who get to the final endorsement level. You want a college where you can thrive, do well, and make it to applying to med programs. Prestige is far, far from what matters.

It’s hard to find stats on weeding. But JHU was one used as an example, years ago. Of 200+ freshmen with med school goals, something like 20% got that far. Sorry, I don’t remember the exact numbers, but that brutal. When a college touts, eg, that xx% of their kids got into one of their top 3 med school choices, it’s a far smaller pool than started with this hope. In contrast, many other schools, often LACs, really work with the kids, take a cooperative approach.

You want to look deeper than the dream: what makes a schcool a match for you and, more importantly, what makes you a match for them.

10

Hi, thank you for all of this information! I guess I was pretty unaware of how challenging my pre-med and medical school journey would be, I just have such a big passion for biology that I am more than willing to confront it. I will be researching colleges and pre-med programs as much as I can to find my best fit, and try not to make such a big deal out of prestige. What’s most important is finding the place where I am most confident, and I understand that now. In the meantime, does anyone have any recommendations that I should pay more attention to?

11

Should you mention you got a D because your family had a foster child in the home? No.

Should you retake the class? Yes.

12

^^Seriously, you’d have a student retake an elective art class taken sophomore year? Why?

OP, I think you need to start with what is affordable for your family and work from there. How much can they contribute to your college education? I think your stats right now aren’t going to get you into an Ivy or similar so you need to re-set expectations, starting with what is affordable and going from there.

13

“I believe certain Ivies … give me the best chance at a good med school”

This has been discussed and somewhat debated on CC several times, with no real conclusion. Clearly the overall percent of Ivy League undergrad premed students who get into medical school is higher than the overall percent of public state school premed students who get into medical school. However, it could also be argued that the student who finished in the bottom 50% of his class at Harvard and didn’t get into medical school, if he had gone to UMass instead and if he had worked very hard – just as hard as he might expect to work at Harvard might have been in the top 25% of his class and gotten into medical school. Thus, does an Ivy League school have a higher percent of med school admissions success because of the university teaching their students well, or because of the students that it brings in?

One thing that is clear is that there are plenty of students from very good LACs and also from flagship in-state public universities who do go on to get into very good medical schools, and into very good graduate programs of other kinds.

With the additional information that you have provided, to me is looks very highly likely that you will be able to get into a very good university with a very good premed program. The D in art won’t stop that. Whether you can get into an Ivy League school or equivalent is not clear to me at all, and would still not be clear even without the D. Whether you need to go to an Ivy League school in order to go on to a top medical school is also clear – you don’t need to. If you want to get into medical school you will need to work very hard and do very well as an undergrad – premed classes, including but not limited to premed organic chemistry, are going to be very tough even at your local in-state public university.

14

“Clearly the overall percent of Ivy League undergrad premed students who get into medical school is higher than the overall percent of public state school premed students who get into medical school.” That’s not the fact of being a top school alone. It’s the level at which the kids in strenuous tracks are operating.

There’s a surplus of kids applying to tippy tops with almost exquisite records. Thats a tricky factor. It doesn’t mean kids who matriculate have a better shot at med school simply based on the college prestige. Rather, the honed skills that those students may draw on can serve them well.

OP, what were the B grades in? There’s a big difference between this being electives, PE, some odd mandatory classes, versus stem cores. What is your STEM rigor and what are the AP scores in sci and math (some issue with AP physics?)

If you retake art, adcoms are going to look for the logic in that, wonder why the time wasn’t spent on loftier pursuits. Your GC cab always mention something about the art class, that it was a fluke. BUT, your record else-wise, needs to be strong.

I suspect any of the 2nd tier colleges (and that’s a whole lotta great, empowering colleges) would serve you well. But right now, we don’t know enough about your actual picture.

15

Look at some LACs that are really strong academically and meet-need- Scripps (all women, but part of the Claremont McKenna consortium of 5 colleges on a contiguous campus with full cross-registration for colleges), Vassar, Williams, Amherst (no-loan financial packages), Wellesley (all-female, but you can cross-register at Babson, Olin, and MIT, plus you can spend semesters at any of Amherst, Bowdoin, Connecticut College, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Trinity, Vassar, Wesleyan, and Wheaton). If you end up with very high SAT scores, Vanderbilt (also no-loans policy)

Does your state university flagship campus have an honors college? that can be a good choice,

imo, the ideal med school prep is a college where you are academically strong enough to be a star (if you push yourself! it shouldn’t come too easily, or you won’t build the mental muscles you need for med school) and there are enough other self-motivated students that you keep each other sharp while sharing the inevitable bumps and bruises along the way. Med schools typically make their first cuts on numbers (GPA & GMAT), your recs and ecs are next, and the interview is basically to try and make sure you are not a sociopath :slight_smile: