I am currently a 10th grade student. In 9th grade, 2nd semester of pre-calc was difficult for me and I ended up getting a C. In the first semester of 10th grade, I got another C in Calculus BC and a B in AP Biology. I had really difficult teachers in those classes and I basically had to study AP Biology by myself since my teacher didn’t teach anything to us in class. I calculated my gpa if I got all A’s until the end of junior year and the weighted gpa is estimated to be 4.47. I have medium extracurriculars. I was planning to major in neuroscience and minor in psychology. Do I still have a chance to get into low acceptance schools? I took practice SATs and I got around 1500. I am scared if getting the C’s in math and the B in bio might affect my chance of getting possibly into BS/MD programs or even into top colleges, which is my dream (I’m aiming for WashU). Will colleges look at these grades when evaluating?
Colleges do look at grades when making admissions decisions.
Try not to stress about it. Do your best in high school, follow your passions, take the ACT or SAT for real, then figure out what it is you like about NU and the other “top colleges” that interest you. Form a list with plenty of likely and target schools, in addition to those reaches you alreay have on your list. Try not to focus on any one school because even with a 4.0/1600/36 there’s no saying whether or not you’d be admitted.
BS/MD programs are unlikely for everyone.
Slow down! There is no reason to be taking calculus in the 10th grade, especially if you are struggling. Go meet with your guidance counselor and evaluate your course selections- it’s good to stretch yourself, but if you are having trouble learning the material, that suggests you need to cut back.
You’re going to be fine- but you don’t need to be taking BC Calc two years before most HS students in America…
BS/MD programs are extraordinarily selective. They’re really only an appropriate goal for a very few students of extraordinary ability and early laser focus on medicine. You can still get into great colleges for what you want to study, and still get into medical school. If you got a C in precalc you didn’t belong in Calc BC. Can you drop into Calc AB now? As for the B in AP Bio, it is a tough class with a huge amount of material. I know that lots of kids were helped by Bozeman videos - here is a link to several YouTube channels that can help you. 5 YouTube Channels That Saved Me During AP Bio | Knowt Blog
Please, don’t worry so much. What you want to study, you can study at your in-state flagship U probably and still have the exact same career path. Do your best, get help, drop down a level in math, and try to do ECs that you enjoy - don’t do them for the sake of college apps, do them because you love doing them. It will all work out.
Excellent post.
And I will add that since advanced math builds on the earlier foundation, it pays to take it slow. Better to have complete mastery over pre-calc before you tackle calculus than try to skip ahead. It will catch up with you!
Elite colleges do look at all grades including back to freshman year (except the UC’s and select others). But a couple poor grades is not usually singularly exclusionary if the rest of the story is exceptional. Will it make it harder, yes. Impossible, no.
But there seems to be a disconnect in your class selection. Why would you jump into AP Calc BC after struggling in pre-calc? Did you school not offer either regular Calc or AP Calc AB? It is a mistake to prioritize the hardest possible courses over the classes you can succeed in. Most colleges will see it that way too. While both grades and the rigor of the class matter and of course its great to have both, in a competition grades matter more than rigor. I’ve seen more kids from our HS get into Ivy+ schools by not taking the hardest classes in every subject (while doing some in some where they can excel) than those who took the top classes in every subject but got a bit worse GPA’s. At our HS, they wouldn’t even have let you into BC after a C in pre-calc – it would have required a minimum of an A-.
Do your 9th grade grades matter - yes, at most. Emory is a WUSTL sub where I’m told they don’t calculate.
Does 10th grade matter - likely everywhere.
Why did you take Calc BC in 10th grade? Why did they put you in Calc BC after you got a C in pre-calc?
A weighted GPA (4.47) is tough to understand. What is your unweighted GPA?
Do you have a chance to get into schools with low acceptance rates? Yes, but only they can tell you - no one here can.
If you want to major in neuro, you can do so many places. If you want to go to medical school, you’ll need an 8 year budget.
Everyone can dream - but there are kids with straight As and a 1500 or higher SAT that will get turned down at WUSTL.
Rather than focus on a school, focus on being the best you and when you are a Junior, go visit schools of various sizes and environments so you can find the right school for you - right includes not just fit, but affordability too - as you have 8 years ahead of you and the med schools won’t care if you went to WashU or Wyoming. WUSTL can be on it - but so will other schools - like a U Denver or Butler or Elon- need to be on it too - so you can assure you have a home.
But to answer your question - of course they’ll look at your grades.
Your scheduling seems odd - too far ahead in math and you clearly struggled - so why you weren’t put on a time out I have no idea - but what’s done is done.
As far as you got a B, so you got a B - don’t try to “dismiss” it by I had a hard teacher. Guess what - you got a B. And that’s a good grade.
Good luck.
A B grade, probably won’t affect your admission to colleges. BS/MD programs are likely MORE competitive for admissions than most elite colleges. My free advice…drop the “dream school” thing and look for a variety of colleges with varying rates of acceptance.
And remember…MOST doctors go the traditional route of undergrad to medical school…not BS/MD.
Please please don’t use your teachers as an excuse for not doing well in these courses. Please.
Some schools state that they do not consider HS freshman grades when evaluating candidates. Here is a list of top schools that adhere to this policy:
Does your school allow students to re-take classes for replacement grades. If so, you may want to explore this option. My second son is doing this for Algebra I (his spring semester, freshman year was a train wreck) and he is on track to raise his grade to an “A”.
I agree that you should not blame teachers, even if they are bad. Ultimately, you and your parents are responsible for your education and there are things you can do when your teachers are weak. For example, you can set up regular sessions with tutors (my son did this for Honors Pre-Calc when he had a teacher who taught the material after students turned in problem sets for grading). If you attend a R1 university, you will likely have some professors who 1. mean well, but are not very good at teaching, or 2. want to focus on research and do not want to waste their time on undergrads, which is reflected in their classroom performance. Learn now to fill in the gaps.
Scoring a 1500 is a strong score for a first run at the SAT. I recommend taking practice tests under time pressure, and maybe spending a couple hours with a tutor who can give you hints on how the test is scored, time management, and the types of problems that are always on the test, etc. My son adopted this strategy and raised his score significantly. I would not be surprised if you raised your score to the mid 1500s.
For math…it is extremely important to have a solid foundation in lower level courses to achieve well in the upper level ones.
That strong foundation is far more important than accelerating in terms of your course selections.
It sounds like your foundation isn’t as strong as it needs to be.
My suggestion…you need to find out where the cracks in that foundation are. A good tutor will be able to help you tease this out…and help you understand what you seemingly don’t clearly understand.
UofM disregarding freshman grades has been discussed here before. Not sure that website is correct on all 9 colleges.
Lol. That’s my post.
For the OP. All grades matter but if you have an upward trend then 9th grade can get discounted. Depends on the school. I can tell you from experience Michigan will look lightly at 9th grade if there is a upward logical trend. Let’s say you get a C in Geometry but then a B in Algebra 2 and an A in Calc. That shows you them your getting it. But of course higher grades are better but not always needed. Look at the common data sets for the schools you’re applying to and look at section C. Then ask your school how many from your school get applied vs accepted and with what GPA /scores and this will give you a clue.
The CSU and UC schools do look at 9th grades in determining if the UC/CSU a-g course requirements were met with passing grades and HS course rigor but 9th grades are not used in their GPA calculations with the exception Cal Poly SLO.
9th grade is very, very early to take precalculus.
A C in precalculus strongly suggests that you are not ready to take Calculus AB, never mind BC. You are jumping ahead into classes that you are not ready to take.
You are in 10th grade. You do not need to take any AP classes at this point.
Yes. This will impact your chances of getting into BS/MD programs. This will also impact your chances of getting into highly ranked universities such as WUSTL.
You are jumping ahead WAY too quickly. You are taking classes that you are not ready to take. You are getting grades that are disappointing, but which are not a surprise when you take classes that you are not ready for.
Let’s suppose that I have cancer. I go to see an oncologist to discuss my care. I have a choice of two oncologists. One took a lot of relevant classes early before they were ready, had trouble following the material, and had C’s in these classes when they were quite young. The other took the same classes when they were two or three years older, learned the material very well, excelled in the class, and got A’s and A+'s in these tough classes. Which doctor do you think I want to see to figure out how to treat my cancer?
Slow down. Take classes that you are ready to take. You need to be striving for A’s in classes that you are prepared to take, and not B’s and C’s in advanced classes that you are not yet ready to take. You will get there, but it will take time and a lot of effort.
I have a daughter who is currently getting a DVM. Before getting accepted to a DVM program she first had to get her bachelor’s degree while taking the pre-vet classes in university. The required pre-vet classes are the same classes as required premed classes, and were full of both pre-vet and premed students. She has talked about how difficult these premed/pre-vet classes were. You do not succeed in these classes by jumping ahead. Instead, you succeed in these classes by first taking the prerequisites and doing well in them, and then only when you are ready moving on to more difficult classes.
If you want to ever be a doctor, then you are going to need to learn to pace yourself.
Frankly what these grades do to your chances for university admissions is not the primary concern. The primary concern is how you are going to get back on track to get A’s in difficult classes when you are struggling now. As one example calculus is the basis for quite a few higher level math classes and for some physics classes. You need to learn each step well before you go on to the next step.
3 grade levels ahead – usually only the strongest students in math are properly placed there, and still find any high school math to be easy A.
I agree with everyone else about slowing down and refocusing on getting a good education at a pace which reasonably challenges you, not unreasonably.
I just want to emphasize that for sure nothing that has happened so far is going to prevent you from eventually attending medical school, if in fact that remains what you want (the vast majority of people eventually change their mind). Including because it truly does not matter how selective your college is. As long as it is a generally reputable college and you take the med school prereq courses and get very good grades in those courses, you can still be arbitrarily competitive for med school admissions.
But the thing is, a lot of those kids who start off premed and then switch out go through a college version of what you are describing. They start taking the med school prereqs, and they maybe place as far as they can with APs and such, and load up their early semesters trying to do them as quickly as possible. And then they find one or more of those courses overwhelming, and that ends up being a large factor in them switching out of premed.
And of course there is nothing inherently wrong with doing something else. But I do suspect some of those kids could have been fine, if in fact they had slowed down and understood there is no real advantage in rushing, that taking courses only when you are really well-prepared, not doing too much at once, and so on is what actually maximizes your chances of meeting your ultimate goals.
I assume by this point you see where I am going. The processing of becoming a doctor is a marathon, not a sprint. If at any point you set your pace too fast, you are risking not being able to finish the marathon at all. And it is very much not too late for you to learn how to better pace yourself. Because fortunately, HS grades will not matter for med school admissions (or really any notable next steps after college), nor will it matter exactly where you go to college.
But I do think if you learn from all this the importance of setting an appropriate pace, that lesson will then serve you very well once you actually get to college. Whether in fact you choose to stay on a premed track or not.
Besides the math issue, AP Biology is set up to be a second year biology course, same with AP Chemistry. AP Physics is the only one of the three that the CollegeBoard promotes as a first time course.
And if you ask me (although no one ever does), it is a good idea to do Physics, Chem, and Bio in that order, as each is sort of the foundation for the next. Obviously you have to work within the structure of your school, but if possible I think this means a sequence like algebra-based Physics (which could be AP, but I don’t think has to be), Chem 1, and Bio 1.
And then you can do AP Chem, AP Bio, or (if you are ready for this mathematically) Physics C, perhaps more than one if you have the space and want to.
My two cents is that is a great way to get a really solid natural science foundation you can use in college. And with the possible exception of Caltech (which can be interpreted as suggesting you should at least take both AP Chem and Physics C if possible), I am not aware of any college where that would be considered insufficient according to their recommended HS curriculums.
High schools in the US usually do the reverse order, due to the level of math required in each course. I.e. they may find that teaching physics when the students may only be concurrently taking algebra 1 to be less effective.
And actually, if that is the reasoning for their standard sequencing, that of course is perfectly fine.