<p>Meaning an upward trend in grades and course difficulty. In my case:
Fresh: 3.52WGPA, 3.48 UW -1 HNS class
Soph: 3.33WGPA, 3.10 UW - 1 HNS, 1 AP
Jun: 4.68 WGPA, 3.82 UW - 2 HNS, 3 AP</p>
<p>Although I dipped down from fresh to soph year, I have greatly improved in junior year. Senior year (2 HNS, 3 AP, 1 beyond AP) so far is a 4.82WGPA and 3.82UW (assuming i maintain same grades as I had first MP).</p>
<p>Will this overall upward trend compensate for my below average overall GPA?</p>
<p>The upward trend is not that important.</p>
<p>I asked a representative who said, “we prefer students to have a good GPA throughout high school”</p>
<p>Its especially trivial when you’re dealing with AP classes. Of course you’re going to have more advanced classes as a junior than as a freshman, because fewer classes are offered to freshmen and sophomores than to juniors and seniors.</p>
<p>However, you can make this important by mentioning it in your essay. Think about the circumstances which caused you to have low underclassman scores, and then think about the process which led you to become a better student and talk about that either in an essay or in an interview. Otherwise, they will just glance at your scores and not think much about it.</p>
<p>Well, to be honest, I just got lazy sophmore year, there was no real reason for my falling grades. I started to try junior year because I realized by being lazy, I was screwing myself over for college. Thanks for your reply BTW.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s good. Figure out a way to tell the admissions counselors that you realized junior year that you could do much more if you only applied yourself, and how you took steps to apply yourself and get your grades up. I could imagine that would be the only way to spin the negative of having a low GPA into a positive. </p>
<p>I, on the other hand, have no excuse. My grades have consistently fallen from freshman year, when I believed that I could attend MIT and save the world and a whole lot of other ambitions, and then slowly became cynical, apathetic, and blinded by teen angst.</p>
<p>So, an upward trend is certainly better than a downward trend, but its worse than having a stellar GPA all four years.</p>