Im am an international student taking a gap year and applying to uins in the us rn. although my ecas,essays and final a levels grades pretty good, but my internal grades are pretty bad. i think my internal grades do show a upward trajectory for the most part, my 12th’ grades midterm grades have a huge dip in them. how much significance di internal grades hold in comparison to other aspects of the application and can my other areas mitigate the damage done by them?
Can you clarify what you mean by internal grades? Do you mean prior academic year grades? Most schools look at your GPA that was one of the highest measures.
Maybe it would be helpful if you did a chance me/match me thread which would have more complete information about you in terms of college ideas.
To apply to universities in the US, you will need to send a high school transcript, which shows the classes that you have taken and your grade in each class. Do you know what grades will be shown on your transcript?
As one example, when I took algebra in high school, we had a test pretty much every week. Those weekly test results do not appear on my transcript and have long been forgotten. I think that my midyear grades might show on the transcript (this was a long time ago), and the year end grades definitely do appear on the transcript.
If you are applying to universities in the US, your budget will also matter. There are only a tiny handful of universities in the US that meet full financial need for all international students, and all of them are very competitive for admissions. There are a few schools that are only moderately competitive for admissions, but that have full ride scholarships that are very, very competitive.
However, there are thousands of universities and colleges in the US, most are reasonably good, and hundreds of them are very good. Most of them are not all that competitive for admissions. Thus if someone is okay with attending a not-well-known university and paying a lot for your education, then getting accepted to a good university is often not all that difficult. In contrast, if you want a free ride, then getting accepted to a school that meets full need can be very difficult for anyone other than the very, very strongest students.
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Us universities consider internals/mock results if your school system uses them.
If your school system is a British pattern system - one with IGCSE/GCSE/OLevels + A Levels - they want full (actual) results for all GCSE exams taken, which will form half your GPA; AS level results if available; A Level predicted results : AS+ if available full A Levels would the other half of your GPA.
Typically if using the numerical scale you’d need all grades 5+ and most grades at 6 or higher for GCSEs, or C and higher with most results A*/A if A-G letter scale on OLevels; and A/A* on your chosen ALevels whatever they are (or ABB/BBC and 4-5 with most 6s if aiming for selective but not highly selective universities).