I am a rising 10th grader in southwestern Virginia. I have spent the last year in a local magnet program for math and science, along with taking my history and English classes at my home school. My home school is a relatively small rural school with about 230 students in my class. I love History, Philosophy, and Economics, and my dream is to get a degree in political science, followed by law school at a Top 20 university.
I have achieved high amounts of academic success already. I won awards for excellence in Honors English and History for our grade. I also competed in national history day and International science fair and was able to move to the state level in both competitions. While I have been massively successful in both my academics and extracurriculars (I am one of the top golfers on our school team) I completed algebra II with an 89.0 this year. (4.0 on 5.0 AP scale, equal to A in regular class.) I felt like I learned more than I would’ve in an Honors Class (4.5), however I am worried about the negative effects. It brings my gpa down to 3.88 UW (out of 4), 4.1666 W (out of 5). I will drop to 4 in class rank behind students I easily outperform in every academic category. Should I be worried that this will effect my future academic opportunities and how should I respond to this?
You are putting way too much pressure on yourself, in my opinion. You are doing fine. This kind of stress really does you no favors. Be the best you that you can be. The rest will fall into place.
Please please don’t let your life be defined by a B or even several B grades on high school. And don’t let it be defined by the college you attend.
The top 20 colleges are highly competitive for admissions. Even students with all A grades are rejected from them. If you don’t get accepted in a few years, you will never know why…but it’s unlikely that a B grade or two will be the reason.
Instead of fretting about this…make a list of the characteristics you think you want in a college. Then start looking for colleges with acceotance rates that are not as competitive.
Find an affordable college that you like…that you would be happy to attend. Do that first and foremost.
You success in life is practically assured if you can golf & socialize at the same time. Not kidding.
You will be fine. Please relax.
OP, when I got my first B (also Sophmore year), I thought it would be the end of the world and that I would never be able to get into a good college. I literally cried for hours after I got my report card because I was so upset with myself. When I got my second B (in Junior year) I thought I was really screwed. Then I applied and got into several top 30 schools, one of which I will be attending in the Fall. One grade alone means almost nothing in the greater context of your application. You will be just fine! Good luck to you.
Did you jump ahead at some point to get to Algebra 2 in 9th grade?
If so then the lesson here is to be cautious about jumping ahead, particularly in math. In mathematics, what you learn this year in most cases is based on what you learned last year. What you are going to be learning next year will be based, again in most cases, on what you learned this year and last year. You want to learn each step very well before going on to the next step.
In terms of admissions to top universities, I do not think that this will make any significant difference. No one is perfect. The students are MIT and Harvard and Stanford are not perfect (I met a bunch of the students at two of these schools many years ago). You do not need to be perfect either.
There will be more minor set backs in life (and this one is very minor). Do not worry about them. Instead learn from them and adjust what you do in the future accordingly.
By the way, one daughter similarly had one B in high school, and was still 5 for 5 in university admissions (and will be starting her PhD later this year). Our other daughter had several B’s in high school, several more B’s in university, several more B’s in graduate school, but is still on track to be “Dr TwoGirls” about a year from now (assuming that all continues to go well). A few B’s are not a major problem.
This is very true. Graduates from the top schools routinely work alongside graduates from a very, very wide range of other colleges and universities and in most cases no one cares where anyone got their degrees. Similarly, the students in highly ranked graduate programs typically come from a very wide range of undergraduate colleges and universities. There are a lot of very good colleges and universities in the US, and you can do very well in life with a degree from any one of at least several hundred different schools.
You learn from it.
I think part of the problem may have been some of my jumping ahead. I had to take geometry over the summer (it wasn’t offered in 8th grade) to get into the magnet school and probably didn’t have a very good foundation. I have always done really well in math and got a high A in Physics at the same school this year so I think I can improve next year. I am going to work on my skills in this class so I can improve in pre calculus!
More to the point, nobody will ask you about it, so don’t preemptively offer an “explanation” (air quotes deliberate)
Most get Bs - and Cs - and where you go to undergraduate won’t preclude you from a top 20 law school - unless all 147 represented at Harvard or 130+ at UVA etc. are all top 20.
They’re not.
Relax - be the best you that you can be. It’s a great time in life.
No reason to wreck it with stress.
If you struggle in a subject, do your best to learn it. Stretch but not too much. Maybe taking geometry in summer was too much - you want to make sure that you learn in the subjects that build vs. just going through fast. That’s more important than the grade.
Work hard and hustle - and you’ll be great in life - no matter if you do law or something else.
And whether you go to Radford or W&M/UVA, a top 20 law school would still be very possible.
Good luck.
And for law school…your undergrad GPA and LSAT scores will matter…not any of your high school grades.
By the way, look into a major called PPE (Philosophy, Politics, Economics).
URichmond offers it for example.
Of course, even if the colleges you’re interested in (or selected as likely) don’t offer this specific major, you can always create a cluster of classes in subjects which you add to your major, or add a minor, or even a second major (harder to do).
You got one B, as a high school freshman. Whatever college decisions you end up with three years from now, they won’t be because of that one grade.
Math, however, is cumulative. The important thing, as you allude to, is to make sure your foundation is solid to do well in the future.
I would encourage you to view this as an opportunity to practice seeking out supports and resources. Sure, you could probably tough this out on your own. But that’s a mindset that could hurt you down the road in college. Too many high-performing students arrive at college with a mindset of “getting help is shameful” instead of utilizing all the supports that their tuition pays for.
Sometimes a tutor can see where the weak spots are, better than you can. Why not arrange to work with someone on math next year, and see if it’s helpful? If you are doing great and no longer need support, you can always stop; but in the meantime, it’s really good practice to learn how to work with a tutor and make the most of it, so you have the comfort level to be proactive about seeking help in the future.
Yes I completely agree that I need to work on my issues. My mom has a minor in math and is a math teacher so she usually helps me to understand concepts I struggle with. As you seem to allude to in your post, I do think that I refused help and failed to do the practice work because I was expecting it to be easy due to my previous high performances in math.
The grade is not significant. However, your lifestyle at the beginning of high school would concern me. Maybe you like competition and aiming to be the top in academics, golf, history, science etc. and like competing for a top rank in your class. Hoping that as high school progresses, you more to internal motivators rather than these external ones, which are in some ways hard to satisfy. You might want to read some of Alfie Kohn’s books. He speaks about the toxic effects of grades. Home - Alfie Kohn
I wasn’t at all intending to comment on what you may or may not have done wrong in the class that’s already finished. That’s water under the bridge, and I wasn’t assuming anything about your attitude or motivations. (If you have insight about things you need to do differently, all the better.) I was merely making the point that a lot of students who are accustomed to doing well find it hard to ask for help, and practicing that skill can only be a good thing.
If working with your mom works well for you, that’s great. Sometimes working with someone who isn’t a parent can be less fraught, but it’s still nice to have someone who’s there all the time, who can field questions.
At any rate, I intended no criticism. My point was not what you did wrong, but only what you could consider doing right, to make this experience pay off in the future. Knowing when to ask for help, and doing so sooner rather than later, is a really valuable skill that many high-achieving students don’t master until they have a rude awakening with some challenging class in college. If you master it now, you’ll be ahead of the game and the B, which is not a big deal in and of itself, will have been well worth it.
Your math grade doesn’t define you and you can’t change it, but you can adjust your attitude about some of things you have mentioned:
Please understand that “massively successful” is all relative. You are a strong student who has competed in state competitions, but you need to appreciate that there are strong students who have won national and international competitions. There are golfers your age who are competing internationally. I don’t say this to demean your accomplishments, but to remind you to keep them in perspective. As you will read on this website often, even a 4.0 and a 1600 SAT is not a guarantee of college admission success. There will be a lot that you can’t control, so focus on doing things that you enjoy. High school and your teenage years should be more than just a stepping stone to something else. Try not to be so competitive that you miss out on the experiences that are worthwhile and spark joy.
Again, you need to reflect on comments like these. You didn’t “drop to 4.” There is no meaningful rank before the end of freshman year, so your first rank is 4th. You did not “easily outperform in every academic category” the three students ahead of you. Their grades are higher, so they outperformed. That’s ok. You are a good student. High school grades and rank are not a zero sum game. Their success does not indicate your failure. You can all be good students.
How strong of a foundation in geometry did you need for algebra II? Our school reversed the order of math class and had kids on the accelerated math track take algebra II before they took geometry because it better aligned with the standardized state assessments for math (the school thought they would score better on the algebra section if they were in algebra II and not geometry).
Yes I agree with everything you said. However, the students that are ahead of me in class rank took easier courses at our home school and achieved As (4.5) and so even though they did not get into the magnet program they are ahead of me. I’m not saying that they aren’t good students, but I consistently win academic awards for our grade level, and have the highest scores on standardized tests.
A B is not the end of the world! You said yourself that you’re already very accomplished in academics and extracurriculars. A single B doesn’t make you any less smart or talented. The most important thing is that you know that!!
But also, admissions teams won’t care all that much. My friend who got a B her freshman year (and went test optional!) got into Boston U with a half tuition scholarship, and two of my friends with a 4.0 and 35/36 ACT did not get in at all. Grades aren’t the whole picture and they know that.
A B, especially freshman year, won’t ruin your application, and it certainly won’t make anyone think you’re any less brilliant! Showing growth in grades and class rigor over your 4 years will also impress admissions teams. Taking algebra II freshman year already shows that you challenge yourself. Also, I’ll echo that your freshman class rank doesn’t matter. I just graduated and no one that I know ended with the same rank as after freshman year, and I know almost everyone who ranked top 10% of my class
I am little worried because my friend (similar resume, 2 bs at same magnet school, didn’t compete in history contest) got waitlisted at Boston University. I know that a lot more goes into admissions, but that is worrying me.
Please please stop. You are a strong freshman student. If you continue high school only thinking about these top law schools and colleges, you are creating a recipe for stress.
Summer is here almost. You can review Algebra 2 using something like Kahn Academy. But I would suggest you stop thinking about your grades, college, law school…and the accomplishments of other students.