<p>i am about to go to college, thankfully this crazy process is almost over! YEAH!! I am concerned about my brother, two years behind me, he is a great kid and we are very close. He was put in a very tough competitive private school for 9th grade, he failed two subjects and got a mix of B’s and C’s otherwise. He had private tutoring over the summer and really excelled in these subjects. He is a great athelete, does community service and this year, his 10th grade year is in another school and has a 88 across the board average. A MAJOR improvement to say the least. How badly will that freshmen year hurt him when he starts the college process? He has his hopes set for a California school but possibly east coast as well. If he can continue with good grades throughout the rest of his high school years, are past mistakes easy to forgive? Isn’t it true that they actually like to see a success story/constant upswing of grades. In fact next year he is going to be taking a few AP’s. Some have even suggested making this “metamorphis” of sorts the subject of his essay when that time comes. Whats your honest opinion? He is not talking ivy league here but a good state/private school. Thanks!</p>
<p>If 9th grade mattered much, my son would not have gotten into MIT. It matters what grades are, but a record of improvement and good SATs will certainly make a huge difference.</p>
<p>WOW! Did you son have poor grades in 9th grade? They couldn’t have been as bad as my brothers. The positive thing of course is his amazing improvement, which we think will stand out. And I have already urged him to sign up for a summer SAT prep course, unlike me who crammed two months before I had to take my first one!!</p>
<p>yeah that would definitely help. like you , i also crammed two months before my SAT. didnt do that badly as a matter of fact but a summer prep course will help him a lot in beating the 2400 SAT.</p>
<p>Kelly–My son had Bs and Cs (mostly Cs) in 9th grade (except for the one 101% in pre-calc), which moved to As and Bs in 10th and 11th. He went to MIT at the end of his junior year. He was an NMF, his SATs were excellent, and he had one national-level EC and several state-level math/sci awards. He just wasn’t much interested in classes or doing homework.</p>
<p>Schools don’t necessarily want students who have never failed. What they want are bright students who can overcome difficulties to excel in the end. It will be critical that your brother pull up his grades in the next few years to the point that schools will be confident that he can be successful in college, but if he can do that he will probably not be penalized for weak (even atrocious) freshman grades.</p>
<p>BTW, I have a friend who applied to the Harvard Business School. She wrote one of her essays on the topic of how she flunked college Latin…twice! She was admitted.</p>
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<p>That’s amazing that he got in, given his disinterest in doing homework and in classes. Not what they ‘profess’ to be looking for.</p>
<p>Andi, I think MIT is looking for students who are serious about doing engineering–and my son does demonstrate that. He started building a car when he was 14, starting with an engine block; he started and successfully fundraised for a robotics team that won the regionals the first year… His HS teams won state-level championships in math and science as well. </p>
<p>But with all that, he found most of his classes a waste of time, claiming he could learn the material faster on his own (and demonstrated that learning with good AP scores); he hates doing “busywork” homework (which is anything repetitious), and he scored extremely well on every test he was given in high school. (Except French.) SInce he contrived to be excused completely from his classes for 22 days as a sophomore and 25 as a junior (for competitions, research trips, etc.), it would appear he was right.</p>
<p>MIT has always seemed to me to be much more interested in what a student has LEARNED rather than how s/he learned it. In my son’s case, his relatively low grades reflected his learning style–and teachers who used homework grades to boost overall grades. Part of what made his application successful was finding a school for sophomore and junior years where his learning style and learning preferences were accommodated.</p>