For context, I am taking max rigor (14 APs) and have had a 3.97 GPA with only 1 A- up to this point. However, this semester I got a B in AP Lit and a B+ in AP Spanish. As a cognitive science/neuro major, I was wondering how much this would hurt me for HYPSM/T10’s. I understand that it is my fault but I’m incredibly worried that this has ruined or really hurt my chances. I would appreciate any answers or advice on the subject.
Grades are but one part of holistic review. It is what it is. If you get rejected, you’ll never know why
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Thanks for the response, but do you have any idea on how specifically it might affect me? From my understanding it could be really damaging or not so much, but I am not sure the extent
I think my UW would now be a 3.87 so idl
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. It will impact you by a factor of α/2θ, where α is “it is what it is” and θ is “don’t stress over things out of your control.”
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None of us are admissions officers. If you get rejected from highly selective colleges (which have admission rates well under 10% and are reaches for any unhooked student) it is unlikely that one semester with two B’s in AP classes will be the only reason.
No useful advice can be given. You have done very well overall and at this point it is what it is. Stop stressing and move forward.
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Right, I appreciate the response. I just think that I happen to be quite strong with research, comm. service, passion projects, and esp being an olympiad winner, but as an Asian male in STEM I’m afraid that this might be a dealbreaker. Not sure though.
All you can do it put your best application forward and see what happens. If you created a well balanced application list with reach, match, and safety schools that appear affordable and that you would be excited to attend then you will be fine. Many colleges are excellent in your area of study.
It’s interesting - the first response you got was:
“Grades are but one part of holistic review. It is what it is. If you get rejected, you’ll never know why”
And your follow up to that was - “but do you have any idea on how specifically it might affect me?”
So you clearly didn’t want to understand the response.
Then you followed up with - summing it up nicely, quite honestly:
“From my understanding it could be really damaging or not so much”
That’s it - it could keep you out or maybe it won’t. You got it.
There are 4.0s and 1600s with lots of rigor who get turned down at top 10. And there’s 3.8s that get in.
You put your best foot forward, make sure you have at least 1-2 assured and affordable safeties - and go on. The schools will tell you.
You cant’ change your grades - so it won’t really matter how it impacts you. The decisions you get will be the decisions you get.
Some schools don’t even look at first semester grades.
Being Asian, in theory, shouldn’t impact you as it can’t be taken into account (from a check box) for your admission. If you write about being Asian in essays or activities, then it’s fair game.
Bottom line - you might have gotten straight As and still struck out. My daughter’s Val was a 4.0, lots of rigor, 36 ACT and was 0 for 16 in top 20. Got into NYU full pay and attended U of Tennessee. And she’ll be fine in life - just like you.
So relax, and you’ll find out soon enough - and whether you are in or not in, you’ll never know why. It will just be what it is.
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Agree with all the other posters, but just checking – did you also apply to colleges outside of HPYSM/T10? Do you have matches and safeties that you have already applied to? (This would be a recommendation even if you had a 4.0)
If not, there are colleges that are still accepting applications for the next few days.
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As others explained, there is no way to meaningfully answer a “how much” question about this sort of thing. The actual deliberative process that your application would go through before arriving at an admissions decision is just far too complicated and far too dependent on unknown factors, which could well vary significantly between different colleges meeting your description.
If it helps, though, I think for colleges like the ones you named, even applicants who easily meet their academic standards are still likely to be rejected. Like on the order of 90%, maybe even more.
And then getting into the 10% that are accepted is mostly about non-academic things. Basically unless you are something like a recruited athlete, you still have to meet a very high standard for both activities and also personal traits.
And then even if you meet their standards in all of academics, activities, and personal traits, you are still just competitive, and you will still need to be someone they choose out of that competitive field for one or more specific institutional purposes that guide how they put together a class, aka “filling buckets”. That’s a big part of the uncertainty, we don’t know exactly what “buckets” they will consider you for filling, if any, and we don’t know what the competition will look like in those buckets in this application cycle.
OK, so suppose the hypothetical version of you with As instead of these Bs wasn’t competitive in activities or personal stuff too. Then you are probably being rejected.
Or suppose you were competitive in all three areas, but then they didn’t end up picking you among the competition to fill one or more buckets. Still rejected.
OK, but suppose this hypothetical you would be competitive in all three areas, AND then they would pick you among the competition to fill one or more buckets. Yay, accepted!
OK, so now take that hypothetical you, the only one who would actually be accepted, and turn it back into the real you with these couple Bs. Rejected instead?
Well, maybe. If it turned you from academically competitive to academically not competitive, then you might never get as far as the bucket filling stage.
But maybe not! Like if they really like your activities, really like your personal stuff, really have a clear vision for what you as an individual could contribute to their class, are they actually going to say no to themselves because of a couple Bs? Again, quite plausibly not.
OK, so there is some risk there, and we can’t quantify it. But I think realistically, in most scenarios either you were never going to be accepted anyway, or they like you so much it doesn’t really matter. I think it is a pretty narrow/unlikely scenario where it actually makes a difference. Just not one we can entirely rule out.
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I think that this is key.
Even if you had never had a B in your life, you still cannot expect to be accepted to any “top 10” ranked university in the USA.
Also, at least as far as I know cognitive science and neuroscience are areas where some form of graduate school is likely. If you look at graduate programs at top 10 universities, you will find students from a very wide range of undergraduate schools, and the majority of students will not be from a school that is ranked in the top 10. It is likely that a majority will be from schools ranked in the top 100, but this will probably not be all of the students. There are hundreds of very good universities in the US, and you really can get a very good undergraduate education at any of a very wide range of schools.
To me it looks like your two B’s are in areas that are outside of your intended major. This might help. I would be a little bit more concerned for example for a B in a math class for someone going into a math-heavy field such as engineering, computer science, or math. However, even here one or two B’s is not necessarily going to make all that much difference.
And if you don’t get accepted to any “top 10” university, that is the expected outcome, and you will never know why this happened. If you do get accepted to a “top 10” university, then again you will probably never know why (although in this case I would be tempted to thank whomever gave me references, on the basis that no one gets into a top 10 university without very strong references).
And if you don’t get accepted to a top 10 university for your bachelor’s degree, but do get into a top 100 or even top 200 university that you can afford and that has a good program in your major, then the top 10 universities will still be there if you are considering some form of graduate school at some point in the future.
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EVEN if you’re a recruited athlete. And you still need to have strong academics in any case.
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How it affects whether you will be admitted at highly selective schools with non-transparent admissions is not knowable by you.
Also, any effect may not necessarily be the tipping point between admission and non-admission (i.e. if you would be rejected either way or admitted either way).
Yes, although there is evidence their standards across the main holistic review dimensions could be materially lower for recruited athletes versus “unhooked” applicants at some colleges. Although to be fair, you can see athletics as basically serving the same function as other non-academic activities. But in terms of things like academics and personal stuff, you may only need to meet a somewhat lower standard in order to be admitted.
ETA: For a quick illustration, you can check out the Princeton Frosh Surveys. Here is 2029:
In the testing section, if you click on, say, “SAT by Recruited Athlete”, you can toggle back and forth between the distributions of scores.
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There’s no evidence that OP is a recruited athlete, so such off-topic conversation isn’t particularly useful.
However, in for a penny, in for a pound, I feel compelled to add some texture. For starters, I’m not delusional enough to suggest that the majority of recruited athletes’ stats are in the 25th percentile. But I don’t believe the Princeton info is comparing apples to apples. Princeton is test optional. According to the Class of 2028 CDS - the most recent available - 56% submitted SAT and 21% submitted ACT. Since an unknown percentage submitted both, the total is likely less than 77%. Recruited athletes, however, are “advised” to have test scores in order to get a preread, and unlikely took any senior year having passed the preread.
Additionally, the Daily Princetonian data is self reported by the 62% responding anonymously. And sometimes, people lie
You just answered yourself perfectly. It might matter and it might not!
Honestly, this is way less of a problem than it feels right now.
A B in AP Lit and a B+ in AP Spanish after years of near-perfect grades and max rigor isn’t going to suddenly knock you out of HYPSM/T10 range. Admissions people look at the whole picture, and your picture is still very strong.
Also, Lit and Spanish are two of the classes where even very strong students sometimes dip a bit, especially with heavy writing or language components. And since you’re aiming at cog sci/neuro, those grades aren’t really sending any red flags about your academic focus.
If this turns into a pattern, that’s different — but one semester like this? Most likely just a blip. If your grades bounce back next term, I doubt this even gets much attention.
It’s normal to freak out when you’re used to all A’s, but this isn’t the thing that makes or breaks an application.
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OP is a senior who has already applied and is asking about the effect of first semester grades. Next term would be spring semester and would have zero effect on admission decisions.
To OP: you shouldn’t worry too much about your small dip in grades. It sounds like you’ve put together a strong application with high rigor. Best of luck to you!
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So again I don’t think the OP should be too concerned about what I am about to write, but I do want to briefly mention I would not necessarily think these grades inherently matter less because they are not directly tied to the OP’s current thinking on a major.
By way of background, the sorts of colleges the OP is talking about are mostly within the “liberal arts tradition”, and specifically an exploratory version of that tradition. What that means is students are expected to continue their “general education” by taking a variety of classes, and typically don’t have to actually declare a major until after a designated period of exploration of options.
Consistent with that model, most of these colleges seem to expect their successful applicants to have done very well in all the core areas, not just the ones related to their current intended major. Basically, they want to make sure their students are well-prepared for that general education/exploration phase.
Of course some applicants will have done MORE than necessary in some areas, which is fine. And as a bit of a wrinkle, there are sometimes suggestions from these colleges that they are interested specifically in Math credentials for students indicating an interest in Math-heavy majors. And MIT in particular is sort of entirely like that.
But this doesn’t really imply they care LESS about non-Math credentialls for possible STEM intenders. Indeed, this is a quick and dirty illustration, but MIT reported a 25th SAT EBRW of 740, ACT English of 35. Yale, with many more non-Math-heavy intenders, was actually lower at 730/34, Princeton the same at 740/35, Harvard 740/35, Chicago 740/34 . . . . Again, crude, but point being MIT really does not have observably lower standards in this area despite being mostly STEM or other Math-heavy majors, and I think that is largely true at these other extremely selective colleges as applied to their STEM intenders.
The good news is these two grades are very likely not inconsistent with such a college concluding the OP is in fact well-prepared for their curriculum overall. I just thought it worth mentioning that I think one of the ways these colleges do some “easy” cuts to their applicant pool is to filter out most of the applicants who do not seem to understand their high expectations across all the core areas regardless of intended major, including as preparation for an ongoing general education and exploration of options before actually choosing a major.