I think you could have asked a friend in your class for the work, but that is water under the bridge. I am also surprised that the assignments were not posted, but maybe your school doesn’t do that.
I agree that the C should not be explained away by you- follow your guidance counselor’s suggestions. Your grade is your grade and we do not know all of the details. It is frustrating, but it will not stop you from achieving success.
You are a strong student and I have no doubt that you will have wonderful options to choose from.
I would send a note to AOs but be careful not to make excuses about getting a C. Instead, focus on it as a personal update about the fall. I would keep it brief but you could succinctly describe how you faced some unforeseen challenges, how you overcame them and what this experience taught you about yourself. Not a whole essay but just a couple of paragraphs email. They will see your mid year grades, so you don’t really need to point them out. Take it as an opportunity to share more about yourself. Good luck!
FWIW Every AO my daughter spoke to individually at college fairs or information sessions made a point of emphasizing that they wanted to hear directly from the student, but not excessively. D didn’t have much of a personal update to send but did reach out to connect, as they had all suggested. She emailed AOs from her 6 reach schools and received a short personal email reply from four of them. I’m sure every AO is different but we got a pretty clear sense that they were happy to hear directly from her.
As long as this student doesn’t sound like she is trying to explain away a C grade, fine. But that’s sort of what it sounds like here.
If there were extenuating circumstances, the high school counselor can reach out.
If the student wants to do so…I still would suggest discussing this with the high school counselor so it doesn’t look like making excuses for a C grade, but actually explains the extenuating circumstance and why this only affected one class.
In the vast majority of cases, it should be the student who communicates. This is not one of those times.
IME, 99.98% of the time, a student “explaining” a grade comes across as whiny. Based upon the posts made, this student will not be the exception. I’ll make no apologies if that seems harsh. And absolutely nothing good will come out of an explanation where the student blames the teacher / school.
As noted by others, even with an A, admission to Stanford is not guaranteed. The OP was rejected from Yale presumably without Yale even knowing the issue. But there will be colleges which will accept OP, with or without an explanation.
You should have been invited to the yearly review of your 504 plan as a high school student, or if this was a new plan, you should have been there when they wrote the initial plan. They then should have sent a paper copy home. You can ask your school counselor for a new copy of it or to point you in the direction of it. If this was the last review of it, make sure the things on it will be helpful in college. Know what is on there, and be an advocate for yourself, you will need to be in college. If this was a new plan, someone from school should have followed up with you about what was on it and asked for your input. Good luck. I agree, this C won’t make or break you. There is 99.9% more data on your application already set in stone that they will use to determine their decisions.
In case anyone is interested, I had a parent-teacher conference with said math teacher today. She was very difficult to work with (very upset when we mentioned the 504) and my parents and I decided I will be switching math classes. I have reached out to my school counselor about providing a letter explaining the circumstances.
You had major surgery and you were out of school. What is the plan for students who cannot attend school due to illness. Does your school district offer home instruction- where the teacher comes to your house to deliver instruction . Did your parents reach out to the school to request home instruction? How long were you out of school due to surgery?
The OP had a 504 in place. But sounds like something went wrong.
Not enough information from the posts to see what actually happened and in my own experience dealing with 504, there is always more to the story.
But advice to OP. Perfect grades won’t guarantee admission to the schools you listed. Bad grades after major medical issue won’t keep you out. “How” you deal with the adversity is going to determine your final outcome.
I understand that the student had a 504 in place. What I am saying is that we do not know the whole story. OP stated that s/he was recovering from surgery. It is one thing to have a 504 plan where you may have had surgery on your dominant hand and need a scribe to take notes or talk and text technology.
It is another thing (real situation) to have surgery where you cannot come to school for the foreseeable future and the first response would be to coordinate hospital school for the time the student is in the hospital and home instruction for when the student is released.
In this scenario, you could not put 504 in place for the teacher to create a Google classroom and post work, because at the NYC DOE, it would be cause for a grievance and a violation of their contract. The home instruction teacher would receive work from the classroom teacher and conduct the class at the students’s home.
This is why I asked my follow-up questions because I am just seeking clarification.