Insight Needed - VERY bad Freshmen grades but huge upwards trajectory

Applying to College
1

Hi all,

I’m currently a second-semester Senior, and as the title indicates I had very undesirable grades in Freshmen year. I had transferred from a less than stellar middle school where no one cared about grades to a very competitive private international high school. As a result, I had a rocky beginning to my high school journey. However, since then, my academics have improved consistently and massively. My high school semester GPAs and grades are as follows:

Freshmen Year:
Semester 1 - 2.429/4 (I know…); A, B, B, B, C+, D+, D-
Semester 2 - 3.043/4; A, A-, B+, B+, B, B-, D+

Sophomore Year:
Semester 1 - 3.529/4; A, A, A, A, B+, B+, B, B-
Semester 2 - 3.800/4; A, A, A-, A-, A-, A-

Junior Year (started the two-year International Baccalaureate Diploma program so grades are on a 1-7 scale, where 6 is roughly an A- while 7 is A/A+):
Semester 1 - 6.4/7 (roughly 4.4/5.0 when going by the weight AP gives); 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6
Semester 2 - 6.6/7 (roughly 4.6/5.0 when going by the weight AP gives); 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6

Senior Year:
Semester 1 - 7.0/7.0 (5.0/5.0); 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7

My predicted grades for the entire program is 45/45 (predicted 7s in all of my 6 classes + 3 extra points from a predicted A in Theory of Knowledge, which is basically a required IB Philosophy class, and a B in my Extended Essay, a required 4000-word essay on a subject of our choice). For context, out of about 85,000 candidates for the May 2018 IB examination period, about 250 people got a perfect score of 45.

I know the College Confidential community can be very blunt, which is exactly what I need right now. Will this huge upwards trajectory be enough for admissions offices to consider me as an ‘A-student?’ Or am I still not able to compete, purely grade-wise, with the consistent 4.0+ weighted GPA students? I’ve been struggling with this for quite some time; my counsellor says it ‘helps’ with admissions but I want some more viewpoints.

Thank you!

2

It would help to know what kind of colleges you are targeting. As a second semester senior, your applications should all be in, no?

At this point I wouldn’t worry about what you can’t change. Hopefully you applied to a more-or-less-even combination of reach, match and likely schools that you can afford and would be happy to attend. You didn’t mention what colleges you were targeting.

In general, yes it is better to perform at a consistently high level all four years. However, if you are going to tank a year, you’d want to pick freshman year. Some schools don’t consider freshman grades (such as the CA state schools among others). Admissions to the top schools tend to be holistic, as long as your test scores and overall GPA aren’t so low as to be an embarrassment to the school’s averages (and your overall GPA is probably in range). So if you wrote a particularly compelling essay, got some great letters of recommendations from teachers, and had interesting extracurriculars which you explored in depth, I’d say you will still have as much a chance as any other unhooked applicant.

Good luck to you!

3

Didn’t initially put in schools because I didn’t want to turn it into a ‘chance me’ thread, but I guess how my grades are interpreted really does depend on the school. My reaches are Georgetown, Tufts, and UVA (out of those, I’m guessing UVA, being a big public school, might place more emphasis on quantitative factors such as cumulative GPA).

Thank you so much for your imput!

4

Full pay, with no FA applied for, as you are international? That is a big factor for you, as you are in at NEU, was that applying with no aid?

5

@Sybylla Apologies for not putting it in the main post (couldn’t figure out how to edit it after I had posted), but I am a U.S. citizen, so I did apply for FA at NEU and all of my other schools.

6

Colleges want to make sure you can do college level work.
Your Junior/Senior grades show what you can do college level work.

You have already applied to colleges…hopefully safeties, reaches, and matches.
If you do not get into as “top” college as you want, fret not. You will shine and be a star at your college.

7

@bopper Thank you for those kind words :slight_smile: