<p>I screwed up in my college freshman year too, but I made up for it in my junior-senior yr and I really don’t think it hurt my chances at all. I think you are allowed to be human and screw up for one year in your life (after all, the first yrs in college is very exciting, and it’s just human nature to experience freedom and experiment before you transform into a fully mature adult). In fact, most schools ask you categorize your GPA into different sections: lower class, upper class, major, non major, etc… so if you ace the “important” major classes, then they will see that.</p>
<p>As a reference, I got some B’s, C’s and even an F during my freshman yr. But all my upper class major classes were B+, A-, A and A+s. My GRE score was good. I applied to 5 graduate schools (ranked 1 through 5 in those popular grad school ranking magazines) and got into all of them. :)</p>