<p>1) Do colleges (especially Ivies) like to see an upward trend in your grades? I heard some colleges don’t even look at your freshman grades. Is this true?</p>
<p>2) For teacher recs, will it hurt if I have one really strong one and one mediocre one? My AP English teacher loves me and he’s gonna write a great rec for me. In APUSH, I’m one of the top-achieving students and the teacher likes me. Thing is, i don’t participate nearly as much as i do in English, so the recs will probably differ. I’m worried that my APUSH teacher will say that I’m quiet, because i heard colleges dislike that. Any thoughts would be much appreciated :)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Yes, colleges like to see an upward trend, but if you did ‘bad’ enough early that your rank suffers, the upward trend won’t save or justify your class rank when applying to top schools.</p></li>
<li><p>Why don’t you get a recommendation from a different teacher then?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Yes an upward trend looks good but consistently high grades looks better. A downward trend looks bad, I suppose.</p>
<p>As for your recs, try harder to participate in APUSH? I think a lot of kids would be in the same boat, it really depends on the quality of the second rec. Like if the second one is great, and the first one is super great, it shouldn’t hurt that much.</p>
<p>It’s too late to participant more, school’s over tomorrow. I think I may just ask a senior year teacher instead. I didn’t really connect with any of my junior year teachers except for my English teacher.</p>