I was planning to apply RD to MIT, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell for ECE. I am taking max course right and have all As except a B in Calc BC Junior year. I also have a 36 ACT and a 5 on AP Calc BC.
This semester, I got a B+ in AP Microeconomics, B in Senior Honors English, and a C in Calc III. Our Calc III is only one semester and notoriously hard with no curve. The kids in this class are very smart though. Around 30% of the class gets an A, 50% get a B, and 20% get a C.
Do my grades this semester completely ruin my chances at my RD schools? I feel I have well above average ECs, essays, and LORs. Is it even worth applying?
You could have all Aâs and STILL not get in- and never know why.
So make sure youâve got some rock solid safeties and some âeasierâ admits as matches-- and then youâve got this covered. Nobody can tell you how an adcom will react to your obvious advanced performance in math-- but a dip in your grades. So make sure youâve got safeties you can afford.
Your headline focused on the C in multicalc, but the real âstoryâ that needs explaining is the general decline in grades senior year so far over 3 classes where you usually ace them all. I would ask your guidance counselor to address that in their letter of rec, if thereâs a good reason other than just those being hard. To be clear, itâs not that those grades are terrible or exclusionary, but when someone goes from virtually straight Aâs for 3 years to sub A- in 3 of their academic classes at the start senior year, it feels like something is going on.
As others noted, you listed a bunch fo super-reaches. Schools where perfect grades _ perfect SAT/ACT scores are routinely rejected. So your odds are long anyway. I think your grade momentum shift needs explaining, but your grades alone wonât make or break your application at this level, nor with your 36 on the ACT. It will come down to your ECâs, essays, recs, etc.
Thereâs not a good reason for my decline in grades. Itâs just a mix of classes being harder, having to spend time on EA apps, and senioritis.
Also worth mentioning that almost all of my As are actually A-. Itâs not factored into our GPA so no one at our school worries about it. I recently found out that it can matter.
I guess I am kind of looking for reasons to not apply and save the effort of writing the supplementals. But obviously my chances are extremely low given my senior grades.
MIT is full of students who are very good at math, and who may be similar in mathematical ability to the students who are running an A in this tough class. Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and Cornell will be similar in this regard.
MIT teaches calculus, multi-variate calculus, and differential equations in two semesters. These were the two easiest math classes that I had in four years at MIT. However, the professor for these two classes when I was there was very good, which does make a difference.
Make sure that you apply to solid safeties, do the best that you can, and try not to worry about it. There are a lot of universities that are very good for ECE, CS, and related fields.
All the advice is great. But one thing you will hear is you should take rigor classes and do well in them. Just taking rigorous classes isnât enough.
Colleges are looking for A/B in these classes. The 36 isnât enough. Even if you didnât you can always get a tutor for the Act and score high.
Colleges are also expecting you to use your senior year to get âreadyâ for college. College math isnât any easier. Some might want your midterm grades. Your a great student. Go to teacher office hourâs and figure out how to improve your knowledge in that class. It will only help you in college.
Not going to sugar coat it, but T20 schools do not like Câs. Especially if they are unexplained and accompanied by a decline in grades in general. I mean, shoot your shot because you never know. But it would be a very unlikely.
S25 has a C in AP Calc BC junior year, and I think thatâs what sealed the deal on the rejection from his ED1 (despite having several hooks and a legitimate explanation for a decline in junior grades that we were hoping would help).
If you are kind of looking for permission not to apply to your super-reaches, you can have it. Nobody needs to include super-reaches on their lists. All the supplements are a lot of work, and the chance of pay-off is essentially nil (unless you are heavily hooked in some way that is not apparent from your posts.)
I donât want to be a downer; but I also donât want to lie (or lie by omission since I read the post and genuinely want to help).
Iâm going to have to agree with the above that the one C isnât the worst thing- itâs the downward trend and frankly, low GPA for these schools.
You wonât get in if you donât apply- but I donât foresee an acceptance from these schools. Sorry, thatâs the reality. The chances for straight A students is very low already, unless you are a major donor or a power athlete I donât see what their incentive to accept you would be.
I am not saying you canât go to fantastic schools! You absolutely can and obviously will.
I might be wrong, Iâm just a college student trying to help others out.
I completely agree with @DadTwoGirls here. In fact, it is typical for an MIT student to place out of 18.01 (calc â1â). The kids who got the As and did not succumb to senioritis (and/or perhaps finished their EA apps in the summer) - are going to be competing with you for those schools.
The one bright spot I see is that you got a 5 on the BC AP even with a B in the course. If that were your only B, it would be almost a good thing, because it would indicate to AOs that your school grades very strictly and that all your other grades should be viewed in that light. (I think that happened with my DS16 whose only A- was in AP World History where he got a 5 on the AP. I always thought it was thus a more informative transcript than all As would have been. Who can say, but he did get into the single-letter places.)
I agree with the other replies that a dip in senior grades in exactly the courses a future engineer needs will be not attractive to the schools youâve listed. In a way, the perfect APs and ACT may reinforce a âdoesnât work hard or value school despite his potentialâ message.
The supplements are certainly time-consuming, and if you have good other options you have the official CC permission to let it go.
Iâm going to be very blunt because I think this may be the right thing for you to hear.
I am not at all sure you should even WANT to be admitted to colleges like MIT or the other ones you named. Not least in your intended major, you would be surrounded by extreme math outliers, the kind who find it easy to get top grades in HS classes like Calc BC, Micro, Calc III, and so on even if there are other kids good at math in those classes.
It looks like you are good at standardized tests, but that is really not enough to be able to thrive in those colleges, again not least in your intended major. They look for perfect or near-perfect grades in advanced HS classes because that also is part of what predicts actually doing well in their own classes.
Of course it is good to reasonably challenge yourself. But I think it can be a bit hard for kids to accept sometimes that a certain challenge might be unreasonable for them.
But that doesnât mean you cannot be a success in life. It just may mean you take on different challenges from the ones you were originally considering, and find different ways to thrive.
So that is my suggestion. Seriously assess where your talents actually lie, and think about what colleges, and college majors, might really make sense for you as a reasonable challenge, not an unreasonable one.
That depends. OP was saying his school doesnât include + or - in their transcripts which is why itâs not factored in their HS GPA. Some schools do this. Even the UC system does this when translating anyoneâs HS GPA for their applications. If all they provide to the colleges is A, B, etc., then a theoretical A- range in the original class wouldnât matter. If the school on the other hand provides a % for the grade that the college can transpose to a +/- grade, or some other indicator of the lower range, then it could.
