High school GPA and college admission
Dear moms who work at colleges or have kids who go/went to college, I really need your advice asap please.
Question 1:
What is better for the college admission purposes:
Option 1: to have D+ in chemistry during the first semester of sophomore year of high school, then redo the class next year and get a higher grade
Option 2: get C in chemistry during the first semester of sophomore year of high school and no option to redo the class.
My daughter is a sophomore in high school. All previous years she had mostly As, very rare Bs. She wants to be a writer/editor/journalist and also very interested in computer science.
This year she got many challenging classes on her schedule and then was sick for a while and as a result was not able to attend many classes. She is better now and is working very hard last several weeks on trying to catch up and submitting missing assignments but has only less then 2weeks remaining until the end of the semester and a ton of work to do. So grades dropped in several subjects to C, and the worst one is D+ in chemistry.
She is very stressed out by that situation.
School counselor told me that is not allowed to drop the class in high school, but if her grade stays less then C she can redo the same school class next year. In such case only new grade will be counted towards GPA however the transcript will show that she had D+ on the first attempt.
If she submits missing assignments or does well on final she will increase the grade to C and no longer will be allowed to redo the class. Which means in order to have an opportunity to redo I should tell her right now to stop submitting missing assignments so the grade would not improve to C. Then she can use limited time remaining until the end of the semester to improve grades in other classes which would be easier.
Counselor didn’t know which one is a better for university admission purposes. I guess letting the class fail and redo next year is better then C but not sure about it. What would you do????? Please help
2nd question: counselor recommended to decrease in the next semester the intensity of classes from AP history to regular college prep history and from English honors to regular college prep English because they will require less work. But she couldn’t tell how much less work is it like half or work or quarter or 5% only less work. Now she has Cs In both of those which counselor told would be like Bs on GPA. Is it a good idea or useless?
Parent Replies
Hi there,
My son got a D the first semester of Algebra2 when he was a sophomore (he got a C the second semester). That's when I learned that "D is for Diploma, C is for College." He ended up re-taking Algebra2 at Tilden Prep the summer between junior and senior year, and even though he did both semesters of ALg2 at Tilden, the registrar at Berkeley High did not accept the higher grade for the second semester, only the semester in which he got a D. Warning: Tilden was EXPENSIVE. There are other options, like Berkeley City College or online math programs, but we had a scheduling issue which meant Tilden was the best option for us.
At the end of the day, he barely had a 3.0 GPA but he had pretty good ACT scores, a lot of extra-curricular activities, and good recommendation letters and essays. He was accepted at several colleges, including UC Santa Cruz. He did a great job of scheduling a balanced class load for his junior and senior years and has said he really felt sorry for his friends who were stressed out. He was in BIHS and had challenging courses (2 IB courses junior year, 3 IB courses senior year), but he also took art, music, and computer science electives to give himself a chance to decompress. He really enjoyed his senior year and earned some important life-balance skills at the same time. It was an important learning experience for me, too. His college applications really showed who he was and what he cared about, because everything he did was because he wanted to -- not just to have a good "college resume." It was all real, and true. I now encourage my younger child, now a junior, to enjoy her life too, and choose courses and activities that match what SHE wants to do. High school is stressful enough, let the kids enjoy their lives!
My advice is to encourage your daughter to take courses that match her interest and skill level. Where she will comfortable, feel good about getting good grades, and therefore feel good about herself. In that way, she will boost her self-esteem and get to know who she is. As for whether to accept the chemistry D, let her make the decision. It's possible she could work her ass off these next few weeks to get that C, and continue the good work and get an even better chemistry grade the following semester if she has a lighter load in the other subjects. Then she could have a more relaxing summer :-) It really depends on her. Really, best of luck! Parenting is hard.
Another option is your child taking the course at a community college during the summer. One of my children did this. It worked out well. Talk to the counselor about it since the cc needs approval from the HS and you would want to have that grade included in the HS transcripts.
In my experience, the difference in workload in AP vs regular classes depends more on the teacher, subject area, and school than it does on the label "AP". For example, at one local high school some years ago AP Chem was so difficult that only a handful of students managed to get through without dropping it, while AP Chem at another local high school was purposefully structured so that any student with the appropriate math background could do well. AP Environmental Science varies widely as well.
One advantage of AP classes is that you can tell in advance where you're headed. Check out the College Board online resources or pick up a prep book, and you'll see the kinds of essays/questions/problems the student will be learning in the months before the test. Of course it will seem pretty foreign before they take the class, but at least they will get an overview of the structure and content. For non AP classes, you and/or your student might email or talk with the teacher now to ask generally what the workload is like -- essays written, pages read, grading policy. Most AP teachers stick around for awhile.
I'm not a college admissions counselor so I can't answer your C/D question directly, but here are a few thoughts. 1) Some colleges look at GPA and don't have so much time to look at each class that contributed to it, so GPA is important; 2) If she goes into chem part 2 without thoroughly understanding part 1, then part 2 will be harder; and 3) finishing part 1 in January 2018, then starting part 2 in January 2019 will be very difficult without a thorough review during the summer and fall -- that is a long gap from which to pick up a class in the middle, so to speak. The other students will be fresh from part 1.
Hope that helps, and good luck!