When a student asks me this question, I say: Don’t worry. Freshman, sophomore or junior year, there’s time to become a phoenix emerging from the ashes.
It’s the exception not the norm to maintain a consistently meteoric grade point average throughout the four years of high school. However, if that C in sophomore geometry is worrying your student, here are a few tips on how to frame their academic story to ensure a low grade doesn’t put a pall on an otherwise strong college application narrative.
Examine Courseload
Not every student does or should take APs, Honors classes or an IB program. While these offerings may demonstrate ambition, they may not be the “best fit” for a student’s mental health and executive functioning skills. One of my students recently asked if it were ok to transfer out of her IB program. Her parents were divorcing and she had to move homes, two personal disruptors that made the structure and strictures of the IB overwhelming. We FaceTimed and I suggested she move into her school’s traditional academic track whereby her whole body relaxed. Her grades stabilized and most importantly, she began smiling again.
Reconsider AP-Heavy Curriculums
A too-hard courseload doesn’t yield college application success. Choosing APUSH over American history, the former being a prescribed curriculum for the AP exam and the latter describing a generalized US history curriculum created by the school or teacher, doesn’t necessarily signal to colleges that students are superior or inferior to one another based on their selection. In other words, APs don’t help or hurt a student’s college acceptance outcome. Many students don’t want to or shouldn’t take AP exams; these tests can add unnecessary stress to their lives. What’s most important is that a student be engaged in classwork and shoulder a courseload that suits their learning style. High grades are often the result of just such choices.
Use the Additional Information Section
The Common Application and other proprietary college application portals offer a section, often called Additional Information, where students can explain any issues in their high school career that seem incongruent with their overall application. School changes, suspensions, up-and-down academic histories, sports injuries and mental health diagnoses are perfect topics for the “Add Info” section. I advise students to write frankly about themselves and their situations, a tell-don’t-show approach, revealing a self-awareness that colleges will welcome.
Focus on the future not the past: this is my refrain to students who worry that that one semester or even year where their academic performance didn’t reflect their capabilities will ruin their chances of getting into a “good school.” First, no admissions officer dismisses a student because of a blip and second, any college that offers a curriculum that excites a student is a good one.
DEC