Improved GPA; how beneficial?

Question

Suppose my GPA in 9th grade was fantastic, and then 10th was a little downhill, and then 11th was a little more downhill. From 9th - 11th grade, it was all honors courses (school doesn't offer AP until senior year.) Then, senior year, I took all APs an actually did my work and 'Anti-Slacked' for a 3.8 GPA. How important is this to colleges? Will the giant improvement in all AP classes show that I can actually handle the course load, and help the colleges overlook the low period of my GPA?

Answer 1

I want to tell you that you should always do your best and that it will always be helpful, and it will. Just not in the ways you are thinking. Since you generally have to apply to colleges by the Fall of your freshman year, you won't be able to show the "anti-slacking" to them, so you would be stuck with the GPA from your sophomore and junior years to show them. This will probably limit your ability to get into most of the better colleges, depending on how poorly you actually did.

The advantage, though, is that the better you do in high school, the more easily you will be able to handle college, even if that college is a local community college. Remember that most of the college general education classes assume that you took and did reasonably well in your high school classes, so if you are missing three years of math, or English, or history, you will find it that much more difficult to catch up.

If you do well in your first two years of college, you can then apply to transfer to a somewhat better school, so all would not be lost.

Answer 2

11th grade is the most important. In 12th grade, all you had to do was get a "C" overall. Looks like you picked the wrong year to ride but don't worry about it. If you're just going to a State college then a sub-3.0 GPA will *typically* do, depending on it's admittance policy. I got into Cal State with a 3.03 but I did pass all my AP exams (3 on European History, 4 on Biology, 5 on Calculus) so I'm not sure where you're at. The important thing is not about taking AP courses but the exam.

Answer 3

The improvement will help, particularly if you make sure to point it out and clarify your school's policy on AP courses in any additional essays. But colleges look most closely for an upward trend your junior year, since that's typically when courses start getting more difficult and you've had sufficient time to adjust to the rigors of high school. It's possible that schools will think you've only just realized you can't get away with slacking, or that you haven't been doing enough to compensate for any boredom that might have been contributing to your previous performance, whatever that was. (If you've had mostly Bs and Cs before now, it's going to be harder to overcome than a mix of As and Bs.)

All that said, every good grade counts, and schools will recognize that you've been challenging yourself to the best of your ability under your school's policies. Good luck!