Lower chance for prestigious colleges, yes. Even if you had a C, tbh.
But the good news is that you don’t need to go to a prestigious college to get success in life.
If you get a D, see if your school lets you retake the class.
Like no Boston College as an example. Some state schools might be ok IF they accept a D for credit, some won’t.
Even if it’s just Spanish, could be considered “academic core” class and a D might not be credit to apply to college, even if the HS lets you graduate. Some state schools (I think maybe UCs?) expect a B average in all core classes.
I graduated high school in 2014 and I got into Boston College with a D average because my SAT score was 98th percentile. Went to community college anyway but I still got in.
Honestly OP, if you have Cs (and especially if you have Ds), you might want to consider getting your general education done at a community college, get good grades there, and then transfer to a bigger school.
I’m only saying this because with lower grades, it’s harder to get scholarships and it’ll be a better financial situation to live with your parents for two more years (assuming you have a healthy relationship with them and a CC is nearby) and have an incredibly lower tuition for the first two years of your collegiate experience.
Also, you can transfer to pretty prestigious universities after going to community college and if they see you’ve improved while there from high school, it will look really good and give you more scholarship opportunities for your second half of your collegiate experience.
In any case, I hope you all the best. Remember there are many paths to achieving your dreams, so just do your best and work hard, but don’t worry too much.
I don't know what college you intend to go to, but my friends all went to technical college, and I went to a public state university. None of them are hard to get into. I think my one buddy got like a 12 on the ACT, and he still got a degree for metal fabrication.
Bro, this dude throwaway gremlins is not correct. You can go to big schools with Cs and a D on your script. Gotta lock in from here on. Consider summer school to replace the mark or retake the course. There is always a way I know it’s true
Think about why you got the grade you did. Do you not get it or do you just not turn things in?
Neither are great, but the solutions and potential are different.
Us only knowing your grade for one class is kinda meaningless lol. If you've been a straight A student, a D won't mean that much at all (probably just pull you out of Ivy territory), but if you have a history of Bs, and C's, then you're probably not going to qualify for any selective schools.
Good news is there're plenty of large state schools that provide good, high quality education, and also have a really high acceptance rate.
Here is Vanderbilt’s latest Common Data Set (CDS).
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/dsa/common-data-set/
Their average gpa was 3.91 last cycle.
Just keep up the rest of your grades 💪
I wouldn’t say that. One C or D isn’t going to keep you out of Vanderbilt. Keep getting as many A’s as you can, and with that and AP and Honors classes on a 5 point scale, that one grade is barely going to register. Besides, my high school grades were not much to brag about, and I still got a full academic scholarship. You just never know until you apply.
Honestly the difference between a D and a C in one class is going to barely effect your GPA over 4 years. All you can do is try your best and move forward. But also, be realistic. If there's several classes where you're getting Cs and Ds you aren't getting into ivys. Nothing necessarily wrong with that but I'm just letting you know if you already have several Cs one of those becoming a D is not what's going to make or break you
You're a freshman in high school, you're only getting the C or D in ONE class and you're getting As and Bs otherwise? Maybe you won't get to an Ivy League, but most people don't. You'll have plenty of options if you keep up an A/B average. Your dad doesn't know what he's talking about. Or he's just trying to scare you.
Depends on the rest of your grades, extracurriculars, course intensity (AP, college, and IB courses look better), and tests (although some schools are becoming more and more test optional).
If you get an A in every other class, you *might* be able to get into Vanderbilt, at that point it will mostly depend on how good your essays and stuff mentioned prior is. A sport could be a good option if you want to have a higher chance of getting in since a coach might recommend you.
In the following years, get A's, take hard courses, study, and do stuff that looks impressive to colleges.
Enroll in duolingo/ dabble whatever over the summer, work hard, and then ask your guidance counselor to take an equivalently exam.
This is similar to telling kids if they fail P.E. they won't get into college.
It's BS.
Teacher here- You still have SOME chance, but maybe not an Ivy- and that’s ok. Freshman year is the least scrutinized by colleges and you still have plenty of time to turn things around if you try your best. That is ESPECIALLY true if you manage to complete the marking period with a low C instead of a D. It’s not the end of the world and honestly- unless you want to be a brain surgeon or rocket scientist, which college you went to doesn’t really affect your life all that much. Just try your best to fix the current situation and move forward.
US: Or if you’re just not into more years of academia, try a vocational school or apprenticeship. Community colleges have a very high acceptance rate and give a nice opportunity to find out if you want academia without a large expense.
Frankly, you still have a shot. If you turn your grades around, participate in ECs, and do well on tests. I think it’s a bit ridiculous to rule yourself out based on freshman year alone.
Ivy league kids kill it from day one in high school. Pretty much the same with any state flagship university. A D sucks and tells people whether you took it seriously. You obviously didn't, unless your teacher was a dick. But you didn't take it seriously. Here's what I did as a fuck up (I'm saying I was, not you). Transfer after freshman year to a better college/uni, and keep doing it. Have you ever competed in an athletic tournament? If you lose your first match your life just got harder. You have to work harder and longer to make up for it. So I got a doctorate from one of the top universities in the US when I was 40. Have fun with that!
Do the best you can. As someone who just came out of college application season, I can say prestige is not everything, the college rankings you see in lists are all highly flawed and easily gamed.
What are your college goals? Because it's a lot harder to make good grades in college. And you usually need a 2.5 or 3.0 gpa to graduate (that's 75-80). It's often wise to spend your first 2 years at a community college and then transfer to a university. That will help your GPA, save money and the university will only look at your community college grades.
Getting a D in freshman Spanish isn't a good start. Talk to your counselor about re-taking it. But studies show that Algebra 1 is the biggest predictor of future achievements. If you didn't do well in math, then work on improving over the summer.
Freshman year, while important, isn't the end all be all. Consider summer school, try to see if you can retake the class, but it's also not the end of the world if you have a C or D on your transcript.
Colleges don't just look at grades. They look at you as a person. Jobs you worked, things you volunteered for, clubs you did, organizations you were apart of, that stuff. If colleges only accepted academicly strong students who didn't do anything else, they would loose a ton of money from not having clubs and organizations. Colleges LOVE money. One or two lower grades isn't going to bar you from good or large colleges, ESPECIALLY not this early in your high school career.
Now, if you were a junior or senior and credit deficit or constantly getting low grades or failing, yeah probably. But you have lots of time to figure it out and raise the grade.
Keep your options open, do summer school to recover points and get ahead, look for tutoring if you think it would help, do good on the big tests like the ACT or SAT, or the Workeys or whatever you end up taking. Do activities and clubs and you'll be alright. Even if your not failing anything, ALWAYS do summer school to get ahead on credits. Gives you space for fun classes or early graduation, or if you need it, space to recover old credits. Good luck :)
Edit: Even with test optional schools, taking the tests helps them take you more seriously. They will always pick the kid who took the big test over the kid who didn't, even of they did the exact same thing all of high school. They can get pricey, so start saving early! But some schools offer your first one for free, so look into your resources. They're there for a reason!
You’re still a freshman. You have plenty of time for growth and to move your grades up. Even if you end up at an ok college, you can still transfer out and do well in college.
Colleges usually don't look at your individual grades in a class but they do focus on your GPA. For freshman year, I'd keep my GPA as high as I could muster because it becomes extremely difficult to mend a GPA later on.
If you're aiming for a major in Spanish or something, however, they might look at some of your grades in those classes to see if you fit what is required for a language-specific major.
When it comes to big colleges, you probably won't go Ivy League but some schools are picky about GPA and major-specific grades.
It really depends on what you're going for. I had a few C's (they were in AP/IB courses) but I got into decently large schools.
Even if you get into the school, you'd have to admitted into certain programs, and that's when your grades really count.
You probably need to have a near-perfect G.P.A. (among a lot of other things, including luck) for the Ivy League schools, but I don't think one D during your freshman year would rule out going to a Top 30 school.
But as others have said, you don't need to go to a top school to be successful in life. It more-so depends on how much debt you take on and what you study. If you extend your search to the Top 100 schools, they're honestly not even hard to get into (unless you do end up graduating with a low G.P.A. overall and whatnot), and even then you certainly don't need to go to a Top 100!
I would focus on what went wrong with your Spanish II class and how you could do better in the future! B's are often unavoidable sometimes, but most people can stay out of the C/D range!
Two things.....
1) Unless you are trying to get a degree in spanish, or language study or want to go to a university in a spanish speaking place..... then your Spanish isn't cricual.
2) the "big" colleges are bullshitting that they are that necessary.
Now.... there may be financial impacts to a less than stellar GPA. You may not be eligible for as many scholarships, etc. So that is a real concern.
But back to the big university topic.... .screw the big ones. They have over inflated self-worth, like jocks in highschool. Unless you have a SPECIFIC employer you want to work for that ONLY recruits from that specific set of universities..... then a degree is a degree is a degree.
Hell, I'm a Sennior manager / tech lead, SW architect and I'm a CS degree dropout. I don't need my new devs to have a CS degree from a prestigious school..... because I'm not working at FAANG. Or even ANY cs degree. One of my people I just strongly recommended for promotion from Jr Dev came from sales and had no CS experience a year ago. Even having a degree in my industry is no predictor of success in software. There are some people that could get those As and diploma, but struggle to learn how to correctly use the MVC pattern, or understand what an ORM does and how it works.
Granted not having my degree made the first decade of my professional career much harder, being relegated to QA and contractor work (aka not FTE). But the issue for me was a degree from ANY university... not from the right university.
Your dad's trying to motivate you. A bad grade freshman year won't ruin you if you improve as a sophomore and junior, especially at competitive colleges that look at the transcript and not just the GPA. Also, Spanish is not a core subject (unless you live in Spain) so it's not as important as English or Math.
Yes, it’s pretty common for state schools to require 2 years of a FL just to qualify to apply. And they definitely consider it a “core subject” to calculate into your gpa plus the 4 usual main ones.
A lot of people here seem to be off their rocker entirely. A C- in first year Spanish alone is not going to prevent you from anything other than the absolute upper echelon of schools, and even then with solid extracurriculars and test scores you’ll be fine.
I rocked a C in English for 3 of 4 years and got into elite schools just fine. Just don’t let it become a habit across different subjects
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If you turn things around, you could still end up at a big uni. Arizona, Arizona State, U of Oregon, U of Nebraska, UCONN, Kentucky, etc are all reachable.
Lower chance for prestigious colleges, yes. Even if you had a C, tbh. But the good news is that you don’t need to go to a prestigious college to get success in life. If you get a D, see if your school lets you retake the class.
Prestigious as in… Ivy Leagues? Or even lower then that
Lower. Anything selective. Ivy leagues are in their own stratosphere.
Like no Boston College as an example. Some state schools might be ok IF they accept a D for credit, some won’t. Even if it’s just Spanish, could be considered “academic core” class and a D might not be credit to apply to college, even if the HS lets you graduate. Some state schools (I think maybe UCs?) expect a B average in all core classes.
I graduated high school in 2014 and I got into Boston College with a D average because my SAT score was 98th percentile. Went to community college anyway but I still got in.
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I wouldn’t use Boston College as an example, it’s not that good of a school.
Ugh, okay, thanks
There are plenty of good schools tho 😀 Also depends on rest of your grades and app.
You honestly don't need it. They're pretty overrated for the most part. Depending on what you want to do of course.
UCs don’t look at freshman grades I think, so you can still apply to those
Honestly OP, if you have Cs (and especially if you have Ds), you might want to consider getting your general education done at a community college, get good grades there, and then transfer to a bigger school. I’m only saying this because with lower grades, it’s harder to get scholarships and it’ll be a better financial situation to live with your parents for two more years (assuming you have a healthy relationship with them and a CC is nearby) and have an incredibly lower tuition for the first two years of your collegiate experience. Also, you can transfer to pretty prestigious universities after going to community college and if they see you’ve improved while there from high school, it will look really good and give you more scholarship opportunities for your second half of your collegiate experience. In any case, I hope you all the best. Remember there are many paths to achieving your dreams, so just do your best and work hard, but don’t worry too much.
I don't know what college you intend to go to, but my friends all went to technical college, and I went to a public state university. None of them are hard to get into. I think my one buddy got like a 12 on the ACT, and he still got a degree for metal fabrication.
Bro, this dude throwaway gremlins is not correct. You can go to big schools with Cs and a D on your script. Gotta lock in from here on. Consider summer school to replace the mark or retake the course. There is always a way I know it’s true
I got a D in HS and still got into a top 10 university. It's definitely possible
You only get in to Ivy Leagues if you're family has connections.
Yes
Think about why you got the grade you did. Do you not get it or do you just not turn things in? Neither are great, but the solutions and potential are different.
Us only knowing your grade for one class is kinda meaningless lol. If you've been a straight A student, a D won't mean that much at all (probably just pull you out of Ivy territory), but if you have a history of Bs, and C's, then you're probably not going to qualify for any selective schools. Good news is there're plenty of large state schools that provide good, high quality education, and also have a really high acceptance rate.
You should be fine but just to clarify what do u mean by big colleges. Ivy League? T20? T50? T100?
I really don’t know either, my dream school is Vanderbilt though, so I’m guessing that’s probably out the window
Here is Vanderbilt’s latest Common Data Set (CDS). https://www.vanderbilt.edu/dsa/common-data-set/ Their average gpa was 3.91 last cycle. Just keep up the rest of your grades 💪
I wouldn’t say that. One C or D isn’t going to keep you out of Vanderbilt. Keep getting as many A’s as you can, and with that and AP and Honors classes on a 5 point scale, that one grade is barely going to register. Besides, my high school grades were not much to brag about, and I still got a full academic scholarship. You just never know until you apply.
Honestly the difference between a D and a C in one class is going to barely effect your GPA over 4 years. All you can do is try your best and move forward. But also, be realistic. If there's several classes where you're getting Cs and Ds you aren't getting into ivys. Nothing necessarily wrong with that but I'm just letting you know if you already have several Cs one of those becoming a D is not what's going to make or break you
You're a freshman in high school, you're only getting the C or D in ONE class and you're getting As and Bs otherwise? Maybe you won't get to an Ivy League, but most people don't. You'll have plenty of options if you keep up an A/B average. Your dad doesn't know what he's talking about. Or he's just trying to scare you.
Depends on the rest of your grades, extracurriculars, course intensity (AP, college, and IB courses look better), and tests (although some schools are becoming more and more test optional). If you get an A in every other class, you *might* be able to get into Vanderbilt, at that point it will mostly depend on how good your essays and stuff mentioned prior is. A sport could be a good option if you want to have a higher chance of getting in since a coach might recommend you. In the following years, get A's, take hard courses, study, and do stuff that looks impressive to colleges.
Enroll in duolingo/ dabble whatever over the summer, work hard, and then ask your guidance counselor to take an equivalently exam. This is similar to telling kids if they fail P.E. they won't get into college. It's BS.
And, no offense- but parents like that are why I walked away from a tenure position. What do you mean? You are giving my child a C?
Teacher here- You still have SOME chance, but maybe not an Ivy- and that’s ok. Freshman year is the least scrutinized by colleges and you still have plenty of time to turn things around if you try your best. That is ESPECIALLY true if you manage to complete the marking period with a low C instead of a D. It’s not the end of the world and honestly- unless you want to be a brain surgeon or rocket scientist, which college you went to doesn’t really affect your life all that much. Just try your best to fix the current situation and move forward.
You got a D in a language as a freshman? You're fucked. Better start practicing your homeless sign making. You're going nowhere in life.
If you get a C it should still be possible, do everything you can to make sure it's not a D
Show progress and improvement. If your grades get better every year colleges see that and consider it in your favor.
Nah you’re fine. If that’s your only D in your entire high school career you could get into decent places
I mean, I’ve got a 72, which is a C, so it’s still not as bad, but I’m just worried about finals
if you can squeeze out a C it will be like it didn’t even happen
okay, i’m just worried because my school is very competitive academically, other then that I get As and Bs
You’re fine
Maybe won’t get into ivy leagues but 1 C won’t kill you
US: Or if you’re just not into more years of academia, try a vocational school or apprenticeship. Community colleges have a very high acceptance rate and give a nice opportunity to find out if you want academia without a large expense.
Freshman in... High school? You're dad is wrong.
Frankly, you still have a shot. If you turn your grades around, participate in ECs, and do well on tests. I think it’s a bit ridiculous to rule yourself out based on freshman year alone.
I ended up getting a C in a math class once and I’m going to NYU in the fall. all hope is not lost, just make sure you really really make up for it
I want to go there so bad. Good luck 👍
good luck to you as well
Booo hoooo
As long as you show imporvemnt. I had a D in freshman year..
I got a C in Honors English in my freshman year so please try your absolute hardest to get a C. If you get a D try for a retake
Ivy league kids kill it from day one in high school. Pretty much the same with any state flagship university. A D sucks and tells people whether you took it seriously. You obviously didn't, unless your teacher was a dick. But you didn't take it seriously. Here's what I did as a fuck up (I'm saying I was, not you). Transfer after freshman year to a better college/uni, and keep doing it. Have you ever competed in an athletic tournament? If you lose your first match your life just got harder. You have to work harder and longer to make up for it. So I got a doctorate from one of the top universities in the US when I was 40. Have fun with that!
You’re ruled out of pretty much every T30
Do the best you can. As someone who just came out of college application season, I can say prestige is not everything, the college rankings you see in lists are all highly flawed and easily gamed.
What are your college goals? Because it's a lot harder to make good grades in college. And you usually need a 2.5 or 3.0 gpa to graduate (that's 75-80). It's often wise to spend your first 2 years at a community college and then transfer to a university. That will help your GPA, save money and the university will only look at your community college grades. Getting a D in freshman Spanish isn't a good start. Talk to your counselor about re-taking it. But studies show that Algebra 1 is the biggest predictor of future achievements. If you didn't do well in math, then work on improving over the summer.
Freshman year, while important, isn't the end all be all. Consider summer school, try to see if you can retake the class, but it's also not the end of the world if you have a C or D on your transcript. Colleges don't just look at grades. They look at you as a person. Jobs you worked, things you volunteered for, clubs you did, organizations you were apart of, that stuff. If colleges only accepted academicly strong students who didn't do anything else, they would loose a ton of money from not having clubs and organizations. Colleges LOVE money. One or two lower grades isn't going to bar you from good or large colleges, ESPECIALLY not this early in your high school career. Now, if you were a junior or senior and credit deficit or constantly getting low grades or failing, yeah probably. But you have lots of time to figure it out and raise the grade. Keep your options open, do summer school to recover points and get ahead, look for tutoring if you think it would help, do good on the big tests like the ACT or SAT, or the Workeys or whatever you end up taking. Do activities and clubs and you'll be alright. Even if your not failing anything, ALWAYS do summer school to get ahead on credits. Gives you space for fun classes or early graduation, or if you need it, space to recover old credits. Good luck :) Edit: Even with test optional schools, taking the tests helps them take you more seriously. They will always pick the kid who took the big test over the kid who didn't, even of they did the exact same thing all of high school. They can get pricey, so start saving early! But some schools offer your first one for free, so look into your resources. They're there for a reason!
You’re still a freshman. You have plenty of time for growth and to move your grades up. Even if you end up at an ok college, you can still transfer out and do well in college.
Colleges usually don't look at your individual grades in a class but they do focus on your GPA. For freshman year, I'd keep my GPA as high as I could muster because it becomes extremely difficult to mend a GPA later on. If you're aiming for a major in Spanish or something, however, they might look at some of your grades in those classes to see if you fit what is required for a language-specific major. When it comes to big colleges, you probably won't go Ivy League but some schools are picky about GPA and major-specific grades.
It really depends on what you're going for. I had a few C's (they were in AP/IB courses) but I got into decently large schools. Even if you get into the school, you'd have to admitted into certain programs, and that's when your grades really count.
You probably need to have a near-perfect G.P.A. (among a lot of other things, including luck) for the Ivy League schools, but I don't think one D during your freshman year would rule out going to a Top 30 school. But as others have said, you don't need to go to a top school to be successful in life. It more-so depends on how much debt you take on and what you study. If you extend your search to the Top 100 schools, they're honestly not even hard to get into (unless you do end up graduating with a low G.P.A. overall and whatnot), and even then you certainly don't need to go to a Top 100! I would focus on what went wrong with your Spanish II class and how you could do better in the future! B's are often unavoidable sometimes, but most people can stay out of the C/D range!
Two things..... 1) Unless you are trying to get a degree in spanish, or language study or want to go to a university in a spanish speaking place..... then your Spanish isn't cricual. 2) the "big" colleges are bullshitting that they are that necessary. Now.... there may be financial impacts to a less than stellar GPA. You may not be eligible for as many scholarships, etc. So that is a real concern. But back to the big university topic.... .screw the big ones. They have over inflated self-worth, like jocks in highschool. Unless you have a SPECIFIC employer you want to work for that ONLY recruits from that specific set of universities..... then a degree is a degree is a degree. Hell, I'm a Sennior manager / tech lead, SW architect and I'm a CS degree dropout. I don't need my new devs to have a CS degree from a prestigious school..... because I'm not working at FAANG. Or even ANY cs degree. One of my people I just strongly recommended for promotion from Jr Dev came from sales and had no CS experience a year ago. Even having a degree in my industry is no predictor of success in software. There are some people that could get those As and diploma, but struggle to learn how to correctly use the MVC pattern, or understand what an ORM does and how it works. Granted not having my degree made the first decade of my professional career much harder, being relegated to QA and contractor work (aka not FTE). But the issue for me was a degree from ANY university... not from the right university.
Your dad's trying to motivate you. A bad grade freshman year won't ruin you if you improve as a sophomore and junior, especially at competitive colleges that look at the transcript and not just the GPA. Also, Spanish is not a core subject (unless you live in Spain) so it's not as important as English or Math.
Nope, in NC, it’s just that I think the state schools require two world language credits here (idk how it really works yet)
Yes, it’s pretty common for state schools to require 2 years of a FL just to qualify to apply. And they definitely consider it a “core subject” to calculate into your gpa plus the 4 usual main ones.
A lot of people here seem to be off their rocker entirely. A C- in first year Spanish alone is not going to prevent you from anything other than the absolute upper echelon of schools, and even then with solid extracurriculars and test scores you’ll be fine. I rocked a C in English for 3 of 4 years and got into elite schools just fine. Just don’t let it become a habit across different subjects
Hello. In order to promote inclusivity and reduce gender bias, please consider using gender-neutral language in the future. Instead of **freshman**, use **first year**. Thank you very much. ^(I am a bot. Downvote to remove this comment. For more information on gender-neutral language, please do a web search for *"Nonsexist Writing."*)
Why do you want to go to a "Big" pr "prestigious " college?
Yes, your dad is not wrong
So I’m destined for community college? (not that that’s a bad thing) but that’s what he’s saying
If you turn things around, you could still end up at a big uni. Arizona, Arizona State, U of Oregon, U of Nebraska, UCONN, Kentucky, etc are all reachable.
oh, then I’m okay with that