How Important is Freshman Year of High School TKG

How Important is Freshman Year of High School Good morning. TL;DR: Freshman Year Is Just as Important as Junior Year. Every single year of high school is important. We know this. We stand by this. We emphasize it to all of our clients. Every moment is important, including freshman and sophomore year (we even created a foolproof checklist to guide you through sophomore year). But we also get this follow-up question a lot: how important is freshman year (uttered in slightly hushed tones) *really*? And we understand where the question is coming from. Of course everyone knows that anything that happens in high school (academically) will translate to a transcript and will be seen by colleges. But, are colleges really going to hold a B+ from freshman year English class against a student if they get straight As otherwise? Actually, though? So, our answer to: “how important is freshman year (be honest)?”The answer is simple… IT DEPENDS!You’re rightfully rolling your eyes, but just like anything else in this process, the reality is just completely case-dependent. Probably not the easy, black and white response you were expecting, but how many things in life are simple? Very few, and even fewer in the college application process. Grades matter no matter what--we’ve waxed poetic about how grades are the foundation of your entire application and without a solid base you have nothing to go on. That said, the intensity of this answer depends on where you want to go to college. Creating a balanced and realistic college list is one of the most important things that we do with our clients (and it takes time!) because, while we want you to go after your dreams, we don’t like you to waste your time and energy on an application to a school that’s not even going to read your application. Whether or not an application gets read (as in, it gets through the initial and necessary filtration) is dependent on a few things: test scores, GPA, and combined reflection of class selection, competitiveness, and class rank. S chools like Yale or Harvard usually want to see consistently high grades starting with freshman year. Why? Because they have thousands of applicants with flawless academic records. This means lower risk and no unanswered questions. So, if your ambitions point to a school like Harvard, then you better have straight As freshman year. This is a good time for us to say that Harvard isn’t the best school for most people. Not that it’s not a great school, it’s just not a great fit for many people. We’re all about fit, and there are hundreds of amazing schools outside of the “Ivy League” that offer academically rigorous and top tier degrees. Schools like Wesleyan, Washington University at St. Louis, UCSD, Bowdoin, Emory, University of Michigan, Middlebury, Wake Forest, UT Austin, Northwestern, and the list goes on and on. If you’re open (and you should be) and excited by schools outside of the Ivy League, then freshman year is still VERY important, but there’s a tiny tiny bit of wiggle room. After all, schools don’t want robots. They want people. And your GPA does not determine your worth or your ability to articulate and achieve your ambitions. In sum: freshman year=S U P E R 10/10important if you want to go to Harvard and around 7-8/10 important if you want to go somewhere like, say, Wesleyan. Or a number of the schools listed above. And hundreds that we did not list because you don’t want to read that. If this answer brought up even more questions for you, let us know by emailing us or calling us.