Do Colleges Really Care About Freshman Year Grades?

As high school students begin thinking about college applications, a common question arises: do colleges care about freshman year grades? The transition from middle school to high school can be challenging, and many students worry if a less-than-stellar freshman year can impact their college prospects. While freshman year might seem like a distant memory by the time you're applying to colleges, it does indeed play a role in the admissions process. Colleges do look at freshman year grades on your college application. However, if a student doesn’t receive her best grades during her first year of high school, all is not lost. Admission officers recognize that some students need time to adjust to the rigor of high school work, and can forgive a rocky start if things eventually improve and even out.

Freshman Year: Building the Foundation

Think about your years in high school as a building. You need a solid foundation for your building before you add anything else, right? You couldn’t START with the Needle! You need something strong and sturdy first. Freshman year is the foundation for the rest of your high school career. The courses and grades you receive freshman year determine courses for the next year and continue to build from there. Freshman year sets the tone for everything that will come after. The courses you take, and the activities you participate in, are the foundation for the rest of your time in high school. Colleges closely evaluate freshman year grades and activities, but not in the ways you might think. The courses your child takes early in their career, as well as their performance in them, determine the rest of your child’s high school course load. If they join extracurriculars freshman year, they may become a leader in those extracurriculars as an upperclassman. If they take honors physics at the start of high school, they may enroll in AP Physics senior year. And most colleges consider your child’s overall high school GPA, meaning the grades they receive freshman year do have weight.

If you take rigorous courses in freshman year, that opens up the chance for you to take Advanced, Honors, or AP courses later on. And this, in turn, allows you to build a strong transcript for when you get ready to apply to college. This doesn't mean that you'll be able to skate into college if you earn a lot of C's and D's in freshman year, but if your grades aren't quite where you would like them to be, there are a lot of ways to recover from that. It’s still in your interest to do your best freshman year. While colleges are generally forgiving of students who show improvement after freshman year, low grades are still not ideal.

Holistic Admissions: Seeing the Whole Picture

The vast majority of colleges in the US use a holistic approach to admissions. This means that they assess things like your experiences and background in addition to things you’d expect like GPA or test scores. Schools do this because they really want to get the full picture of who you are as a person and student, what your values are, and how you can contribute to their community.

So your GPA, while important, is just one piece of the much larger puzzle that is you! Colleges and universities that take a holistic approach to admissions want to learn your whole story, so they look at your freshman grades as one page in that book. A student’s GPA is part of this complete picture, but so are things like intellectual curiosity, the things students devote their time to outside of class, and the individual experiences that make someone different from the person next to them.

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With grades and classes, context is also important: What courses did you choose from the options you had available to you? If you had the chance to take a more rigorous course, did you do that? What about your extracurricular activities? Do you spend time in service to others? Do you somehow supplement your interests if those options aren’t available to you at school? And yes, what kind of grades did you earn in freshman year? Colleges will also have a clear picture of your school’s course offerings so they’ll know if AP Chem wasn’t an option for you because your school doesn’t offer it. On the flip side, they’ll also know if you had the chance to take more advanced courses and you didn’t.

Admissions committees are far more likely to be excited about a student who had mediocre grades freshman year and went on to receive stellar grades than they are to admit a student who thrived academically freshman year and then declined. Colleges understand that your child might enter high school not yet knowing what they’re passionate about or that they might be coming from a middle school that didn’t prepare them as well as their classmates’ junior high schools did. Taking the first year as a chance to scope out their new world, learn its ways, and then ace it is much better than starting strong and losing interest or momentum. An underdog story is never a bad one!

Course Selection and Academic Rigor

The courses your child takes freshman year matter as much if not more than the grades they receive in those courses. While most colleges don’t have minimum GPA requirements, they do want your child to have completed a minimum amount of coursework. And at most high schools, freshman courses are prerequisites for more advanced classes. In addition, colleges want to see that your child has challenged themselves by taking tough courses offered by their school. Achieving a high GPA by taking easy courses is not viewed as favorably as achieving a high GPA in hard classes.

On top of that, the courses your child takes freshman year are the foundation for the courses they take in the rest of high school. Choosing courses wisely will help set your child up to take the best classes for their strengths and passions later on. For instance, if your child is interested in art but their high school doesn’t have an honors or AP course in that subject, your child shouldn’t skip the painting elective freshman year. Instead, your child should enroll in it and find other ways to deepen that interest later on, through community college classes, summer programs or scholarships, or extracurricular activities. How well you perform in classes during freshman year determines which classes you are eligible to take in the future.

Pretty much every college will look at how much you challenged yourself within the context of your high school, so it’s great to give yourself the option to select more rigorous courses by turning in a solid performance freshman year. (Whether or not you choose to take that option, of course, is entirely up to you and a good thing to discuss with your school or Collegewise counselor.")

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What if Freshman Year Didn't Go as Planned?

Ok, so maybe you’ve completed 9th grade already and it just didn’t go the way you planned. It could be that shifting into high school mode took you a little longer than you thought it would. Maybe you didn’t know which classes to take so you did the basics because that made the most sense. Or maybe you had some stuff going on in your personal life that really impacted how you could show up your freshman year. We beg of you … don’t worry! All is not lost! There are some pretty clear and decisive ways to improve upon your freshman GPA. The key is to show progress.

If your child didn’t take an ideal course load freshman year, don’t worry. They can still bounce back by choosing to take a challenging course load during the rest of high school. Or, perhaps your child missed a freshman prerequisite for a class they would like to take. They should talk to their guidance counselor to see if there’s a way to test into that class. Your child can also look for summer, online, or community college options.

Demonstrating Progress and Improvement

Let’s say you didn’t take any classes that really challenged you in 9th grade. From 10th grade on, make it a point to take classes that are more rigorous AND (this is important) that you find interesting and engaging. Maybe this looks like AP or IB classes for you. Or perhaps you opt into an Honors class instead of going the non-Honors route. Did you miss a prerequisite in 9th grade that you need for an advanced class in 10th, 11th, or 12th grade? If you have the time and the means, see if you can fulfill that prerequisite over the summer.

Taking steps like these will show colleges that you’re approaching things differently than you did in 9th grade, and that’s part of that holistic perspective. They’ll be able to see that you challenged yourself in 10th grade in ways you didn’t in 9th grade. When 11th grade rolls around, they’ll notice that you’ve made a big leap from 10th grade. And when 12th grade is upon you, well, you get the picture. Believe us, college admission officers will be so happy to see this trend.

Colleges want to see how much progress you’ve made throughout your high school career. Colleges care about whether or not you are willing and able to challenge yourself by taking increasingly difficult courses and consistently earning higher grades. In other words, colleges look at academic trends. Colleges will be looking for consistency from its students, and will care much more about Cs in eleventh grade than about As in ninth.

Extracurricular Activities: Depth over Breadth

If you didn’t really commit yourself to extracurricular activities in 9th grade, try to do so in subsequent years. And make sure these activities are things you really enjoy and care deeply about (instead of just things you think will look good on your resume) because they will do a lot to show colleges what you value.

Getting involved with clubs, societies, and teams freshman year gives your child a chance to dive deep into an area of interest. Joining early can help them achieve and assume leadership roles within those organizations as an older student. However, sophomore or junior year is not too late to become more involved in your child’s high school, town, or state community. If you’re concerned about your child’s extracurricular involvementIf your child hasn’t yet involved themself in extracurriculars, how can they bounce back during their remaining time in high school?

Your child should not overcorrect for a low-activity freshman year by joining as many activities as possible later on. They risk seeming scattered and unfocused. Instead, they should select few extracurriculars that are meaningful to them. Anywhere from two to six extracurriculars can be a great number, but it’s the quality and not the quantity of their involvement that matters. What activity will give your child the chance to really make the most of their talents and interests? If, during freshman year, your child devoted most of their time to one demanding primary activity, such as a sport or musical instrument, they should not feel they have to take time away from that activity simply to pad their list of extracurriculars. Is there a way to supplement your child’s core extracurricular activity? For example, if they spend most of their time playing soccer, they might find time to volunteer at soccer camps for younger children or to referee youth games. Or, if they play violin in a youth orchestra, they might share their talent by performing or giving lessons in a local venue like an elementary school or a retirement home.

If your child pursues what is truly meaningful or exciting to them, this will come across in their application. Summer and school breaks are also opportunities for your child to become more involved in the community. Over the summer, they might follow an interest they haven’t found an outlet for within their school community. Maybe they’re interested in politics, science, or creative writing. They could volunteer for a political campaign, find an internship at a local hospital, or write a play. It’s even better if your child can then somehow bring that involvement back to their school community in the fall. For example, your child might recruit other students to get involved politically or direct a production of their play with the high school theatre troupe.

If, for some reason, you don’t have the time to participate in hours and hours of activities outside of school (maybe you have to work or take care of a family member), that’s ok! You can use your personal statement, your supplemental essays, or your UC Personal Insight Questions to give colleges that information.

Addressing Extenuating Circumstances

The people reading your college applications know that sometimes life can get in the way of your best plans, and they want to give you the chance to share this information with them. Most applications include an essay prompt about overcoming a challenge or obstacle , so use this space! You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to share (this is your story, afterall, and you’re in charge of it), but if you feel compelled to let colleges know about your life experiences, you’ll have the chance to do that.

If extenuating circumstances influenced your child’s course load freshman year, they should, if at all possible, have their guidance counselor address this within their letter of recommendation. And if your child attends a high school that lacks challenging course options for freshmen, your child’s guidance counselor can also provide that context in their letter.

Remember that admissions officers make holistic decisions based on your child’s entire application. If your child received weak grades early on in high school but went on to attain excellent grades, receive high test scores, write distinct college essays, complete a handful of extracurriculars, and develop relationships with teachers and administrators who write glowing letters of recommendation, then admissions officers are likely to view low grades freshman year not just as a “fluke,” but as a setback your child overcame to thrive in high school. If your child is stressed about their GPA, they should use that energy to focus on other parts of their application.

If the challenges of your child’s freshman year were truly significant, they might consider writing about it in their Common App essay, Common App Additional Information section, or supplemental college essays. But that’s totally optional. Your child shouldn’t feel that they have to apologize for or explain low freshman year grades within their essays or elsewhere in the application. Another way to explain freshman year grades is through your child’s counselor’s recommendation letter. Yale University, for instance, tells students that an explanation from a counselor or another school official is more valuable than notes in the Common App Additional Information section. A counselor can explain how your child went on to succeed despite their circumstances, demonstrating resiliency and drive, without seeming defensive, as your child might if they wrote it themselves. If you dealt with any of these during your freshman year of high school and they impacted your ability to perform, you might want to consider writing about these experiences. The Common App Essay, Additional Information section, or supplemental essays are a good place to share. If you’d prefer not to write about your own hardships but still want colleges to understand this “fluke” in your transcript, reach out to your school counselor. They will be able to explain extenuating circumstances when writing your recommendation letter to colleges.

The University of California System: A Unique Case

If you’re applying to any of the schools in the University of California system, a few things will be different. You won’t use the Common App, you’ll respond to Personal Insight Questions instead of writing a personal statement, AND your freshman grades will not be considered as part of your UC application. The UCs look at your GPA starting from the summer after freshman year to the summer after junior year, so no freshman or senior grades are part of this grade calculation.

But (there’s always a “but”), they do pay attention to the courses you take in freshman year, so just something to keep in mind when you’re thinking about what classes you want to take! As a side note, we’d highly recommend taking a look at applying to the UCs, especially for any California residents.

Addressing Concerns About Readiness for Advanced Courses

This is an excellent question, and it shows some really good self-reflection if you’re thinking about what’s realistic for you. Our first piece of advice is to talk to your teachers about your readiness to move into advanced courses. They have a good picture of what that transition can be like for students, and their experience in being your teacher gives them some great insight into what you’re capable of (which is probably a lot more than you think).

However, if it really doesn’t make sense for you to move into advanced courses in 10th grade, you’re not alone! Many students wait until junior year to start taking Honors and AP classes, and that still shows the progress colleges are looking for in their applicants. (In fact, some schools limit the ability to take AP classes in 9th and 10th grade.)

The key is to challenge yourself AND to be realistic. You don’t want to choose advanced courses just because they’ll look good on a college application if it means you’ll be struggling and miserable all year. But you do want to push yourself in appropriate ways (this is much more about your intellectual growth than it is about applications, by the way).

Limited Advanced Courses

This is a situation many students find themselves in, and there are a few solutions to this one. Schools with limited advanced courses often try to offer advanced options in at least a few core subjects (English, Math, History, or Science). Since you will be taking classes in these areas anyway because they are required, you could choose the advanced option.

If you have the time and the ability, you could also demonstrate your willingness to academically challenge yourself by taking a summer course at another school or community college, or you could enroll in an online course.The other thing is that colleges will know which courses your school offers, so they’ll also know if you didn’t have the chance to take AP Art History, for example, because your school doesn’t offer it.

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