Possible make-up opportunity?Answered
My high school experience was very nomadic, moving from institution to institution. In one such moving occurrence, I had to change high schools roughly a week into the beginning of a school year; sadly, the registrar’s office was not notified of my departure, and, therefore, my English 9 (non-Honors, as the education there was comparatively lackluster) teacher was not notified either. I was not at all able to notify her personally, as well, for personal reasons not applicable herein. As a result, with her thinking that I had just not turned in the assignment, the then-current project I was working on was given a bountiful 0%, totaling my cumulative grade to an F. Luckily, my next school was able to curve it to a C, for they understood the situation.
This C grade is my only non-A grade. Following this trend, I should have a 3.96 unweighted GPA by the end of my senior year.
To get to the point, now that the background is laid out, I have been elected the president of the National English Honors Society at my current school. Does this position make up for the C completely, somewhat, or is it simply trivial?
Thank you for your time.
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3 answers
Simple answer is that you can't swap an EC for a C grade regardless of what the course is. While its an honor to be the Pres. of Nat'l Eng. Honors Society, there are only 700 chapters out 15000 High Schools in the US so less than 5% of HSs even have these. About 1/2 the states in the US have only 0-5 chapters. There are 150 in Florida alone.
If you want to impress Admissions Officers that you have met the academic threshold for English, I would aim to have these credentials on your application by the time you apply.
- AP English Language and Composition
- AP English Literature and Composition
- Editor of the School Newspaper or Columnist, Feature Editor
- Contributing Writer on in your community newspaper
- Editor of some creative writing journal at school or a "zine" or "Blog"
- Win some award or honor for your writing submission to State or National writing competition.
- And write some kick@ss essays on your college application.
You can't swap an EC for a bad grade but you can show evidence of your upward trend in English, creative and expository writing ability.
Your position as NEHS president will not directly make up for your C, but it will benefit your application overall. You can compensate for your grade so long as you continue to receive As in all of your classes and make sure to take the most rigorous English classes you can. As in AP Lang and Lit will make the C look like an anomaly. I also recommend explaining the circumstances behind your C in the additional information section of your applications. Hope this helps!
As far as I understand, admissions look at different aspects of your application and consider it separately.
Academics is a section all by itself, so I believe the best way to make that up is to improve in English with A+ in following years, taking AP/IB English class, outside writing program/school.
Basically to just show improvement in any way possible. The more the drastic this C seems in comparison to the rest of your academics the lesser impact it will have.
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Thank you so much! I’ve received a 5 on my AP English Language and Composition exam—would that help, as well?