How can I raise my GPA? I have an interesting situation.?

Question

My freshman year I was more than a slacker, I did not care at all about my grades and by thhe end of the year I wound up having a 1.9 GPA. But I didn't have as many classes as everyone else did, I had 4 out of 6 due to a Section 504. I would like to be an astrophysicist, since I love both astronomy and physics, but I understand that a lot of colleges only offer astronomy or physics, not astrophysics. The main colleges that have astrophysics as a major are big ones such as Princeton and Harvard. First semester of sophomore year I had a 2.7 GPA (unweighted) but I am enrolled in the hardest classes they had to offer me.

Now this semester I am actually trying and have a GPA of around 3.2, but it's still not enough to get into a big university that will offer the major that I would like. I did the calculations and even if I had a 4.0 Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years, I'd still be at a 3.475 unweighted. I add the unweighted part because by the time I graduate I will have taken 6 AP classes (APUSH, AP Chem, AP Calculus, AP Environment Science, AP Statistics, and AP Physics.)

I am sorry for the long paragraph, it's just that this has really been worrying me and the only thing I could possibly do to make that 1.9 freshman year is to point out that the GPA is calculated by taking the grade points and adding them, then dividing it by the attempted credit hours. That and that I have a Section 504. I don't want my mistakes as a freshman to follow me for the rest of my life.

Sam Spayed · Answer

You need to be able to answer the question "why should Princeton accept you, when they could fill the class with people who got all A's for all four years of high school?" You need to stand out in some way.

Colleges like to see improvement so a bad freshman year isn't fatal, even at the very best universities. But you really have to excel the rest of the time for the most competitive schools like Princeton, and you're not really there yet. Going from a C average to a B average just doesn't cut it; sophomore year is the second most important year, after junior year. Universities don't typically consider senior year grades, since applications are due before the grades are final.

Irrespective, you should consider universities with good astronomy and physics majors, and not just those with astrophysics majors. Astrophysics is a branch of astronomy, and at the undergraduate level many universities just don't specialize to that degree. For example, my bachelors degree is in biology even though I studied ethology. If I had limited myself to schools with an undergraduate "ethology" degree I don't know where I would have ended up.

Physics is one of those fields that practically requires a graduate degree if you want to work in the field, so go to a university with respectable astronomy and physics departments, get excellent grades, and go to one of those top "astrophysics" universities for graduate school.

eri · Answer

Colleges ask for unweighted GPA on the 4.0 scale. No, you don't want a major in astrophysics.  What you want is a physics major.  Astrophysics doesn't include enough physics to get you through a graduate program in physics, which is essentially what an astrophysicist does (most of us have PhDs in physics - it makes us far more employable).  And you can study physics almost anywhere, but keep in mind you need a very high college GPA to have a shot at grad school.

Tony RB · Answer

Don't worry about the 9th grade grades.
As long as you show improvement, that is what matters.

Physics and astrophysics require strong mathematical skills.

Focus on the math classes because when you take calculus, you are expected to be able to handle algebra easily. High grades in math classes and on the college entrance exams are what gets the attention of the colleges.

Your science classes are a kind of "applied mathematics" and you learn to translate a physical situation to a mathematical description, then solve the math equations.

For the fun of it, check out the questions people ask about Math here on Yahoo Answers, and try to answer those questions. Advice - solve the question on paper, then type it in. Don't try to solve it only while typing in the answer box, it takes forever. And don't spend a lot of time trying to answer here, as your own homework is challenging enough.

anyhoo085 · Answer

Retake the classes that you did poorly in and have the school override it. It may still show up on your transcript but it will raise your GPA.

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How can I raise my GPA? I have an interesting situation.?

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