What are the chances for getting into Johns Hopkins?

Can one bad semester ruin my chances of getting into my selective colleges?

• I started off high school behind in freshman year, but i have caught up with the top students in my sophomore class all 3 prior semesters are very strong, a collectice GPA of give or take 3.9 but this semester, mainly Algebra II, i wasnt quite understanding exactly how to do the problems and as a result my grades were not good, the semester is still going and i have made some significant improvements and im understanding the materials My Civics grade is also low, but that is mainly due to missed days and i knew all of the things we were learning so i kind of slacked off i digress, will my Algebra II grade (80% maybe lower) and civics grade (70% probably higher, but im being conservative) ruin my chances of getting into one or all of these colleges that i am looking at: USC Johns Hopkins Duke Virginia U Ohio State Pitt my college major is Sports Medicine

• Answer:

  Hey, so I've had a 3.8 all semesters except one, where I got a 3.0 (also because of Algebra II and chemistry). My counselor told me that if I improved the next semester, it would be pretty likely that colleges would somewhat overlook that one bad semester. Luckily, she was right. I applied to ten schools, five of which are very selective, and I got into all of them. The only one you should think about is Duke. I don't mean to crush your dreams if that's your top school, but Duke is extremely competitive and won't accept anything less than a 4.0 all four years. Take a ton of AP classes as a junior and senior and I promise that you will get into really good schools, probably almost all on your list. You just have to keep those grades up.