Questions students ask

Do colleges look at freshman year grades?

Updated September 7, 2026

Yes. In most US high schools, ninth-grade grades appear on the transcript that colleges receive, and they usually count towards the cumulative GPA. But they carry less weight than junior year, several state university systems recalculate GPA using only tenth grade onwards, and an upward trend across four years is a pattern readers recognise and take seriously. A difficult freshman year is a real disadvantage and a recoverable one.

What is actually on the transcript

Every course and grade from ninth grade onwards, in nearly all US high schools, along with the cumulative GPA those grades feed. That is the document your counselor sends, and it is not editable.

What varies is how it is used. Some large public university systems recalculate GPA from tenth and eleventh grade only, and some recalculate using core academic subjects alone. Others read the transcript as sent. There is no single rule, which is why "do they count" has a longer answer than it should.

Why later years weigh more

Because they are more recent and more difficult. Junior year is the last full year of grades most colleges see before deciding, and it is usually the hardest schedule a student has taken — so it is the best available evidence of what they can do now.

Ninth grade is read with the context that ninth grade deserves. Readers know students arrive from different middle schools, adjust at different rates, and are fourteen.

If your freshman year went badly

The trend is the thing. A transcript that goes up is a genuinely strong document, and a rising line from a difficult start reads as someone who worked out how to work — which is not a bad thing to demonstrate.

Practically: protect sophomore and junior year, take the hardest courses you can actually carry, and do not let one bad term become a story you tell yourself about being behind. If there was a specific reason — illness, a move, something at home — there is usually a place on the application for a counselor to explain it, and that is what it is for.

Work out where you stand

Weighted and unweighted, from your actual schedule. Free, no account, nothing leaves your browser.

Open it

Orblite keeps the whole four-year plan in one place, and tells you the one thing worth doing next.

Free to start · no card · about ten minutes to your first plan

Meet Orblite

Do colleges look at freshman year grades?

What is actually on the transcript

Why later years weigh more

If your freshman year went badly

Read next