At my school, AP US History is a joke of a class. Even below average students enroll and consistently earn high marks. No one save for a few braves the AP exam- this year only 9 of us out of nearly 70 students took the test, and I think everyone agreed that we definitely did NOT earn high marks on it. Many people including myself had an attitude of general apathy towards the class.....I basically did enough to earn my A and that was it. Not much effort. First semester this worked out splendidly for me. I got an A+ basically without doing any homework the whole semester.
Second semester was a disaster. The teacher took a strong disliking to me. It's almost as if she picked up on the fact that I was coasting and decided that no matter what happened, she was not going to allow me to earn an A. I had a 93% in the class headed into the final week, and everything fell apart. The teacher gave me a solid *"**ZERO**"* on an assignment that I had partially complete (it is standard to receive partial credit for a partially complete assignment). Also, she didn't give me credit for an assignment that was intended to be an *alternative* to the AP exam (even though I took the exam) since there were so many students that didn't step up and take it. This left me with an 89%.
I had a meeting with my teacher, dad, and counselor in an attempt to explain my situation, and my teacher would have none of it. While it's not right....It looks as if a "B" will be the grade that I'm stuck with. This has potentially dire implications for my grades....I was previously ranked #1 in my class. Heading into my senior year, I can still snatch my #1 spot at the end of my senior year with my extremely difficult schedule, but It would have been nice to have an unweighted 4.0, and to be able to hold the #1 spot when applying to colleges next winter.
My question is:
How much does this hurt just the academic portion of my prospective application to an elite school? Is the drop off from #1 to #3 steeper than the drop from say, #2 to #4 due to the certain sacredness that the #1 class rank holds? What about GPA? (4.4 to 4.3 /// 4.0 to like 3.9 or something)
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