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Do Colleges Look at 8th-Grade Record?

Written by Sally Rubenstone | Sept. 12, 2008

Question: I just started 9th grade, and I'm worried. Last year my attendance record for my first class was really bad. Even though I got straight A's, I was constantly late or absent. The course was geometry, and I was taking it for high school credit. So I was just wondering if colleges consider pre-high-school attendance records?

Nope, don't worry, admission committees won't be concerned with your 8th grade attendance records, although they will consider grades in middle school classes taken for high school credit (typically math and/or foreign language).

However, colleges often do look at high school attendance and tardy records, so get a good, loud alarm clock. :-)

Sally Rubenstone

Sally Rubenstone knows the competitive and often convoluted college admission process inside out: From the first time the topic of college comes up at the dinner table until the last duffel bag is unloaded on a dorm room floor. She is the co-author of Panicked Parents' Guide to College Admissions; The Transfer Student's Guide to Changing Colleges and The International Student's Guide to Going to College in America. Sally has appeared on NBC's Today program and has been quoted in countless publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Weekend, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, People and Seventeen. Sally has viewed the admissions world from many angles: As a Smith College admission counselor for 15 years, an independent college counselor serving students from a wide range of backgrounds and the author of College Confidential's "Ask the Dean" column. She also taught language arts, social studies, study skills and test preparation in 10 schools, including American international schools in London, Paris, Geneva, Athens and Tel Aviv. As senior advisor to College Confidential since 2002, Sally has helped hundreds of students and parents navigate the college admissions maze. In 2008, she co-founded College Karma, a private college consulting firm, with her College Confidential colleague Dave Berry, and she continues to serve as a College Confidential advisor. Sally and her husband, Chris Petrides, became first-time parents in 1997 at the ripe-old age of 45. So Sally was nearly an official senior citizen when her son Jack began the college selection process, and when she was finally able to practice what she had preached for more than three decades.