Okay, what we’re going to be teaching you today in this article is unlike most of our content and probably a bit different from what you’ll hear in other articles. Nonetheless, based on the past few years working at a prep center and counseling clients, I genuinely believe this technique is your best bet for recovering from a failing class in high school (or bad grades in general).

If you really want to make your GPA and transcript look nice, you’ll have to follow this guide as closely as you can. This will include what we’ve come to call the Exponential Growth Method.

It is spread out into three parts.

The Exponential Growth Method:

1. Intro
2. Guaranteed straight-A semester plan
3. Cleverly explaining your bad grades

I know the word guarantee sounds pretty nonsensical, but don’t worry. We’re going to get to that in a sec. For now, let’s cover the Exponential Growth Method and why it works better than other advice.

Intro: What is the Exponential Growth Method? How Does it Help me Recover from Failing a Class or Having Bad Grades?

The Exponential Growth Method tailors and targets your GPA and transcript not as a statistic, but as a story. That means it capitalizes on the application process inside of admissions offices; it then uses your weakness and builds a narrative.

The Exponential Growth Method requires you to increase your GPA significantly in a short amount of effort with minimal effort. Okay, so that sounds pretty impossible, right? Well, we’ll get to that. For now, let’s talk about what the method does for your college apps.

What message do you think a fast exponential growth in grades demonstrates?

Remember: most students think that only their grades matter; however, it’s not just about that. It’s also about what their grades say about them. I.e: what can the admissions officers infer about you based on your performance over the years?

Here’s a graph of a student’s academic progress throughout Freshman through Senior Year without the Exponential Growth Method.

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Now, here’s one that uses it.

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The first graph shows that the student had a dip in their Sophomore year, but managed to crawl back up over time.

The second graph showed a dip in their Sophomore year too. However, the increase in grades was preposterously fantastic. This shows that an unexpected or significant experience must have happened to incite such a difference in grades. In fact, the major gap in grades between Sophomore and Junior year justifies the lower grades as an anomaly.

Alright. So, doesn’t this just mean we’re saying you have to get good grades?

Well, yes. However, we all know it’s not as easy as that. That’s why the Exponential Growth Method requires you to formulate your plan in a manner that nearly guarantees sharp GPA increases.

Interestingly enough, failing a class in high school can actually serve as an advantage to you depending on the time at which the failure took place. If it took place early on in your career, then you have more space to improve and demonstrate an ability to recover from academic obstacles, a characteristic that is vital to college admissions.

If you failed a class later on in your career, well, things may be a little bit rougher but it’s still workable! You just need to be clever in the way you navigate your next few year(s).

However, you should also note that if you failed a class in high school or had bad grades, you need to learn how to get good grades fast to demonstrate good recovery.

So, now the question is this: “How do I get good grades fast?”

How to Recover / How to Get Good Grades Fast: Guarenteed Straight A Plan

Note: If you have in the past received at least a 3.5 GPA with multiple AP courses, you are more than likely capable of achieving a 4.0 GPA as well.

Alright, as we said before –in order to recover from failing a class in high school or having a low GPA, you need to increase your grades dramatically in the next quarter or semester. Here we’ll show you how to make your own Guarenteed striaght A plan.

In order to make your own guaranteed straight A plan, you need to improve one dimension and one only: conscientiousness. Now, why is that? Don’t you have to improve many other dimensions? Isn’t there more to academic performance than just that one factor? Well, yes; there is.

There are 2 MAJOR factors that predict long-term good grades and academic performance. Only one of these can reliably be increased to help you get good grades fast.

1. IQ Score (Intelligence Quotient)
2. Conscientiousness

Woah, that’s pretty cool! That means I can just increase my IQ score from one of those apps I see on the App Store, right? Well, not really. Sadly, IQ is about as unchanging as a rock. That thing is not going to budge. The only exception is starvation and genetics.

Here’s a cool video that covers IQ more in depth.

Well, that’s a bummer. Trust us, if we had a model that could increase IQ amongst our clients, we would’ve been richer than Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos combined.

So, we can’t increase IQ. However, there is something we can do about conscientiousness.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “That’s it? So I just have to be more conscientious? Just do it, Nike?”

Well, yes and no. Just watching some motivational videos won’t help you increase your trait conscientiousness. Influencing and honing your trait conscientiousness, however, will help you increase your GPA fast. How much does it help? A lot.

If you want to increase your grades fast, you also need to increase your conscientiousness fast. So, think of it like this: great change demands great life changes as well.

In other words, if you want to develop the personality or temperament that helps you get good grades fast, you’ll need to change a lot of your bad habits and perhaps even the dynamics in your life outside of school.

Here are a few examples of life-altering tenets we’ve used for our clients to help them improve their GPA fast. These were during our summer program, so it took about 1.5-3 months to increase their GPA by about .5.

1. Reestablishing normal sleep habits
2. Segregating oneself from toxic/”poor-influence” friends
3. Fix/cope with familial issues in the wake of academic coursework
4. Personality and Temperament Mapping
5. Procrastination
6. Dopamine detox
7. Long-term strategizing (is there a clear path that comes after good grades?)
8. Stricter organization structure (making a schedule and cleaning out your backpack)
9. Pain tolerance

That’s just a few ways you can increase conscientiousness. As you can see, just “increasing conscientiousness” is a more laborious task than one may expect. You can’t increase your GPA into a straight A 4.0 level easily because you need to increase conscientiousness, which is a monumental task.

It’s up to you to determine what exactly it is that is debilitating your conscientiousness. Maybe its your addiction to video games (that’s a common one we see in our clients). Perhaps its your unhealthy relationship with your family that distracts you from your time studying. (also a common one).

Ultimately, take some time for yourself to see what is preventing you from increasing your conscientiousness and ability to work hard. This is what stands between you and your ability to recover from your bad GPA and failed classes.

We would highly endorse speaking with a good school counselor who you trust for help and guidance. We also recommend speaking with a college prep expert and consultant to help reorient you in the right direction. If you feel you need help with this, you can also speak with us for a free consultation for help. We’ve helped students for years with this exact technique.

Cleverly Explaining Your Bad Grades

This section is just as important as getting good grades fast. If you want to know how to recover from a failing class in high school, it is also critical to know how to explain your bad grades in your college applications.

Most people need to know how to recover from a failing class in high school or get better grades because they are applying for college. When you apply, your colleges will question why you had lower grades in one semester. If you do not have a good explanation when you write your college essay (or your additional comments section) you will be at a severe disadvantage.

With our clients, we typically cover a lot more on how to explain their low grades. We also accommodate every client’s contextual background. However, that’s too much for one article. So, here’s a few pointers on how to explain your failed class or low grades in your college essay.

1. Unfair teaching practices that occurred when you failed a class in high school or had bad grades?
2. Personal experiences or psychological issues that got in the way of your academic performance.
3. Discrimination or social issues.
4. Poor work habits (be specific here).
5. Unmotivated or motivated by external factors.
6. Busy working on personal projects (this is a good one).

Now, more importantly, here are a few pointers on how to explain your recovery from your failed class or low grades. In other words, how did you respond or compensate for your lower GPA?

1. Changed your work habits (be specific here)
2. Fixed your family dynamic
3. Separated yourself from bad influences
4. Set your sights on a specific goal and planned for it (example: want to be a nurse so you worked harder in your Biology class. )
5. Worked through a summer program to reorient yourself.

Overall, this is mostly what you need to successfully recover from a failing class in high school. In short, you need to implement what we call the Exponential Growth technique. It includes two things: increase your GPA with a guaranteed straight A plan quickly through life changes, and cleverly explain your fall and rise in grades.

Suffering from bad grades? Wondering how you can improve your GPA fast after you just failed a class? If you are struggling to recover from failing a class in high school or you have bad grades in another semester, you may want to consider taking our academic counselling program to sort yourself out! You can get a free consultation, and we will use the same techniques we used to help our clients increase their GPAs by .5 or more.