I am a latina/ native american high school student. I will be the first in my family to be attending college. My freshman year I received good grades with a 4.2 gpa and was a part of gsa and MESA (engineering club), where I participated in a robotics competition at ucr. However that summer I moved schools because of personal family issues. I am currently a junior in highschool. My sophmore year I had a total of 6 classes. 2 APs and 3 honors. However I did not do amazingly and ended with a 3.8 weighted gpa and a 3.0 unweighted. However during this time I was going through personal family issues involving my brother and him checking into rehab, which led to a really bad depression. I passed all my AP tests. However this year I stepped it up and ended this semester with a 4.2 gpa with 3 APs and 1 honors. I am aiming for a 4.5 next semester. I am a club officer in my schools social justice club where we frequently do lessons plans and debates involving social issues. I will soon be doing a presentation at UC berkeley with my gsa about the importance of mental health.I have not yet taken my sat (I will in march) but I scored in the 94th percentile for my psat. My current overall highschool gpa is a 4.0 and a 3.4 unweighted. Will I get into any “good” colleges since I messed up sophmore year?
I will not worry too much about one bad year due to family issues. It shows your strength to bounce back. You can include some of your family situation and how you handled it in your application. Also write what you learnt from it and how you matured in the process. Prepare well for SAT. Many high schools offer classes on SAT prep as an elective. Also look into Khan Academy. Try to solve as many tests and understand your mistakes. When my son was preparing for SAT, he wrote all the questions he did wrong. If he made mistake in the same topic (lets say similar grammar mistake or math topic) he will revise it from his high school text books and class notes to clear the fundamentals. His systematic hard work helped him. It will help you too. All the best.