First Semester Sophomore troubles

So I’m going to get right to it, last year (freshman) I had a 3.7 unweighted average over 2 semester (Both were relatively the same), and this semester I have seemed to have hit a wall, around a 3.3 unweighted, I did increase my workload, I take mostly pre-Ap and AP with a few Honors mixed in there. I was wondering if I still had time to bring this 3.5-3.6 average after this semester up to the level that could get me accepted into colleges such as: University of Iowa (Tippie school of business direct admit) and Virginia Tech.
Thank you!

OP, your chances of getting into UoI and VATech largely depend on whether you’re in state or out of state. Check their admitted freshmen profiles (the average 25-75% of attending freshmen) and see where you fall in that distribution. If you’re out of state, try to be on the higher end of these stats.

Even then, it’s definitely possible to pull up the GPA. If anything, use your 3.3 as a motivation to get back to even higher than a 3.7 GPA. If your previous study and work strategies aren’t working for harder classes, try new ones. Use your peers, teachers, family, tutors, Youtube, Khan Academy, etc to pull grades up. A word of warning though: junior year will only get more difficult. Challenge yourself, but don’t overexert yourself so you burn out 3/4ths of the way in.