I am a sophmore in high school and the reality of college approaching is really starting to hit. My dream has always been to go to USC or UCLA or some good school in California. My gpa is 3.75 unweighted cummulative including freshman grades, so far(it has only been 1 semester of sophmore year) but I’m hoping that with easier classes this semester, it’ll get better. I know it’s not the best GPA but I’m taking pretty hard classes. As a freshman: Honors english, honors civics, integrated 2x and 3x math, physical science, gym, band. As a sophmore: AP biology(tested out of honors biology during the summer), pre calc, honors chem, honors english, world history, health, AP macroeconomics, AP comparative government. My extracurriculars include volleyball(school team and JO team freshman year but just JO sophmore year), club Y.E.S volunteering(137 hours and bronze presidential scholar award), speech team since freshman year, and joined science olympiad this year. Do I even have a chance of getting into Berkeley or UCLA or USC?
After your junior year courses and grades are complete and you have SAT and/or ACT scores, you will be much more likely to assess whether you have a realistic chance at your target colleges.
As a junior I plan to take: AP chemistry, AP calc AB, AP calc BC, human anatomy, organic chem, US history, Grammar and comp, anthropology, psychology, and band. I forgot to mention that for my arts, I have been playing piano for 10 years and plan to do band for all of high school.
For Berkeley, you’d probably have to get straight As for the rest of your high school career (minus senior year). Also, UCs don’t pay much attention to your freshman grades. Another important factor are your SAT scores, which you should aim to get 2000+ on since you’re hoping for the top UC schools. Become involved in many extracurriculars as well. But make sure to at least apply to the other UCs as backups! You’re still a sophomore, but it’s good that you’re thinking about college admissions already. Good luck with the rest of high school. 
Anyone feel free to chance me for Cal Poly SLO:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cal-poly-san-luis-obispo/1741840-chance-me.html
Are you OOS for the CA public schools?
@BrownParent yes i am
OK OOS for publics are more difficult than instate, the stats have to be higher, usually. Privates it doesn’t matter, you can look at the averages for accepted students and they will apply to you. But if you look at the averages for UCB it will include instate students with lower stats which is unlikely for OOS. Also, make sure you qualify by meeting the A to G requirements as outlined on the UC admissions pages. And make sure your parents are OK with paying 55k per year. At minimum for UC you will pay the OOS tuition supplement of 23k+8k student contribution+EFC. UCs don’t meet need for out of staters. Where USC does, although they will calculate your EFC themselves, they do not use FAFSA EFC.