<p>(I put this in "What Are My Chances" because I felt there wasn't a forum that would be more relevant to what I am asking.)</p>
<p>My freshman year I was more than a slacker, I did not care at all about my grades and by the end of the year I wound up having a 1.9 GPA. But I didn't have as many classes as everyone else did, I had 4 out of 6 due to a Section 504. I would like to be an astrophysicist, since I love both astronomy and physics, but I understand that a lot of colleges only offer astronomy or physics, not astrophysics. The main colleges that have astrophysics as a major are big ones such as Princeton and Harvard. First semester of sophomore year I had a 2.7 GPA (unweighted) but I am enrolled in the hardest classes they had to offer me. Next year I plan on dual enrolling at a nearby community college, GRCC. (I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.)</p>
<p>Now this semester I am actually trying and have a GPA of around 3.2, but it's still not enough to get into a big university that will offer the major that I would like. I did the calculations and even if I had a 4.0 Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years, I'd still be at a 3.475 unweighted. I add the unweighted part because by the time I graduate I will have taken 6 AP classes (APUSH, AP Chem, AP Calculus, AP Environment Science, AP Statistics, and AP Physics.) </p>
<p>I am sorry for the long paragraph, it's just that this has really been worrying me and the only thing I could possibly do to make that 1.9 freshman year is to point out that the GPA is calculated by taking the grade points and adding them together, then dividing it by the attempted credit hours. That and that I have a Section 504. If possible I would like to avoid needing to using excuses such as "well technically the year I had the 1.9 isn't worth as much as the other years." Plus, I don't want my mistakes as a freshman to follow me for the rest of my life.</p>