Had a good freshman year, but messed up my sophomore year (currently sophomore)

So, for my essays and all of those things next year when I’m applying next year, how should I go about explaining my severe drop in grades. I wasn’t able to improve them much at the end of the year, but now I’m doing really well and I feel like the bad grades will only be a sophomore thing. Will colleges not look at me because of that, or will they take into consideration the things I struggled with?

Great news. Re: your home situation affecting your grades- maybe the GC can be of help with explaining this.

Glad things are going better! Yes, you need to loop in your guidance counselor if you haven’t already. You don’t want to be explaining to him/her why you had a bad freshman year, two years from now when you need your college recommendation written - at that point it will just sound like an excuse. You want this person to have an informed perspective now so that he/she can view your progress in that light, as you go along, and be a strong advocate for you when college application time arrives.

Yes, for my essay I believe that will be good to explain. @aquapt I met my counselor and explained a lot of my situation and how that affected my grades, and she sees that I’m doing a lot better now.