I am in the first quarter of freshman high school, with about a week left in the quarter coming out of a straight A middle school career, and have already started slacking off. I tried hard but not hard enough and my grades are suffering because of it. I have A’s in my classes but 2. I have a B- in English Honors because I fell behind and got one bad grade on an essay. I have a B+ in AP Human Geography. Can I overcome this and achieve my goal as a future Ophthalmologist? What can I do to get better grades? Am I screwed already?
A lot of colleges give freshman year very little weight, they know that we are still adjusting into highschool. Also, your highschool gpa isn’t even going to be looked at when you’re applying to medical school. What matters to medical schools is your mcat score and college cumulative gpa and science gpa.
Don’t fall behind now because it will be hard to catch up later. Make sure to ask for help if you don’t understand the subject matter! Understand that high school is a completely different thing than middle school. You will have to work harder and with a greater intensity to maintain A’s. Please don’t get hung up on the ivies, get a decent gpa, then go to college. Make sure you get a good college gpa, and you will be set. Your long term goal is to get into medical school, once you’re a doctor people won’t care if you went to Harvard for undergrad. You can still apply to top universities, but they are not that important in the long run!
Thank you for the feedback! I’ve been getting involved with my teacher more and more so I can hopefully catch up. I’ll try my best for a good college and leave these grades behind I guess. Time to get all A’s 
My tips:
- GO TO CLASS, READ THE CHAPTERS, AND DO THE HOMEWORK!
- Go to Teacher’s office hours early in the semester and Ask this question: “I know this is a really difficult class-- what are some of the common mistakes students make and how can I avoid them?”
- If you have problems with the homework, go to Teacher’s office hours. If they have any “help sessions” or “study sessions” or “recitations” or any thing extra, go to them.
- Form a study group with other kids in your class.
- Don’t do the minimum…for STEM classes do extra problems. You can buy books that just have problems for calculus or physics or chemistry whatever. Watch online videos (e.g., Khan Academy) on line about the topic you are studying.
- If things still are not going well, get a tutor. Your National Honor Society will have some.
- Read this book: How to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less by Cal Newport. It helps you with things like time management and how to figure out what to write about for a paper, etc.
- For tests that you didn’t do well on, can you evaluate what went wrong? Did you never read that topic? Did you not do the homework for it? Do you kind of remember it but forgot what to do? Then next time change the way you study…there may be a study skill center at your college.
- How much time outside of class do you spend studying/doing homework?
- If you run into any social/health/family troubles (you are sick, your parents are sick, someone died, broke up with boy/girlfriend, suddenly depressed/anxiety etcetc) then immediately go to the guidance counselor and talk to them.
- At the beginning of the semester, read the syllabus for each class. It tells you what you will be doing and when tests/HW/papers are due. Put all of that in your calendar. The teacher may remind you of things, but it is all there for you to see so take initiative and look at it.
- Make sure you understand how to use your online class system…Login to it, read what there is for your classes, know how to upload assignments (if that is what the teacher wants).
- If you get an assignment…make sure to read the instructions and do all the tasks on the assignment. Look at the rubric and make sure you have covered everything.
- If you are not sure what to do, go EARLY to the teacher’s office hours…not the day before the assignment is due.
- Take advantage of any “re-do” tests you may be able to take…your teacher wants you to learn the material. Future material depends on it so you need to have the foundation. By explaining what went wrong you really understand it. Take advantage of this.