Hi. I was wondering if I could receive some help?
To start off, I haven’t made the best choices throughout my high school career. I’ve had…issues, in the past couple of years. The long and short of it is that I suffered from crippling depression ( which led to a lot of skipped class ), and my father had several health issues, so money was tight and I had to work to support myself. As a result, my studies suffered quite notably; I went from being a 3.8 GPA student my freshman year to a 3.2 my Junior year.
Right now, I’ve managed to get my act together. I’ve even got straight A’s this semester, for the very first time, and I’m heading into the fall with high ambitions for my freshman year of college ( University of Montana ). But that doesn’t really erase much of the damage that’s been done, so, I was wondering that, given one or two years of outstanding grades at the collegiate level, would it be possible to transfer to a more prestigious school? What else beyond a high GPA could be done to improve my chances, etc.?
I’m going for Linguistics, and I’ve seen that of the top ten given on topuniversities.com, the one most likely within my reach is University of Massachusetts Amherst. The others are, of course, Ivy Leagues, but that’s a whole 'nother ball park. I don’t know if I have the ability to make them even so much as spit in my direction.
If it matters, my high school status is this: current GPA is a 3.4. SAT was a 1690. ACT was a 29. 330 hours of community service ( and no, none of it was related to criminal charges 
).
I’ve been taking Honors/AP English and AP Social Studies since they were available, and Honors Science for three years. I’ve been involved in Orchestra all four years, and plan on continuing in college.
Currently employed in a position of authority ( i.e., assistant manager ).
Our financial situation does stand in the moderate-to-low income category, if that hurts / helps anything.