Hi, im a high school sophomore, and my first real high school semester just got over. I didn’t do so well as a planned to and ended with 4 A’s, an A- and 2 B+'s. The low grades on my end were mostly due to switching from a lax online environment to the hectic high-school (where I was completely unprepared for harshly-timed tests, strict graders, etc). My grades vastly improved nearing the 3rd quarter of this semester (from finally getting used to school), but not enough to increase my B+s. I know grades aren’t everything, but everyone on CC that goes to ivies and other good schools have near-perfect/perfect GPAs and I’m kinda scared. I know I can do significantly better in the coming semester and on, but what should i be doing now?
You should begin to realize that there are MANY great colleges for you out there. Do your academic best. And participate in extracurriculars you care about.
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@2plustrio is dead on. Your record is your record. It’s not bad at all.
But you are more than grades. Your a job or clubs or activities. When the time comes, it’s your essays and your letters of rec-so keep track of who you have great rapport with and keep them in mind. And yes it’s grades. So keep doing the best you can, taking rigor but not overwhelming yourself.
Everyone should have reached, targets and safeties when that time comes. And you will too.
Start to think - not top college but rather what do I want in a college. Large/small, urban/suburban/rural, Greek life ?, big sports?
If you’re on a weekend away and you’re going past a school that intrigues you, take 2 hours. Walk the campus for an hour. Have lunch adjacent or in the student center.
So next year when you start visiting schools for real you have an idea.
You’ll find a wonderful school for you. But you are who you are.
I’m not sure what a top school means to you, but I’m guessing 99% of millionaires don’t attend one of them. Abd 99.9% of us aren’t Ivy.
Good luck.
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A few points:
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If you are a sophomore you have three semesters of high school grades. Freshman year counts for most colleges.
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Your grades are not low, though they might be a bit below average for elite colleges. It’s important to know what your rigor was. If you are thinking about elite colleges, you should be taking mostly honors classes and maybe an AP or two if your school allows it.
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Finally, it is really too soon to be thinking about elite colleges. After you get three years of grades and test scores, you can then get a better idea of what level colleges you should be targeting.
This is what it looks like to me.
You need to do as well as you can for the rest of your sophomore year and all of your junior year. Then you can see where you stand.
Your grades are fine so far for many very good universities. There are a large number of very good universities and you do not need to attend an “elite” university to do well in life.
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I would guess that most kids in your situation are in the same place. Many many kids in Class of 2024 had a slow start to this year and those who thrived in the virtual nature next year had a hard time adapting to the full in person stressors of this year. You missed out on the transition from middle to high school and freshman year where most teachers know how to teach kids howto be a high school student. Your grades in this context are EXCELLENT and probably the norm for high achieving kids. You have plenty of time to get the end of the year up to an A range (if that is your goal) and if not, 1 or 2 Bs will not be the determinant of your future!
There are literally hundreds of excellent colleges at which you will have a great time, and get a world-class education. 80% of them accept more than half of their applicants.
While it is FAR too early for you to start thinking about which particular college you want to attend, let me ask you - what are your reasons for attending college, and what would you want to gain from attending college?
Colleges is not about what you need to achieve, so that colleges will graciously bestow upon you the ultimate accolade of admission. It is about you getting what you need from a college.
A. No they don’t.
B. No they don’t.
C. You don’t need to be
First, CC is not even remotely a representative sample of the USA. If parents or kids are here, that means that they are either entirely clueless, or because the are highly ambitious and are looking to do even better than they are already doing.
While the kids who are getting GPAs of over 3.9 attract a lot of attention, the threads where parents and students discuss colleges that are good for students with GPAs of 3.4-3.7 and 3.0-3.4 are very active, and there are no lack of students with GPAs of anything from 3.7 to 2.9 who come here asking for advice in their college search.
If you are only looking at threads in which students ask how they can increase their chances to be accepted to “An Ivy”, “Stanford and Duke”, etc, you will be seeing many threads in which students state that they have 3.95 UW GPAs. However, if you start looking at threads with questions being posed for all college, you will see that most have GPAs which are not close to that.
Bottom line:
A. you do not “need” to attend a college with an acceptance rate of < 25% to be happy, successful, and have a great time at college and later,
B. ergo, you do not “need” to have the GPAs that are required for admissions to many (but not all) of these colleges.
Your best, considering the time and place you are in.
You will never have these four years of high school again. So don’t spend them focused on getting into an “elite” college, to the exclusion of actually learning things, exploring your interests and passions, building your social life, and learning what it is to be an adult.
Something to think about: College is not a destination, it is only another part of the path, and there are many paths that will lead to having a good and fulfilling life.
Good luck!
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