<p>Junior has been by far the worst year of my life (so far). Everything seems to have just fallen apart. My grades have slipped dramatically. I've gone from As and Bs in AP/Honors Classes (freshman-sophomore) to Bs, Cs, and Ds this year (they are quarter grades now so they are subject to change). I know its not a great record, especially in regards to CC standards :(. I took on too much this year. Way too much. I had huge ambitions up till now. I wanted to be a screenwriter, journalist, or a lawyer. My dream schools were Columbia, Northwestern, and University of Chicago. But right now I'm just not sure if these colleges are in my reach at all. A few weeks ago I went to my guidance counselor to ask her what I should do now and begged her to put me in a lower class. She couldn't though. She really wasn't any help. All she did was hand me a brochure of UCF and told me how great Community College was. I understand there are many many benefits to Community College: cheaper, local, close to friends and family. But I just can't accept the fact that all the hard work and suffering I went through in my classes all amounted to Community College. Even though I'm not fond of Community College I still am considering it. I would just like to know what my options are (for college), what should I be focusing on now, and how can I improve my grades. Any other advice would be appreciated</p>
<p>If it’s quarter grade then you should try to pull yourself up…there are plenty of instate schools like CPU said…if worst comes to show then apply to those and hopefully you can transfer out, if you wish.</p>
<p>Work as hard as you can and get through it to bring up your grades. If you can get them to Bs, you may not be Northwestern bound, but you can skip out of the state to somewhere good.</p>
<p>I’d suggest you really work harder with positive thoughts. Knowing for sure that you will go to community college isn’t going to get you anywhere. What specifically do you mean by ‘too much to handle’? That’s kinda broad, you should really narrow down on what that means and work on it (i.e. time management, focus, improper studying techniques, etc.)</p>
<p>UCF and the like aren’t horrible schools. At worst, you can always excel there and catapult yourself somewhere else.</p>
<p>Get your grades up as best you can, do really well on the SAT, and University of Florida or Florida State shouldn’t be too out of reach. Even if you ended up going to a school like UCF, there are plenty of students at top grad schools–even Yale or Harvard Law–from unselective UGs. You still have ample opportunity to become a lawyer, journalist etc.</p>
<p>Ask your teachers what you can do to improve your grades. Even if they’re horrible teachers and you don’t think that they’ll help at all, ask them for help anyways–they may surprise you. Oftentimes, teachers are more willing to help if they meet students one-one-one… at least, that’s how it is in my experiences.</p>
<p>Also, how are your extracurriculars? If you aren’t in the EC scene already, you should start. Also, find some leadership positions. You said you may want to be a journalist? Try to become an editor of your school newspaper. If your school doesn’t have a newspaper, see if you could start one–if colleges see that you helped found your school newspaper, they’d be impressed. You could also try founding a screenwriter’s/film-making club or a future lawyer’s club. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that if you can maintain a solid GPA (with hopefully an above-C average) and if colleges can see that you’re actively pursuing your interests and leading others to do the same, then all is not lost. If you really do not want to go to a community college, then don’t. There are plenty of other great universities out there that you may want to look into–like those universities that probably have been sending you lots of emails lately. Although their incessant “I’m trying to reach ___” emails may seem annoying (ah, Drexel), one of those colleges may actually BE the right college for you. </p>
<p>Also, since your guidance counselor seems kind of sucky, you can try consulting with one of those college counselors I keep hearing about. Ask around to see if you can find one that is actually worth his/her fee (some of them like to inflate your confidence a bit too much).</p>
<p>Anyways, I hope this helped. Just tell yourself to NOT LOSE HOPE! You’re a brilliant person, and you’ll pick yourself up. :]</p>
<p>Try talking to your teachers. At my school I have known teachers to bump a students grade up a letter and bump the class down a level on your transcriptt, H instead of AP, CPA instead of H, etc-however your school does levels. I had another teacher who agreed to add 50 points to your grade average if you did a research paper/lab etc, some teachers are very understanding.
You should still be able to get out of Florida, I agree with CPUscientist, collegeboard is a huge help, it’s helped me narrow down my list a lot and you can specify what area you’d like to attend college!</p>
<p>^OK, will do wordgirl. But I think it’s a bit too late to ask for EC. The quarter has already ended. I still think I have a chance to get As and Bs this semester though.</p>
<p>I’d like to know what types of schools I should be looking into though. What should be the acceptance rate for the schools I’m looking into.</p>