<p>Hi! I'm a junior in California attending an extremely competitive public high school (nationally recognized-#20 something in the country, largest feeder to UC Berkeley, etc). I'm starting to put together my college list and visit campuses, and my low GPA is really stressing me out. I know my school does have some grade deflation, but my freshman and sophomore grades are still pretty bad. </p>
<p>In freshman year I took all basic classes and got mostly Bs, a couple of As and a C (I actually also got a D, that I have since retaken and received an A). In sophomore year I also took pretty average classes and got about 50/50 As and Bs. Now I've been trying harder and I have one honors class, 3 APs and 2 regular classes and have all As (excluding AP English).
My practice SATs are about 2100 right now, and I think if I tried to study a bit I could get them up another 100 points.</p>
<p>I'm most interested in Reed College and similar schools right now, and I feel like my freshman and sophomore grades really don't reflect on how hard I'm working now and how hard I will work in the future. I really regret not caring about school earlier on. </p>
<p>I guess I have a couple of questions:
1. When you see average college GPAs on sites like this, how is that calculated? Does it include freshman year? Does it only include core classes, or does it include PE, health and college and career, and VPAs? I know each college has their own system, but my GPA varies a lot when I calculate it different ways and I'd like to have a rough idea of what it is.
2. How do colleges view an upward trend? I've gone from about a 3.0 UW to a 3.8 UW.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading/helping :)</p>