Upwards Trend--How Significant Are They?

My freshman and Sophomore year I got a few B’s and A-'s, which ultimately destroyed my gpa. I worked extremely hard my Junior year (taking 3 AP classes and 3 honors classes) and managed to increase my GPA significantly.
Freshman: 3.85
Soph: 3.87
Junior: 4.64
Cumulative: 4.14
(These are weighted GPA’s btw)
Even though I show great improvement and an upwards trend is attractive to admissions office, I still feel that my GPA isn’t strong enough. Because I didn’t have stellar grades my first two years, my class rank isn’t top notch (I’m prob top 20%-30%).

How exactly do elite schools view upward trends and how does that compare to someone with consistently high GPA’s?
I understand upward trends are good, but how good exactly are they?

Better than a downward trend.

For “elite” schools, upward trends pretty much need to end with a 4.0 or they aren’t worth much other than to exactly peg where you sort out in HS.

Colleges would rank them this way:

  1. Consistently high GPA
  2. Upward trend
  3. Downward trend

A few Bs in your freshman and sophomore year aren’t a big deal. Some elite schools, like Stanford, don’t include freshman year in the GPA calculation. Others give it less weight. Even with a few Bs, your record looks good - APs and honors denote rigor. Keep up the hard work and get your class rank up. You’ll have lots of excellent options, ‘elite’ and just plain old ‘good schools which will prepare you well for whatever you want to do.’

Junior year upward trend is much stronger application because it’s closer to application time. My kid had adjustment in high school because we moved, but she did well junior year and first semester of senior year. She did well in terms of admission for her year.