What will top colleges think of a GPA following some sort of "valley" trend?

Applying to College
1

What I mean by a “valley trend”: Freshman year and Junior year GPA were sky-high. Sophomore GPA was eh…

I took the hardest possible courses that are allowed by our school all three years and in freshman year I ended with a 3.87 taking all honors (no APs allowed), in sophomore year I ended up with a 3.62 (with 2 APs) and in junior year I ended with a 4.00 (with 6 APs). That brings the cumulative unweighted to a 3.83. I honestly don’t know how I did that bad in a sophomore year–I was just generally burned out that year.

What will top colleges like Harvard/Princeton think of this trend? I realized how bad I did in sophomore year and powered through junior with all As in 6 super hard AP classes (calc bc, apush, lang, etc.). Will they understand?

Extra info if needed: Current rank top 5% in a class of ~450 + weighted GPA is around 4.53 I think. 1580 SAT. 800 Bio, 800 Chem, 800 Math II

2

To add on: our school GPA policy is that to get a 4.0 unweighted you have to get all As (meaning 93%+). All A- (meaning 90%+) will result in a 3.6 unweighted GPA. All B+ is a 3.3 and All B’s is a 3.0. The patterns continue all the way down to D-.

3

Don’t worry about it and keep doing well. Can’t change the past.