I dropped the ball in the 10th grade pretty hard. I got mostly Bs and only had 1 AP class. Junior year i bumped my grades up decently, i got 1 B first semester, and straight As second with 2 honors and 1 AP class. I know that’s not a huge improvement, but it’s still something. Unfortunately, because of my lackluster job in 10th grade, my unweighted Academic GPA is only a 3.6. Will colleges like princeton, stanford, chicago, etc. see the improvement or just look at my petty 3.6?
As a side note, my average across both semesters junior year was a 3.8 unweighted.
Colleges will see the improvement and generally like an upward trend. However, you will still be below the average at the schools listed so it will be an uphill battle to convince them to accept you. Make sure to have some safeties.