<p>I'm currently about to enter my junior year in high school in the next couple of days. Knowing that this is the most important year academically, I want to know what I need to do this year to greatly improve my chances of getting into my dream school, Florida State, and other universities such as Maryland, Delaware, and other southern schools.</p>
<p>My GPA freshman year in regular public school was around a 2.7, not the greatest, so I transferred to a highly acclaimed prep school in Connecticut. There I got a 2.9, improving from my last year while settling in to the new school with a much harder curriculum.</p>
<p>This year I'll be taking Pre-Calc, Chemistry, US History, Spanish 4 and English 3. I want to get at least get a 3.0, if not higher. I also took an Algebra 2 course this summer which will go on my transcript as a whole math credit.</p>
<p>For EC's I play football, wrestle, and run track. I have 2 summer jobs, 1 of them working with kids and have over 100 hours of community service and play guitar.</p>
<p>-What do I need to get on my SAT's/ACT's?
-What GPA do I need to get this year?
-What are my chances?</p>
<p>Apply yourself to your courses. You have a full schedule and you want to do well in those classes. You can look up the stats of admitted students for each school you are interested. It is usually available in the Common Data Set for each school. collegedata.com also has it. There you can see the midrange of SAT and ACT scores that are reported for accepted students, they will show the 25 to 50% range of scores so you can target the upper tier. But really you should just do the best that you can. The SAT-Preparation sub-forum has pinned threads with some test prep strategies.</p>
<p>First, great job improving your GPA and taking stronger classes. Colleges do like to see a positive trend.</p>
<p>FSU has gotten more selective over the last few years. The academic profile of the middle 50% of freshmen accepted in 2013 was:</p>
<p>3.9-4.7 weighted GPA; 26-30 ACT composite; 1730-1960 SAT total</p>
<p>FSU “weighted GPA” gives +.5 extra points for honor classes and +1 point for AP/DE/IB/AICE classes. You’re current GPA is likely too low for FSU. :(</p>
<p>Use CC Super Match College Search to build a likely list of schools you may want to attend. You can pick the region of the country, your current stats, etc and generate a listing.</p>
<p>Finally, if you think you could be a recruited athlete (if not at the D1 level, then at the D3 level), check out the athletic recruit forum. Being a recruited athletic, at the D3 level will help compensate for a low GPA.</p>
<p>Plan on talking your SAT at least twice, the first time before the end of this year. Most schools will super score your SAT results, so if you score better on math on your first test, but on critical reading on your second, they will take those two results to make up your score. </p>