<p>In freshman year I slacked off a bit and ended up getting a 3.4 for the year. However, I somehow managed a 4.0 UW sophomore year and a 3.9 UW junior year, all of my classes either honors or AP. </p>
<p>My question regards the fact that even though I did excellent in 10th and 11th grade, will my freshman GPA make me look worse, or do colleges look at the GPA for individual years too?</p>
<p>For that matter, would a 3.4 "thwart" my chances of reaching my goals of being accepted to prestigious universities such as Duke, Johns Hopkins, or George Washington?</p>
<p>I should also mention that my course load was not rigorous freshman year.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>They can see your transcript for each year. Yeah, freshman year may bring you down a bit, but the colleges care more about now-you, not freshman-you.</p>
<p>This means your GPA now should be about 3.76 am I right? If you get a 4.0 senior year then you will emerge from highschool with about a 3.825. Not super impressive, but good enough to hypothetically get in anywhere. You won’t be hurt terribly. Good luck!</p>
<p>But still enough to bar you from anything like top 10, given most will have 1 or less grades below an A. Unfortunately the downside is you might suddenly become the smartest person on campus your Senior year, but often it will not count for anything / make up for past mistakes… Sorry!</p>