will very poor freshman year grades hurt me when applying to colleges?

During freshman year, I was careless and foolish. I spent my time on useless things, like social media and my social life. My grades gradually slipped, and by the end of the year, I had a 3.3 unweighted GPA and a 3.6 weighted GPA.

When I saw this, I realized that I really needed to change. I’m now a sophomore and am on the advanced track for every subject at my school, which essentially means that I’m taking 4 honors classes and 2 AP classes (not possible to do more than that as a sophomore). I started to get involved in more clubs and became more studious and cared less about useless things. I now have mostly mid to high As, and only have three A-s at the moment. I am almost certain that I will be getting straight As this semester and for the rest of high school.

How will colleges see this? Will they be worried about my freshman grades if they see that I’ve made a tremendous improvement (mostly Bs and Cs to straight As) all while taking the most challenging course load offered at my school? Will they look past my poor GPA (negatively impacted by freshman grades) and see that I’ve gotten straight As ever since freshman year?

Your freshman grades may not be the greatest, but even so, many colleges put markedly less emphasis on freshman year than they do on successive years, especially junior year and the strength of the senior year schedule. Try to consistently earn as close to all A grades as possible so you can show that you have established a lasting, permanent upward trend, which would show maturity.

Colleges want to see you do better in harder classes. They want you to be ready for college level classes. It seems you are on track!

A social life is not “useless” and please don’t stop spending time with friends and family just to get perfect grades