My freshman grade was not as good as my sophomore to junior grade. I still got all a’s but the counselor told me to take regular classes and I ended up with lower gpa than my peers (I should not have listened to them). I am kind of regretting this because my gpa is lower than the average accepted gpa of the school that I want to go to. But I heard that colleges don’t put as much importance on freshman grades. So my question is do colleges not care about this at all or would they put less emphasis on freshman grades. The school that I want to go is ranked 14-18.
There is no set answer for all colleges, many do consider freshman year grades to determine admission and some do not. Brown, Cornell, Notre Dame, Rice and Vanderbilt (the colleges currently ranked by US News as occupying all places from 14-18) all do consider freshman year grades, and all would also consider improvement of grades after freshman year.
Nevertheless, your question indicates that you really do not have a grade problem but instead a course choice and overalll GPA issue. You say you got all A’s but GPA is lower than peers because you did not take honors or AP courses freshman year. That is not a grade issue but instead a difficulty of courses issue since selective colleges like to see that the student took difficult honors and AP courses that are available. That is an issue that selective colleges would consider even iif they do not consider freshman grades, but again imporvement in course selection and grades in sophomore year and after will also be considered.