I want to go to college.

Answered

College admissions are holistic, so here is what will be important to demonstrate to admissions committees in your case:

- Fully explain the challenges that the pandemic and personal stuff gave you, and show how you tried your best to succeed in these circumstances.

- Do as well as you can senior year to show that your grades are trending upward. This will demonstrate that your lower performance in sophomore year was only temporary.

I recommend striving for Bs and higher in all of your classes. If you can, try to take more APs and IBs. For instance, you could replace Honors English and Psychology with AP Lang and AP Psych. With a strong senior year and more context, you can make your profile impressive in context. Hope this helps!

Hey!

When you apply to college your senior year, your grades from Freshman Year to semester 1 of Senior year will be taken into account. Your grades and classes will be considered differently depending on the prestige of the colleges you intend on applying to. It also depends on what classes your school offers. Each student is reviewed individually, so if your school does not offer certain classes that a different school does, you will not be penalized for not taking them. Overall, those are good classes to be taking, and as long as you try your hardest in them that is all that actually matters.

You might've thought about this, but something you can always do is go to community college for a year and then transfer after. Sometimes colleges/universities work with community colleges so that transferring is common and easier. So, you can always look into community college and transferring later. Otherwise, I would say it's possible for you to go to a nicer state school, especially if you live in a state with good public universities. Because, as you probably know, colleges do look over all 4 years, but if you think you can make yourself look impressive to colleges through your essays and extracurriculars, then you could have a chance. I'm being kind of optimistic, so I would just take things with a grain of salt and continue to try your best and do what you believe is right.

If you get a C on all of those classes I won't say that it will be impressive. Now if you had a mix of A's, B's, and C's, that would be a different case. Colleges like when a person challenges themselves with AP classes, so if you get a C in one of those classes it would be better if you got a B in a general class. There is also a section on Common App where you could write out things that have messed up your grade such as: covid and your family life. It is just a section that allows you to explain to colleges why your grades look a certain way. Also, as a side note but very important, make sure that you write really good essays and be sure to do extracurriculars.