What should I do in high school to get into a good college?

Answered

Hey! Since most colleges don't value freshman year as much as other years, you should try to use this year to experiment with clubs and interests and see what you like. If you want to try coding, join a coding club, or if you like debate, sign up for the debate club. If you like business, join a DECA club, etc etc. Join as many clubs as you can. In freshman year, usually the workload isn't too stressful, so with that extra time you could find some volunteering opportunities. For example, if your school has Key Club (a popular volunteering club), you could join it and start doing community service so that by senior year when you apply for college, you would have an impressive number of hours. If your hours exceed a certain amount, you could win awards. One of such awards is the President's Volunteer Service Award (https://presidentialserviceawards.gov/eligibility#volunteers). Also, experiment with honors classes to get a sense of the high school workload. It's not really necessary to load your freshman year with APs, but if you speak a language fluently at home or if your school offers APs freshman year, you could take one or two APs and see how it goes. During freshman year, try to keep those straight-A's. There are many people who regret not doing well freshman year and having that bad freshman year GPA reflect badly on their total GPA. Lastly, if you don't already, try to find some extracurricular activities to do. Those include sports, starting a YouTube channel, raising money, etc. Collegevine has a few blog posts about ECs. (https://blog.collegevine.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-extracurricular-activities-in-high-school/) Good luck!