I am a freshman in high school and right now I’m looking at having a 3.7/3.8 gpa for semester 1. My mom is constantly saying I have absolutely no chance at getting into a UC now because I “ruined my gpa freshman year”. However, I plan on working really hard to get a 4.0 next semester and get my gpa up in the next couple years. I am also in women’s choir, a member of the Unicef club and I’ve been a girl scout for five years, I am a writer for a local magazine, I already have over 100 volunteer hours (and my goal is 900 by the end of my senior year), and I was second place in an essay contest recently. Next year I hope to join the tennis team, attain an officer position for the Unicef club, and get my gold award for Girl scouts. Do you think with all of these things as well as raising my GPA in the next couple of years I could get accepted into UCLA even though I didn’t have the greatest GPA my freshman year?
UC’s do not use Freshman grades in their GPA calculation, only 10-11th. You are on the right track but have several more years to go before applications. Keep up your grades, do SAT/ACT prep Junior year and participate in EC’s that you love. Do not try to match your stats and interests to a specific school. Just enjoy HS and everything will fall into place. Tell your Mom to chill.
I’m going to second what Gumbymom said, UC’s don’t even factor in freshman grades when they calculate your GPA. I was very similar to you when I was a freshman. In fact you had better grades than I did freshman year and I ended up with a 4.36 Uncapped UC GPA and a 4.18 Capped UC GPA. My only advice to you would be take as many AP classes as you reasonably can, go for quality over quantity with EC’s, and start prepping for the SAT/ACT over the summer. Maybe buy a prep book or ask your parents to get you a tutor. I waited until about the beginning of my junior year to start prepping which I felt was a mistake because it was hard for me to make time to prep with the work load I had during junior year. I ended up getting a 2080 after studying like hell over the summer between junior and senior year, but If I had started maybe a year earlier I could have very possibly gotten 2200+. Maybe you are a gifted test taker though. I wasn’t and I don’t think most people are so it takes a lot of prep to get a good score.
You learned something valuable here. Your mom does not know **** about college admissions. What do do? Go the the UCLA website and read the admission section. They explain how they select students and what factors are considered. For example they look at weighted GPA as well as course difficulty so if you aren’t taking honors and AP classes then you are not going to be a strong candidate.
Are you instate, BTW? If not UCLA is easily the cost of a top private, and will offer zero financial aid (regardless of what mom or your friends say). If you are instate, then talk things over with your GC and start attending presentations next fall about how to apply to UCs.
working hard is part of the puzzle, but far from the only or even (arguably) the most important part. Perhaps you plan on spending more time reviewing your notes and reading the chapter one extra time before quizzes? These are two of the least effective study methods. If approaches such “distributed practice” and “self-testing” draw a blank, they shouldn’t!! There is a recent book that you ought to read to learn how to study effectively, titled “Make it Stick”. Written by 2 of the leading researchers, it covers not just the theory but practical application for HS and college students.