I don’t know if freshman year matters, but I did ok. First semester all A, second semester all A two Bs. I was a clueless kid as a freshman and so I did no extracurriculars and took no honors classes. I didn’t even know they existed… boy was I an idiot as a freshman.
Just finished my sophpomore year (now a junior, woot woot.) And let me tell you guys I really screwed it up this year. The classes I took were hnrs world lit, draw/paint 3/4, hnrs chem, hnrs alg. 2, AP euro, dance PE, and spanish 2. The hnrs and AP are all weighted, although I’m pretty sure lit isn’t. First semester, 3.8 weighted, 3.6 unweighted. (4 As 3 Bs) . Second semester I REALLY dropped the ball and got a C in both math and chem, with an A in all other classes. And I would have gotten a D in math were it not for the gods of very very generous curves smiling upon me. Makes my GPA 3.8 weighted, but 3.4 unweighted. Do colleges look at only GPA, or your actual grades too?
I’m pretty sure I got a five on the AP test since I got a five on the practice test and ended with 98% in the class. I got an A on all my euro tests over the course of the year. Frankly it’s the only subject I did well at this year. However, I won’t really know until July. At our school AP euro is the only AP you’re allowed as a sophomore.
My favorite extracurricular is mock trial. I devoted about nine hours a week to mock trial during mock trial season, which spans from early september to mid-february. Unfortunately I didn’t collect any personal awards and our team didn’t win county or even make it to finals (we lost in semifinals). So even though mock trial is my great passion I don’t have much to show for it. I went to a few other MT competitions, but because of the way we were doubled I was ineligible for an award, as was much of our team. If I were to write a college admissions essay it would be about mock trial.
In our county, if you win first for an attorney award you get an internship (a PAYED internship) at either the DA’s or the public defender’s or with a judge. I would love to win something like that next year. Mock trial is a BIG deal in our county, unlike some other counties where it seems like it’s a pretty easy win like Tamalpais’ county or something, but I don’t think colleges would understand that unfortunately. (not to diss tamalpais, their team is great and they show their quality at state every year).
I also did MUN. I’ve done three conferences. First conference I got the gavel but it was novice so I don’t know if it really counts. Next two I got outstanding delegate which I’m actually more proud of because it wasn’t novice anymore. I talked to my MUN advisor and said maybe we should have club officers, and he said that’s a great idea. I think I would be put in some officer position if we had officers, maybe president but definitely I would get something.
My friend also started a club for korean culture (I am not korean but she wants to show that it is not just for koreans, but also people interested in the culture) and I will hold the position of secretary. So that will be good.
For community service, I do youth court and I recently signed up to help the library with their student’s reading program. Will colleges see those two as lazy? They don’t really require a lot of work. My friend said colleges don’t care about community service. She got into UCLA with only 20 hours.
As a child I did girl scouts for nine years, but I quit before my freshman year.
I played roller derby during my freshman year, but quit for the sake of mock trial this year. It was a very difficult sacrifice for me to make, but I think it was worth it. Mock trial is my great love in life. It’s the best thing I’ve done in high school. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I also did a few speech contests but I didn’t win anything so I don’t think they matter.
I’m pretty passionate about art! I won the PTA reflections for visual art for my school district. I also got put in a local art show. I also got an honorable mention for an art contest put on by our newspaper. So not a lot of art winnings but something to mention.
Here are the classes I’m doing next year:
- AP Lang
- Studio Art
- APES (rumored to be the easiest AP science, right?)
- pre-calc
- APUSH
- Spanish 3
- AP art history (online class)
This means the highest possible GPA I can acheive next year is 4.57. Would that make up for my bad performance this year?
That’s all I can think of. I was really reaching with some of that but I don’t know what’s relevant. What colleges can I be looking at? I live in California.
I’m pretty ashamed of my performance this year. Most of my friends are top ten and gunning for valedictorian, and want to go to schools like Stanford, Berkley, etc. 
And this is in a school where most of our classes are about 800 people, so top ten is really hard to acheive.