If a club you’re involved with allows students to apply for leadership roles, be sure to do so. Once you’ve narrowed your list of extracurriculars down, seek out leadership opportunities. Over time, you’ll begin to realize which pursuits truly interest you and which are not a valuable use of your time. In these first couple years, it’s acceptable and even practical to sign up for various clubs, teams, and/or other organizations while you figure out your interests. As a freshman or sophomore, you may not have much of an idea of what career you’d like to pursue, and accordingly, you may struggle choosing extracurriculars to involve yourself in. Dedication and passion are valued highly by admissions officers when it comes to extracurriculars an absurdly long list of vague extracurricular pursuits, not so much. As a freshman, you can allow yourself more leniency once you know you can handle the workload of one or two AP, IB, Honors, or Advanced courses, you can take a more rigorous course load your sophomore year, and so on. However, in the rush to take the most AP classes or claim the #1 spot in a class, don’t forget about your mental and physical health! Students, especially younger students, shouldn’t be pulling all-nighters every night in pursuit of academic bragging rights. As high schools offer more and more AP and IB classes, and self-studying these exams becomes increasingly common even among freshmen and sophomores, be sure to take a challenging course load your first two years to avoid getting left behind. A few minor slip-ups on your transcript freshman year won’t put you out of the race, but you’ll be in a much more secure position if you keep your grades strong throughout.Ĭhallenge yourself. If it comes down to two students, one with a 4.0 their freshman year and the other with a 3.2, the student with the 4.0 will get the spot 99% of the time. A couple Bs, and even one or two Cs under very exceptional circumstances will slide on your freshman year transcript, but they will have a notable adverse effect on your application. Granted, freshman grades are not as important as those your sophomore, junior, and senior year, but that certainly isn’t to say they don’t matter. “Freshman grades don’t matter” is an oft-repeated adage in the world of college admissions, but not necessarily an accurate one. There are a wealth of things you can do in your first two years of high school that will not only be significant accomplishments in and of themselves, but also set you up for extremely successful junior and senior years.īe on top of your grades. Yes, junior year is the year colleges will scrutinize most closely when evaluating your applications, but that doesn’t mean you can just take it easy until then. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The emphasis on junior year performance lulls many students into thinking that if they’re serious about getting admitted to an elite college, junior year is the time to kick things into gear. It’s the year your grades matter most, your extracurriculars really start to take shape, you form the relationships that will define your letters of recommendation, and for many students, you take the SAT or the ACT for the first time. If conventional college application wisdom tells us anything, it’s that generally speaking, junior year is the most important year for students looking to get into a top university.