How to succeed?

- Focus on getting good grades and maximizing both weighted and unweighted GPAs. Take honors, AP/IB, and dual enrollment classes if your school offers them. Self-study APs. Take classes that align with potential careers or majors. Challenge (but don't overload) yourself.

- Get involved with extracurriculars. Join a few clubs, try out for a sports team, audition for a school theatre program or choir/band/orchestra, enter writing, art, or STEM competitions, volunteer in your community, try to become a member of student council, get a part-time job. Ideally, you should have a variety of extracurriculars (including clubs, sports, and community service) with one area that you should focus more on.

- It's never too early to start studying for standardized tests. Take the pSAT or Pre-ACT if it is offered at your school, or use College Board and the ACT website to take free practice tests. Get to know the testing format, as well as the new online method for taking College Board tests (such as SATs and AP tests).

- Look into summer programs/iron out your summer plans. Maybe think about getting a few volunteer hours or applying for a program in an area of interest. Summer is also a great time to get a job. Make sure to do something over the summer, but also enjoy yourself!

- Build good relationships with your teachers. Although your recommendation letters will likely come from a junior year teacher, it's a good idea to create strong bonds with your teachers so they can provide support in various ways. Furthermore, if you chose to apply for summer programs, recommendation letters are often needed, and you don't want to be scrambling for someone to write one. It's also a good time to get to know your college counselor, if your school has one. My school assigns college counselors at the end of sophomore year, but asking questions and getting to know them early is never a bad plan.

- Build good study strategies and time management skills. These will serve you well not only in high school, but also in life. Being organized and responsible is critical; it is difficult (at least to me) to succeed academically without structure and routine, so start building one now. Freshman year is the foundation that the rest of your high school career stands on; although it may not seem to matter as much, what you do now impacts how the next three years will go, so make sure to start off strong!

Good luck!

Hello @Iyonna_W ! I am also currently freshman, I believe that as freshman, the most important things right now are GPA (which you are killing it right now), honors and ap which can boost your weighted gpa, and extracurricular activities with officer roles, officer roles may seem pretty unimportant, but it gives you experience which will be very useful later on, all of these are my opinion, and I am also keep researching on what I could do in freshman that would be useful for college and universities. Good luck!