The college-admissions internet is dominated by junior-and-senior content for a reason: those are the years when applications happen. But what you do in 9th and 10th grade has compounding effects on what's possible by 12th grade. Here's the focused guide for underclassmen — what actually matters and what to skip.
What matters in 9th grade
1. Grades — the foundation
Your freshman GPA is the hardest grade to recover from. Most US colleges use cumulative GPA across all four years, and freshman year is 25% of that. A 3.4 freshman year is recoverable to a 3.7 cumulative if you go 3.85+ each subsequent year — but you can't 'fix' freshman grades the way you can rewrite essays. Focus on developing study habits that scale. The work isn't intellectually hard at this stage; it's a self-management problem.
2. Try things broadly
Freshman year is the only year you're allowed to wander. Join 4-5 different clubs and activities. Take an art class, a coding class, a community-service hour, and a sport. The point isn't to commit; the point is to find what you actually like. By sophomore spring, you'll narrow.
3. Read outside school
Intellectual curiosity starts here. Pick a topic that interests you (not required reading). Spend 30 minutes a day on it. By senior year you'll have 3+ years of self-directed depth in something — and that becomes essay material, interview material, and the basis for a spike.
4. Take the PSAT 8/9 if offered
Low-stakes practice. Don't study for it. The point is to see what the test format is and identify any glaring weaknesses with three years to address them.
What matters in 10th grade
1. Course planning matters more
Sophomore year is when you set up junior-year rigor. If your school requires prerequisites for AP courses, make sure you're on track. Talk to your counselor about a 4-year plan. Aim for 6+ APs by graduation if your school offers 8+; 4-5 APs if your school offers 6-8; whatever your school offers if it offers fewer.
2. Narrow your activities
Drop the activities you joined freshman year but don't actually care about. Go deeper in 2-3 you do. Take leadership roles where they're natural — don't fake-lead. By end of sophomore year, you should be in a position to start the kind of vertical depth that becomes a spike.
3. Take the PSAT for real
10th-grade PSAT scores don't count for National Merit (that's the 11th-grade test) but they're a real benchmark. If your score is significantly below your target schools' SAT 50th percentile, start a slow study plan now. 30 minutes/week of practice over a year beats 4 hours/day for a month.
4. Apply to selective summer programs
Summer-after-sophomore-year is a high-leverage window for selective summer programs (RSI, MITES, TASP, COSMOS, Garcia, etc. — most have January/February deadlines). Even getting in signals serious intellectual engagement. Doing the program produces artifacts (research papers, projects, professor relationships) you can build on through senior year.
5. Start a real project in your area of interest
Whatever your spike-direction is, start producing artifacts. Build the app. Write the novel. Run the experiment. Found the small organization. By senior year, you want 18-24 months of demonstrable work in your vertical.
What to SKIP in freshman and sophomore year
- Obsessing over the SAT. Take the PSAT, identify weaknesses, slow-roll a study plan. Don't grind for the test until junior year.
- Visiting colleges. You don't know enough about yourself yet to know which schools to consider. Junior spring is the right window for visits.
- Reading admissions Reddit threads. The strategy advice is mostly wrong, the success-story bragging is mostly invented, and the anxiety is contagious. Skip until late junior year.
- Taking SAT subject tests. Discontinued in 2021. They no longer exist.
- Hiring a college counselor. Premature unless you have a very specific situation (international applicant, recruited athlete, learning differences). For most students, freshman/sophomore year doesn't require external strategy.
- Worrying about whether you'll get into Harvard. The math is what it is. Focus on becoming the kind of student who could plausibly get into selective schools; outcomes follow.
The principle
Freshman and sophomore years are about COMPOUNDING. Habits, knowledge, depth, relationships — all of these benefit from being started early and let to grow. The students who are competitive at top schools senior fall didn't suddenly become competitive senior fall; they spent the previous three years building.
If you're a freshman or sophomore reading this, the best thing you can do for your eventual college applications isn't to prepare for college applications. It's to take school seriously, find what you actually love, and start producing real work in that area. The applications take care of themselves later.