sophomore year advice ⭐ from a current senior

hey guys in today's video I'm going to be giving some advice for high school sophomores right now I'm just finishing up my junior year so this is all based on the experiences that I had as a sophomore last school year and my current thoughts about how what I did either helped me or didn't help me obviously I can sit here and be a random person talking to you through a screen and try to give general advice that would probably help the majority of people but another thing that really helps is for you to determine what will help you based on your own individual circumstances so start off by reflecting on what you did and what happened in your freshman year including academics extracurriculars social things everything and then think about what went well what did not go well and what caused these desirable or undesirable results and then based on your past experiences you can determine what will probably help you sophomore year that you should continue doing and what didn't help in that you should it change or improve so with that being said let's now move on to my general tips and I'm going to divide this into three sections part 1 will be about academics and standardized testing part 2 will be about extracurricular activities and lastly part 3 will be about planning for college and beyond so let's talk first about academics and as a sophomore you'll start having to actually worry more about standardized testing so let's talk about that too I'm assuming a lot of you have already chosen your classes for next year but if you haven't ideally you should choose classes that are harder than the ones that you took in freshman year so that means taking more honors AP accelerated classes if your school has that like mine does and at the same time you don't necessarily want to overload yourself either because everyone needs to sleep and do other things besides academics so instead just choose a couple of harder classes in the subjects that you like more so that you can challenge yourself in something that you actually like and of course for this aspect you should talk to your high school your current teachers and someone else who really just knows more about you personally instead of just me a stranger on the internet who doesn't know your academic history now besides signing up for these hopefully harder classes you also need to make sure to get good grades in the classes that you do have your GPA is one of the most important parts of your college application of course the course rigor is important but don't sign up for something you're completely unprepared for because you also don't want to get really bad grades getting good grades in your sophomore year is really important because it's a good time to get your study habits together before junior year in senior year which are usually more academically intense also since sophomore year I did a pretty darn good job getting good grades I'm very grateful to my past self for boosting my GPA and patting it a little bit for potentially messing up this year or next year since I'm taking a lot harder classes my entire channel is dedicated to studying and planning organizationís so if you'd like advice on improving your study habits just check out some of my other videos I'll link some of the ones I recommend the most in the description and if you're worried about your GPA because you didn't do that great in freshman year it's okay you still have this year to turn that around since although yes your freshman year ultimately will drag down your average when someone is looking at your transcript and looking at your progress over time seeing an upward trend in your grade still looks pretty decent especially if you do well in junior and senior year too my third tip which is something I regret that I didn't do in my sophomore year is taking at least one SAT two subject test usually you should just take one that aligns with a class subject that you just took in the school year for example if you took chemistry during your school year then in May or June just take the chemistry SAT 2 subject test I personally wish that I had taken the math 2 subject test at the end of my sophomore year after I just finished a precalc instead of taking it now after my junior year or actually I'll be taking it in August which is in the very beginning of my senior year because now I also need to review all of that material after I had already finished the class over a year ago next because we really just need to keep lining the pockets of college board you should also take the tenth grade PSAT which doesn't really count for national merit but it's a great way to both practice for when you will take the PSAT to try to qualify for national merit in eleventh grade and to practice for the SAT and speaking of practicing for the SAT in your sophomore year you don't have to worry that much about it unless you really feel like you need to get a head start but one thing that you can do is take a practice SAT and an a CT or a couple of both and see which one you're better at and which one you prefer to take this way you'll have a better idea of your game plan for studying for standardized tests towards the end of your sophomore year or during the summer before your junior year and lastly for academics I just recommend that you get into the habit of reading a lot since first of all readings pretty darn fun and you can improve your vocabulary improve your knowledge of grammar and writing and organization and everything since reading is a huge part of a lot of standardized tests and just a really good skill to have for your classes in general and for the rest of your life now let's move on to part two which is about extracurriculars as a freshman you probably got involved in quite a few new extracurriculars since you switched to high school so a lot more new things were available to you and as a sophomore you can also continue to keep trying out new things although probably not to the extent that you likely did in your freshman year you're not in any way for us to stick with what you picked in freshman year your interests will change as you grow and that's not a sign of being uncommitted or like lacking determination and dedication it's just you growing up maturing and changing your interests one thing you can do this year is cut down on the quantity of extracurriculars that you're doing so that you can focus more on the ones that you care more about when you're applying to college and filling out that extracurricular section what's actually more important is depth of your involvement rather than the breath of being involved in a certain number of clubs or activities so this year I recommend starting to whittle things down and just focus really deeply on the activities that you care the most about also since as a sophomore you're becoming old enough to actually have a job maybe you might want to consider getting a job it can help financially support your family and it's a good way to get real-life experience with actual employment and not just taking in classes even if you just work a lower-level minimum-wage job it's still work experience that you can put on your resume another way that you can help with their people and get something to put on your resume and college app is to do community service maybe over the summer when you have more free time or during the school year first of all a lot of schools have community service requirements so this can help you check that off and get it out of the way also some volunteer jobs can be used on a resume as relevant work experience for example I helped design fliers and newsletters and posters and things for my choir so I use this on my resume as a type of work experience now lastly let's talk about part 3 which is planning for college which honestly is not something that I'm even that great at currently as a rising senior current junior for four more days as a sophomore I felt like I was under a lot of pressure to know what I wanted to do in college and for the rest of my life as a career which is an entirely unreasonable demand task of a 15 or 16 year old because you're still pretty young you have a lot of life left ahead of you so that's what I'm trying to remind myself - so I just want to reassure you that you don't have to know all of the specifics yet in fact I don't recommend making any very specific decisions at this current point in time since in high school and as a teen in general you grow and change a lot you'll change as a person and the experiences you have will change how you view the world so don't feel like you have to make decisions right now because you'll probably change your mind later on anyways so yes all this to basically say that you can start thinking about what you want to do as a career what you want to do for college but you don't have to get that specific at all in fact I don't really recommend getting too specific because you might feel like you're committing yourself to a certain career path college major or college choice take this all with a grain of salt because I'm not in the college job process quite yet but what I currently recommend that you do is making some general decisions not even deciding necessarily but just thinking about some general ideas of what career fields you might want to go into what kind of aspects you might be looking for in a college like its general location or public versus private or tuition costs and things like that if you're very ambitious and driven and know exactly where you're going I admire that and go for it you can do it but also give yourself room to change and grow and change your mind I hope you found this video helpful and if you have any other questions be sure to let me know in the comments and I'll try my best to answer them I upload new videos every Monday and my Instagram is app study quill if you want to check that out see you next time you

Channel: studyquill

Views: 54,284

Rating: 4.9588361 out of 5

Keywords: studytube, studyblr, studying, college, school, advice for high school sophomores, sophomore advice, sophomore year of high school advice, high school advice, sophomore year tips, sophomore year experience, things i wish i knew before sophomore year, how to survive sophomore year, high school tips, studyquill

Id: sECNEIfJa3s

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2019