I’ll admit, it’s not easy to get a perfect GPA. There’s strategy involved, of course, but strategy alone will not get the job done. Maintaining your GPA from the start requires extremely hard work and dedication, and it may not be possible for everyone. However, knowing the rules of the game is always the first step to winning.
The first thing to be aware of from the moment you step into the high school doors– no, from the moment you sign up for classes– is that depending on the school, some of the classes may be weighted so that they contribute more to your GPA. The more of these classes you can fit in, the higher your GPA will be. For example, in order to boost my GPA in high school, I chose to take both the higher level chemistry and physics courses offered by my school as a sophomore. In fact, every class that I took as a sophomore was weighted, which boosted my GPA immensely. While this strategy is by far the most effective way to help your GPA, I cannot stress enough that it only works if you can maintain good grades in all of these classes. If it becomes too much to handle, then it’s probably not worth it.
Good ways to play out this strategy include finding weighted classes that aren’t too demanding. For example, one of the classes I took as a sophomore was preAP art, which as you may imagine was a much less stressful class than some of the others I was taking that year. I also took Academic Decathlon for three years in a row, which is another weighted class. And yes, while Academic Decathlon is admittedly a lot of work for those on the team, not everyone in the class will ultimately make the team. For the students not actively competing for a spot, they may find an easy way to boost their GPA without putting in an overwhelming amount of effort, if that’s the goal.
Of course, it is difficult to maintain perfection. I’ll admit that during the times when COVID was at its peak, I took a single course during a spring term online and received an A-. Though I do not plan to make excuses for myself, I did learn from that experience about the importance of setting yourself up for success. This was not the only course I’d ever taken online, but in this case I allowed myself to become complacent, blaming factors outside of my control for any difficulties I faced, difficulties that could have more easily been explained by lack of effort on my part. The act of maintaining a good GPA, then, requires consistency.
Some students may not understand that a good GPA doesn’t simply appear out of thin air. It is the result of years of consistent hard work. Every class, every quiz, every daily reading assignment matters. It is as concentrated effort is applied that progress is made. It is by using the rules of the game to your advantage that you win.