Freshman year · Class of 2030

9th grade college prep checklist

Freshman year decides very little on its own and sets up almost everything. The courses you start now determine what you can take as a junior, and the two national awards below are the ones that take years rather than months — which is the whole reason they belong on a ninth-grade list.

Fall

Courses and grades

Plan a four-year course sequence that reaches twelve to fifteen honors and AP courses by graduation, and pick the Career and Technical Education pathway certificate that matches the field you are aiming at.Career roadmap (PDF)
Ask your counselor which of your courses are weighted and how your school calculates the grade point average colleges will be shown.What this means

Activities and awards

Register for the Congressional Award and start logging public service, personal development and physical fitness — the Bronze Certificate takes about three months of it.
Join two or three clubs and give each one a full year before deciding which is the one you want to end up leading.

Applications

Start a running record of everything you do outside class — the activity, your role in it, and roughly how many hours a week it takes. Reconstructing this in senior year is the single most avoidable job in the whole application.What this means

of 5 done

Spring

Courses and grades

Choose next year’s courses with the four-year plan in front of you rather than one year at a time.
Ask about honors sections in the subjects you are strongest in. Course rigor is read against what your own school offers, not against a national standard.What this means

Tests

Ask which practice tests your school gives underclassmen, and treat the score report as a diagnostic rather than as a grade.Test dates

Activities and awards

Aim at a President’s Volunteer Service Award tier you can actually reach this year: in the ninth and tenth grade band it is fifty to seventy-four hours for Bronze, seventy-five to ninety-nine for Silver, and a hundred or more for Gold.

of 4 done

Summer

Courses and grades

Read on your own in the subject you think you might major in. A genuine interest is far easier to build now than to invent on an application later.
If a course went badly, use the summer to close the gap rather than to forget about it. The next course in that sequence assumes you did.Elite Premier Tutoring

Activities and awards

Use the summer for the Congressional Award’s fitness and personal-development goals. The Gold Medal takes two years, so a Gold earned in high school has to be under way by the summer after freshman year.
Try one structured activity outside school — a competition club, a research course, or a volunteering commitment you can keep going during the year.Elite Math Competition Club

of 4 done

Checked items are not saved; reloading the page clears them. Print the checklist to keep a copy.

This page prints as a plain checklist; the header, footer and navigation are omitted.

This checklist was last reviewed August 18, 2026.

Other grades

Speak with a college counselor See every test date this year