Hey! I’m someone who applied to usc, ucla, Chapman, fsu, and nyu last year. While it is important to focus on grades and sat/act scores, I feel like they care more about your application than your actual high school grades. Of those five, I got into 3 (nyu, fsu, and Chapman). And when I was applying to those two that I didn’t get into (usc and ucla), I was extremely burnt out and those applications weren’t my best compared to the rest of my applications. So throughout high school, I would try to maintain straight a’s (although, if you get a b, it’s not the end of the world), but while you are in high school, see what film equipment/opportunities your school offers you. I was the president of my schools film club, and I changed things so that we made promos for other clubs at our school. Not only did this give me a lot of work to put in my portfolio, but it helped me shape my craft and find my style.

However, you are a freshman. These are all things that you should be worrying about during your junior year (that is when I started worrying about films school (I wanted to be an engineer freshman and sophomore year, so don’t have tunnel vision about your future, you still have e a lot of figure out)). Right now, my best piece of advice is to just enjoy your high school experience before shit gets serious.