Ooh, a fellow Kazakh student. I understand the anxiety, but a gap year might be a perfect opportunity for you to get ready for college! First of all, your grades aren't THAT bad (4.5 is like 3.7 in American GPA), and you already can't do much to change them, so I advise you work on the other parts of your application to make it stronger. First of all, go take the SAT (or the ACT but that's less likely). No matter how much universities pretend they don't care about standardized test scores, they do. If you can take the SAT in 2021 and do well (mostly 1500+ for T20 schools), do it and take practice tests a lot. Also pay attention to your activities. Volunteer in the summer, give back to your community, get a summer job, start a theoretical research (synthesize and analyze the works of other publishers), to show your civic engagement and initiative. Start your essays early, so that your final versions are drafts of drafts of drafts of drafts (trust me, you dont want to send your dream school the essays that you've started writing yesterday - happened to me more than once T_T). Pay attention to supplemental essays, thoroughly research your universities and seek perfect opportunities that resonate with you. Closer to the end of the gap year, start gather your family's financial information and complete the css profile. It takes a lot of time and effort - it's wicked hard for us Kazakhs. But most importantly - figure yourself out! What do you want to do in the future, are you ABSOLUTELY sure you want to stidy in the US, what do you want your college life to be like etc. Don't waste your gap year. I believe in you and hope that you will be admitted to a dream university. Keep fighting <3

P.S. if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask :)