Good Grades Make a Great Future by Danielle

Good Grades Make a Great Future by Danielle - November 2014 Scholarship Essay

My little brother is a sophomore in high school, and last year he came to me and told me that he was nervous about starting high school. I decided to give him a few pointers that would help him during his high school career. Of these pointers, the main thing I tried to stress to him was grades. Maintaining the highest grades I possibly can has always been my top priority in school, and I wanted to pass that mentality down to my brother in order to help him succeed. My brother has Asperger’s Syndrome, but he refuses to let that interfere with his daily life. I made sure that he learned this one lesson—good grades make a great future.

Ninth grade is when your performance in school really matters. From ninth grade up, colleges look at your GPA and grades in every class, along with your scores on the ACT and SAT. During my senior year, so many of my classmates told me that they wish they would have done better during their ninth grade year. The mistakes they made in that year cost them a potential scholarship or acceptance to a school that they really wanted to attend. I made sure that my brother knew the seriousness of his grades in high school and the effect they can have on his future.

I believe this message should be relayed to all students who are starting their first year of high school. I know that when you are fourteen years old, your main concern is not what your career will be in the next ten years, and you may not even know what you want to do yet. That is okay, though, and the main thing that every ninth grader should focus on is gaining the knowledge and tools that it takes to be successful in the future. Getting good grades in school will set you up to do whatever you want in life, even if you are not sure what that may be yet. This is all a part of developing an outstanding work ethic that will carry you throughout life and help turn your dreams into reality.