Summer Preview Classes to Boost Your GPA and Rank!

Whether you’re an incoming freshman or heading into senior year, B2A recommends using your summer break to prepare for difficult high school courses so you can meet your GPA and academic goals! 

5 Preview Classes to Help you Ace Freshman Year

Many rising freshmen are unaware of how rigorous high school courses can be.  Getting strong grades freshman year is vital to secure a high ranking and GPA, which sets students up for less struggles throughout the rest of high school. It is much easier to start at the top of rankings and keep your place than it is to climb the rankings from a lower spot. 

High school courses are “weighted” based on academic rigor and the weight of a course can affect your GPA. Students seeking to increase their GPA and improve their college admissions chances should consider challenging themselves by taking Advanced Placement (AP), Honors, and Advanced courses. For more information, check out our recent blog post on Course Selection Tips. 

These courses are considered to be “college level” courses and therefore the material taught is of a complexity that goes beyond what many students are used to. Some classes are notoriously more difficult to adjust to than others, including: 

• AP Human Geography

• Pre-AP Biology

• Geometry

• Algebra II

• English 

Our 10-week High School Summer Preview Classes are designed to provide an overview of the materials you will be learning in courses such as these. You will meet in small groups for 2 hours twice a week (4 hours total) to study the material. The classes are designed to help you identify where you need to spend more time studying before and during the upcoming year. Students who have taken our courses in the past have used it to familiarize themselves with subject matter, to better manage their studying time in the upcoming year, and to boost their GPA!

Preview Courses for Continued Success

If you are an upperclassman, our preview courses can help you continue to succeed after freshman year or help improve your GPA if you’ve struggled with previous AP classes. We offer courses in both Humanities and STEM, so you can brush up on whatever area you need help with the most. For upperclassmen,  we recommend taking:

• AP Precalculus

• AP World History

• AP US History

• AP Chemistry

• AP Physics

• AP Calculus (AB/BC)

As GPA is one of the most important aspects of your college applications for admissions purposes, we are happy to offer the following 2024 Summer Preview Classes to help set students up for success:

If there is a course you are interested in previewing this summer and it is not listed above, please reach out to our front desk at austin@b2aprep.com. There may be an opportunity to create a class or we may have 1:1 tutoring available. 

Additionally, if you are not sure what courses to sign up for next year, the front desk or one of our B2A counselors may offer suggestions based on your interests and/or what pathway you may want to follow in high school. For example, for an 11th grade student interested in Computer Science, the counselor may suggest taking AP Pre-Calculus or AP Calculus BC, since calculus is often a required course for CS programs. 

Don’t underestimate the effect weighted classes can have on your GPA. Prepare for success this summer with our Preview Courses to help you meet your high school GPA and academic goals!

At B2A, we make it our mission to help students do better so they can achieve their academic goals and improve their college admissions chances! Contact us today to enroll in our Preview Courses before they begin on May 28th. We hope to see you this summer at B2A!