How I Got Straight A’s in High School and a Full Scholarship to College

Thank God It’s Friday! Welcome everyone to a late night edition of "Journey of Ace." As an extra special treat for those of you Steemians hanging out on your computers on a Friday night, whether pouring your heart out on the next great article or trying to earn a few extra bucks (perhaps a combination of the two!), I have decided to devote this article to a very important segment of my life – high school – and in the process, I plan to divulge some very helpful hacks to succeeding in high school, especially for those of you trying to make it out alive….

I’ll preface my story by stating what may already be obvious – if you want to achieve anything in life, you must be willing to make sacrifices. Whether that entails sacrificing your time, comfort, sleep, social life or your guilty pleasures, sacrifice comes in many forms and is especially paramount to attaining any goal in life.

This was in fact the first consideration I had to make when I set upon the difficult task to achieve the perfect Grade Point Average or GPA in high school – I must sacrifice my leisure time and social life to achieve the highest grades possible in all of my high school courses.

Why was the perfect GPA so important to me? What was getting straight A’s in high school such a big deal to me? That part was simple – I wanted a full scholarship to college.

I am a first generation American in my family; my parents immigrated to the United States from India in the 1980s so that my father could complete his Ph.D. in Physics and my mother could continue her medical career as a family practitioner. With my dad completing his Ph.D. and three young boys born within 1.5 years of one another, my mom decided to give up her career so that the house could continue to function at such a critical time in my family’s history. As a result, money was always tight at home and things didn’t change much even after my father got his Ph.D. and started working as a postdoctoral fellow.

I remember having to catch two buses just to attend elementary school in a part of Washington D.C. that was “out-of-boundary” – it was in another Ward, which was comprised of some of the best elementary, middle and high schools in town. Despite the distance and the awful commute that it would take for me to get to school every day, my father ignored the inconvenience so that his sons could receive the best education possible in the nation’s capital. Since I was the youngest and first son to attend these elite yet distant D.C. schools, my father rode with me on the Metrobuses to school every morning and then returned after work in the afternoon to pick me up and take me home.

At home, my parents asked us about the day’s lessons and made sure we completed our homework before eating dinner and sleeping at night. In fact, my dad was always available the evening before any quiz, midterm or final exam to give us a final review and then was the first to greet us when we came home to ask us how the exam went. My father had thoroughly explained to us the utmost importance of a solid education and how academic achievements could transform our life for the better.

So it was a no-brainer why I wanted a full ride to college – to repay my mother’s sacrifice of her medical career and my father’s unyielding investment in our education. Witnessing my parents’ unrelenting devotion on a daily basis was enough inspiration for me to sacrifice my own leisure time and social life in order to achieve the highest grades in my high school class and gain a full scholarship to college.

Although the journey to becoming Class Valedictorian and a full ride to college officially began in 9th grade, I had already instilled within myself the habits that would serve me well and change the course of my life when I first entered 5th grade.

My promotion to 5th grade was perhaps one of the most memorable chapters in my life. Not only was I on the cusp of graduating from elementary school and entering middle school, but I had also changed schools and was about to enter the most intensive elementary school in Washington D.C. – Lafayette Elementary. To this day, Lafayette is an exclusive club for mostly gifted students, many of whom go on to achieve Rhodes Scholarships and study in Ivy League universities. On the basis of my standardized test scores and on the recommendation of my former principal, I had the privilege of entering Lafayette Elementary and it was there that my training to become Ace officially began.

This may be an appropriate time to reveal why I’m called Ace. It was a nickname first given to me at Lafayette Elementary School by my classmates who constantly applauded my ability to read 30+ books every year, win spelling bees, gain the highest scores on math and science tests and display my skills as a young artist when I painted the school mural. On occasion, my Lafayette classmates even hailed me as a Jack of all trades. I preferred, however, to be known as a Renaissance man ;)

I highly doubt that I would have achieved the same amount of academic success had I not decided to change schools in the 5th grade and study at Lafayette. Although I was still a good student before the 5th grade, it was only after I entered Lafayette and was exposed to some of the best and brightest young minds in the D.C. area that I was inspired to become an EXCELLENT student.

Indeed, those very same skills remained ingrained in my psyche as I started 9th grade and selected the most intensive courses in the class. Even before the semester started in September, I immediately went out with my dad, bought all of my textbooks and wasted no time in reading my Biology textbook, cover to cover, since I had already heard from senior students that Intensive Biology was the most difficult class.

Thus, an important piece of advice I will impart to those of you still in school is to study from the textbook. Don’t cut corners and read from e-books – grab a textbook instead since I can tell you from personal experience that textbooks allow you to take notes much easier (I often wrote in the margins with a pencil!) and provide the complete amount of theory necessary to mastering critical concepts, especially in Mathematics and Science courses. So dump those review and dummy guides and stick to the original text!

And so I continued advancing in high school, selecting courses that only grew in complexity, and also devoted a significant portion of my week to preparing for the SATs – a standardized exam with which I am sure most of you are already familiar.

My daily routine in high school resembled something like this:

• Wake up in the morning, shower, dress up and grab a quick breakfast before catching the Metrobus to school
• Enjoy a full day’s worth of classes from 8:30 am – 3:15 pm
• Get home by 4 pm, shower, slip into something more comfortable and start completing homework.
• As soon as I’m done with homework by about 6 pm, grab a bite to eat while propping open my SAT book and study for the SATs, designating a separate day to each section of the exam (Verbal, Math and Writing)
• Finish my SAT review by 10 pm, eat dinner and then go to sleep

Every day of the week (except Sunday which I had designated as a day of rest to avoid burnout) followed the aforementioned schedule to a T. Some students take a few weeks in the beginning of the school year to get used to completing homework and studying for tests again after a well-rested summer vacation. As for me, I never took summer vacations! I spent my summer vacations at home, reading new books and writing book reports or else checking out new textbooks from the library in preparation for the upcoming school year. So when the rest of class was still rusty at the beginning of the year, I always started the new school year refreshed from a summer’s worth of training and already ahead of the class, and sometimes a few weeks ahead of the teacher as well!

By the time I entered the eleventh grade, my father had combed all of the local area newspapers for news of scholarships and had uncovered a gem of an announcement: The George Washington University was offering a full scholarship to the student with the highest GPA in the D.C. area. Since this was such a prestigious and exclusive scholarship, I made sure to apply a year early and returned to concentrating on the task that lay ahead – maintaining my straight A average, even as I prepared to take my first Advanced Placement (AP) courses.

These AP courses were the most difficult courses offered in high school because they were essentially college-level courses which evaluated your performance with college-level midterms and standardized final exams which took place in May. But coupled with the high risk was the high reward of AP courses – if you passed the AP final exam with a 4 or 5, you would receive college credit for that course. For example, if I achieved a 5 on the AP Calculus BC Exam, then I would not have to take Calculus I nor Calculus II in college!

I was thus determined and even more motivated to dominate my AP courses; I signed up for a total of 4 AP courses in the 11th grade and 7 AP courses in the 12th grade. Thanks to many tireless months and weekends, I turned what I initially thought was going to be the toughest two-year stretch in my high school career into the undoubtedly the finest two year period in my academic career.

By the time I finished 12th grade, I had scored 5s on all of my AP Exams and my total cumulative GPA stood at a Woodrow Wilson Senior High school record high of 4.5. I had earned the top spot in my high school class as Valedictorian but there was still one more accomplishment left…

One afternoon during my AP Computer Science class, my teacher pulled me aside and whispered that we had to go downstairs to the library. I just looked up at him incredulously because even in those days, no one ever used the school library, except to check up on WWE Pay Per View results.

I suspected that something unusual was about to transpire, but I went along with my teacher and the rest of my Computer Science class to the school library. As soon as I walked inside, my big brown Indian eyes immediately spotted my father and my older brother beaming at me from across the room. I had only a moment’s notice to guess the surprise before I heard the beating of drums and the mascot from The George Washington University waltzed into the room with a gigantic check!

My father buried me in a tight embrace as a representative from GWU formally announced to the crowd that they had just awarded me with a full scholarship worth $200,000! I nearly fainted but recovered just in time to leap into the air and celebrate with a victorious shriek of joy. Then, virtually the entire library descended upon me and started shaking my hand, patting me on the back and chanting “Ace! Ace! Ace! Ace! Ace!”

It was definitely one of the happiest days of my life and is certainly a cherishable memory I plan to share with my grandchildren someday…

To this day, I still get choked up when reminiscing about my high school experience as it signified the culmination of several years of determination, dedication, perseverance and sacrifice.

And I am sharing this particular experience with my fellow Steemians this Friday night to not only offer inspiration and a few paragraphs of advice to high school students around the world, but as well to offer motivation to anyone who has ever expressed a heartfelt desire to reach the stars and achieve their dreams.

If you have a dream right now that you would like to achieve with every fiber of your being, then the only thing that is currently stopping you from attaining success is your own effort and determination. You must put in the necessary reps to reach a level of mastery and ultimately, you will have to be the most determined SOB on the planet to ensure that you will not rest until you have won. Turn that dream into a goal by putting a deadline on it and use your determination to power you to the finish line!

It has been a pleasure sharing my story with you all tonight. Until next time, keep acing life!