Successful people don't get there by accident. They figure out a way to get from where they are to where they want to be. One of the ways that they do that is by setting goals.

Some goals are about school. Some might be about your personal life. Some have to do with character development. Or with making money. Or with getting stuff done. Or, in your case, with going to college.

In setting good goals, you might want to think about the following things:

Make Sure Your Goals Allow You to Keep Growing
If your goal doesn't move you away from where you currently are and toward where you'd like to be, then it might not be a very good goal in the first place. Good goals move you toward the life you want.

For example, if you currently have an A in English, then saying "my goal is to keep making an A is English" is indeed a good goal, but it doesn't allow you to grow, it simply allows you to maintain.

If you're currently making an A in English, a better goal would be "I want to keep making an A in English while also improving my grade in Math to an A." This allows you to maintain yourself and to grow.

Make Sure Your Goals are Achievable
The trick in goal-setting is setting the bar high enough so that you improve, but not so high that you can't achieve it. When you set goals, you should have a reasonable chance of achieving them.

When you make goals, success or failure should depend on your own performance, to the extent it's possible. If your goals depend on other people doing something or not doing something, your life becomes more about them and less about yourself.

Here's the bottom line: your goals should be reasonable, and they should be achieved or not achieved based on your own efforts, not someone else's. If you follow these two rules, you'll keep the growth of your life in your own hands, which is exactly where it belongs.

Know Thyself
The more you understand yourself, the more specific your goals will be. The more specific your goals, the more likely you'll do what you need to do to achieve them. Whenever you're trying to improve yourself, especially after a poor performance, try to think of the reasons that you didn't perform well in the first place.

Make Sure Some of Your Goals are Short-Term
Imagine making the following three goals as a freshman:

A. I want to have a 3.5 cumulative GPA by the end of high school.

B. I want to be admitted to a selective college on the west coast.

C. I want to be an engineer after college.

All of these goals are great goals. There is a problem, however, if these are your only goals. Why? Because you won't know if you achieved any of them until at least three years from now. If, at the end of senior year, you find out that you didn't achieve goals A and B, it will be too late to figure out what you did wrong.

Break your long-term goals down into stepping stones. For example, if your goal is to have a 3.5 or higher GPA at the end of high school, it might be a good idea to have a goal of a 3.5 GPA for each semester. At the end of each semester, you can then see if you've reached your goal. That way, if by the end of sophomore year you only have a 3.3 GPA, you know you have to work harder during your junior year. Similarly, if you want to be admitted to a selective college, the best thing to do is figure out what it's going to take to get admitted. Then make each of those requirements its own separate goal, such as test scores, a good application essay, or strong recommendations.

Try to Vary Your Goals
Although we strongly encourage you to make academic success a significant goal in your life, it's also important for you to explore a wide range of interests and activities. Colleges will certainly want to see that you are reasonably well-rounded. But more than that, if you don't have a range of experiences, you may never be exposed to something that you'd be really good at.

Here's what we're suggesting:

1. Use freshman year as a time to find out every activity that is offered at your high school.
   
   
2. If you really enjoy an activity and are good at it or would like to become better at it, think about spending some time in high school developing that skill or talent, and make sure that you make it a point to talk to every adult at your school who can help you do that.
   
   
3. Think about exploring one or two activities that you've never even tried before, but that you think you might be interested in. It would be a shame if it turns out you would be really good at something, but you never found out because you never tried.
   
   
4. Even if you think that you're not interested in an activity, still make sure you stay aware of all the activities offered at your school. You might become interested in some things later that you're not really interested in now.