Advice about applying to college!
Maybe colleges don't want me to tell you this, but go out and find out what colleges want early. Find out what they're asking in their essay questions, find out what types of things they're looking for in terms of what requirements they want for admission, and then work to those things in your SATs.

Start writing essays early. Have people at your school read them, and review them, and go over them, so that when you're ready to go to college, when you make that next step, all that work, all that background stuff that you want to crunch in your senior year, you don't have to because you've already done it: you've already started doing that in your freshman and sophomore year.

At the end of your sophomore year, have people review all the writing you've done, have people reviewing some of your essays, and all that stuff. Go to your creative writing teacher, to your English teacher, have them proofread it, have them give you suggestions. That way your senior year is spent sending stuff out, spending time trying to figure out what school you really want to go to, that's going to cater to you.