I'm College Bound

I discovered that my grade point average is lower than I would like it to be in order for me to have a lot of college choices. Most of the colleges I looked at were very prestigious and got that way by accepting the top students of the class with the highest GPA's. I definitely need to raise my grades so that I can get into one of these schools.
I learned that most of the schools that I had previously wanted to attend were coincidentally private religious schools. Being a practicing Catholic, I have nothing wrong with religion, I just do not want to go to a religious school. They are usually more expensive, more selective and sometimes have mandatory religion classes. So I set out to find other schools with top-notch psychology programs. The schools I found were almost all public schools, which are generally less expensive.
The next step for me is to increase the effort I put into my work so that my GPA can be high enough to be recognized by college admissions as a 'good GPA', and so that I can be accepted into most of the schools that I apply to.