How much will my freshman year grades count?

It should be fine so long as you write a good essay about how you improved your performance etc. Pull up your grades for this year as much as possible. Study for three hours a day, even on non-test days. It won't be fun, but if you can get through the rest of this year with very good grades (as many A+'s and A's as possible) then you should be able to recover your GPA somewhat. Try to get a good SAT score too. Frankly, a 1950 is not very good at all. Shoot for a 2200 or better. Learn some grammar and practice the type of math needed on the SAT to improve your writing and math scores. Take a lot of practice tests (I took around 12 by the time I took the test). Do those practice tests in single sittings - don't do half one day and half another day. You need to build up your mental endurance to take a four hour test. Do all of that and you should be in good shape to get into some really good colleges.