Seniors! Avoid Senioritis Like the Academic Plague
This post is for all the seniors who recently (or have nearly) finished their college admissions applications. Congratulations! You put in a lot of hard work over the course of high school and during the fall semester, and hopefully that dedication will be rewarded with some sweet college acceptance letters. Maybe you’ve even heard some great news from an early admissions decision!
With all the hard work you’ve done, and after all the nights spent burning the midnight oil, you might feel like it is time for a break. You are on the last stretch of your senior year, and once those acceptance letters start flooding your mailbox, you will be thinking of the campus far from your greasy pizza squares at lunch and Dr. Smith’s rambling lectures in AP Calculus. During all this good news, you will slowly begin to develop an ailment that has afflicted many seniors before you: senioritis.
Senioritis--the almost absolute apathy towards high school assignments and grades during the final semester of the senior year--is not a life-threatening illness, but it is one that can have severe consequences, the largest of those being the rescinding of your hard-earned college acceptance. How likely is this? Well, according to the National Association of College Counseling, 22% of colleges revoked an admissions offer in 2009, a majority of which were related to bad grades.
What should you do to prevent this from happening to you?
1. Obviously, don’t slack off during the final semester of high school!
There will be senior pictures, there will be prom, there will be skip day. The traditions of senior year are important, but you shouldn’t forget that you are in school for a reason, and it’s not only to socialize. Remember that projects matter, that you cannot plagiarize your English paper with Wikipedia, and that your teachers are SUPER AWARE that you will start caring less and less about high school.
2. If you do slack off, take the university correspondence very seriously.
Universities usually don’t give you the boot. They like to get you to own up to your slacking off, or maybe you had a good reason that your AP Bio grade went from an A- to a D. (That dang DNA unit!) Regardless, you should definitely respond respectfully and urgently to any letter that asks you to explain yourself. Texas Christian University, or TCU, has been known, for example, to send “fear of God” letters to get students to snap out of senioritis--or explain why it happened. Even if you don’t have a good excuse for your senioritis, you should at least admit your missteps and say how you plan to rectify the situation. Just like how you showed maturity in your college applications, do so again if you’re in this awkward--and totally preventable--situation.
3. Opt to take your AP/IB Exams (if there was any question about it).
Sometimes you need that little extra ounce of motivation in the form of a test. You want to get a head-start on your college life, right? Do the proactive version of senioritis: study for AP/IB exams and shed some of your required coursework so you can focus on the important stuff once you are at college.
Sure, senioritis isn’t going to wreck your acceptance, but why put yourself in the position where it may happen? It is okay to relax a little bit, because you have done the hard work, but don’t do anything so drastic--LIKE PLAGIARISM (IT’S A PROBLEM, FOLKS)--and get in serious academic trouble.
We at B2A are happy to help keep you on course with our academic services. And, of course, for non-seniors, who still need to get all the kinks out before applying to college (and even during that time too), we got you covered. Studying for AP/IB exams? Planning on taking the March SAT or February ACT? Want to learn more about Shakespearean sonnets or supply-side economics? We got you covered. Because when you feel that first sign of senioritis, we’re the doctor with the right prescription.
