Are you suffering from senioritis?

graduation

Are you suffering from senioritis?

If you’re a high school senior, now that it’s spring, there’s a good chance that you’ve caught a very common disease: senioritis.

Senioritis – also known as a lack of motivation for doing any type of homework or studying – often sets in after seniors have been accepted to college. Symptoms typically include blowing off all homework assignments, not bothering to do any assigned readings and spending Sunday nights with friends rather than studying for upcoming tests.

While it’s natural to want to take a break after spending the last four years slogging through textbooks and doing endless assignments, neglecting your schoolwork completely can have serious consequences.

Here are five reasons why it’s important to avoid senioritis and continue studying throughout the spring of your senior year:

  1. You can lose your spot in college
    Just because you’ve received an acceptance letter to the college of your choice doesn’t mean that your spot in college is a sure thing. In fact, colleges receive all of your senior year grades, even after you’ve been accepted, and many schools have been known to rescind offers to students whose grades fall dramatically after they get in. According to the National Council on College Admission Counseling, in 2009, 22 percent of colleges revoked the admission of one or more students.
  2. You can lose your scholarship money
    College grants and scholarships are often awarded based on your GPA, so if your grades slip, colleges may rescind those offers. Also, if you are applying for , many of the deadlines to apply aren’t until later in the spring, so you’ll need to include your most recent GPA in your application.
  3. Your AP test scores may suffer
    Even if you decide to slack off in some classes, you definitely want to stay on top of things in any AP course you’re taking because the better you know the material, the better chance you have of scoring a 4 or 5 on the test. And since colleges typically award course credit scores of 4 or 5, you can save significant money in the long run for each AP test you do well on.
  4. You might have a harder time adjusting to college
    The workload you’ll experience in college is often significantly tougher than what you’ve been used to in high school, and adjusting to that workload can be difficult even for good students. Getting out of the habit of studying senior year may make the adjustment to college-level work even more difficult in the fall, which can put you at a serious disadvantage. (To get a jumpstart on this adjustment and make sure you’re prepared for freshman year, sign up for our College Success Workshop this summer.)
  5. Learning without the pressure can actually be fun!
    The best reason not to slack off senior year? Believe it or not, learning can actually be fun! In fact, once the pressure is off to get top scores on every paper and test, you may be amazed at how much you really enjoy discussing novels in AP English or figuring out tough problems in physics class.

Catching a case of senioritis can have serious consequences for your future, so make sure to keep your eyes on the prize throughout your final semester of high school!

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