College Applications: Are Senior Year Grades Really Important?

I'm sure that we can all relate to the laziness, especially in our last year or two of high school. Students tend to get very antsy to graduate during these years, and start caring less and less about the grades that they're actually getting in school. The phrase "senioritis" wouldn't even exist if so many people weren't so interested in just taking it easy their last year of high school.

However, this is one of the worse things one could do just before going to college. For one, if you're not taking classes seriously in high school, when college comes, you're going to be extremely surprised and overwhelmed. Students who get better grades during their senior year are actually much more likely to stay in college and avoid dropping out, primarily because it's not such a huge workload to them because they've been sensitized to it slowly throughout high school, constantly.

Another thing is that if students engage in their extracurricular activities, even during senior year, you're much more likely to get into the college of your choice, because colleges look at these activities, and the more involved you are with the school, the more likely one is to get into the college they prefer.

So being lazy during your senior year not only makes it harder to go to college in the sense that you're much less likely to be fully prepared, but also in the fact that if you're not participating in any extracurricular activities at all, you're much more likely to have a difficult time getting into the college of your personal preference.

Although most colleges aren't exactly strict about what classes you took during your last year of high school, you should definitely do your best and put fourth your best effort during your senior year, because if you don't you'll end up regretting the waste of time. If you take some harder classes, you're going to be much more prepared for college.

Heck, if you can manage, most high schools offer classes which are preparatory college classes, and some can even transfer over credits to college. This can save money on tuition, as well as total amount of time in class needed before graduation. So picture it like this: the more time you waste during high school, the more time and money you're going to have to put into college. It's a horrible trade-off. Just do your work to the best of your ability in high school, and it'll pay off later!