Senior Slide. Senior Slump. Senior Spring. Senior Slack. Senioritis.

"I got accepted into college. Now nothing matters."

We hope all seniors (and their parents) will take time to reflect upon our notes below and rise above the impetus to allow their efforts to wane.

1. All offers of acceptance are conditional. Although the terminology is typically reserved for application offer formats elsewhere in the world, the "conditional offer" applies to all acceptances, including those to US schools. All colleges and universities expect students to continue on with their studies in a manner consistent with that demonstrated at the time of and on their application. Drops in grades, therefore, could result in colleges rescinding their offers of admission! There is always a senior or two in each class who risks it all by allowing efforts to slacken.

2. AP and IB exams matter. In addition to those explicit terms of a conditional offer (where a student may be told he or she must achieve a certain score on an exam), AP and IB exams are important. In some cases, they can result in advanced standing (e.g. sophomore status) if your AP scores are high enough to earn credits, thereby lessening the cost of college. In other cases, these scores may be used to allow you to bypass introductory-level courses. They do matter!

3. Scholarships could be in the balance. Some students may have been awarded scholarships for demonstrating a certain level of achievement or even certain character attributes. Ceasing to meet these ideals can result in the loss of these free monies. Also, other universities will award additional scholarship money based upon achievement at graduation; if you slack off, this money will go elsewhere! (In the class of 2018, we had a student who was awarded after graduation in July a US$20K scholarship that he did not apply for when his college saw his stellar spring semester performance!)

4. Spring performance is a predictor of success. Perhaps most importantly, performance during the spring of senior year has been shown to be positively correlated with college performance. In other words, how you finish high school tends to predict how you will fare in college! This lends credence to the college practice of rescinding offers!

5. You will appreciate ending high school on a positive note. After all the hard work you have put in during high school, you will appreciate later on (if not necessarily now) knowing that you ended on a high note. How awkward it would be if you left in a manner that resulted in your feeling embarrassed about coming back to see so many people who have meant so much to you!

In the end, the message is simple: KEEP WORKING!

I originally wrote a version of this post for http://blogs.tas.edu.tw/collegecounseling/2019/01/15/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-senior-spring/on 15 January 2019.