This one’s for the high school juniors (and future juniors) out there. Soon, winter break will be over and your spring semester will kick off. And this is exactly the time of year when a lot of my junior test prep tutoring clients report feeling a bit of a winter slump. You’ve probably seen your senior friends sweating bullets over their college applications, and you may be dreading when it starts up for you in earnest. Or, you may actually be looking forward to settling back into your school routines again after the strange rhythms of winter vacation. Either way, you might be planning to hit “autopilot” for awhile once next semester begins. You've got so much test prep to do, too! Can't you just chill a bit, academically, for a few months?
Unfortunately, that would NOT be a good idea.
As it turns out, this semester is the single most important term of your whole high school career. So as you prepare to dive into it, I wanted to light a little spark of inspiration under you and help you understand WHY this semester is such a crucial one.
I know, and I sympathize—you’re already feeling tired from test prep. But here’s why you need to not just maintain your grades, but make them the very best you possibly can this spring.
Why Is Junior Spring So Important to Colleges?
You see, you’ll be sending in your Early Decision college applications in November of next year, meaning that you won’t yet have received a full semester of senior-year grades to report on your transcript. Even some of you who are applying Regular Decision might not have a completed fall semester—either because your teachers haven’t sent out your grades yet, or because your high school doesn’t administer finals ‘til January (bummer!).
Either way, this semester you’re just about to jump into will likely be the last term that the admissions officer at your dream university will see. And as you know from every fictional story and play ever written, it’s the ending that determines whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy.
Did you struggle academically freshman year? You can show admissions committees that those low grades were the exception, not the rule (“I just hadn’t gotten the hang of high school yet!”) by demonstrating that your sophomore grades were better than your freshman grades, and—wait for it—that your junior grades were even better than those sophomore grades! If that's how your transcript looks, the story you're telling is one of improvement. Colleges see that story, and they forget all about a few less-than-stellar freshman grades—instead, they get excited to see how high you’re going to fly next on that upwards trajectory. What new accomplishments you're sailing towards. Where your drive to succeed will take you.
But what if we rewrite that same scenario with a different performance in the spring of junior year? Low grades freshman year, followed by a promising uptick during sophomore year, and junior fall pretty good too…..but a “blah” junior spring? Whoops. We’ve just created a downward arc that peaked somewhere during sophomore year. Would we bet on such a pupil earning fantastic grades senior year? Probably not. Do we expect this student to then continue to stretch themselves academically in college? Also probably not. Would this be a good candidate for our incoming class? (What do you think I’m going to say?)
I think I know how you’re going to object here (I've been at this an awfully long time, you see): “But wait, Kristina! I didn’t have sub-par grades freshman year! Mine were actually awesome! (Or: they were...decent!) Why should I have to put my nose to the grindstone junior spring to get supernaturally good grades in the most challenging courses I’ve ever faced, while I also tackle AP/Regents/IB tests AND the ACT/SAT?”
You raise a good point….but your action item (work extra hard in your junior spring classes) remains the same. Even if you did remarkably well freshman year, let’s look at our two endings and see what stories they tell about your academic career:
1) You do just OK (or even poorly) in junior spring.
Uh-oh. You’ve just created a downward trend for yourself, my friend! Doing great freshman year, OK (or even great) sophomore year and the fall of junior year, and then “meh” junior year spring? Looks like your glory days were behind you, and you’ll likely keep not prioritizing your academics senior year and in college. Or maybe it just looks like you’re the kind of student who lets your grades slip when you're overwhelmed (and you know what can be overwhelming? College). Either way, an unimpressive junior spring report card doesn’t bode well.
2) You were equally amazing junior spring.
Even if you stayed the same every single semester, but your “same” is really “amazing,” guess what? That just means YOU are probably a consistently amazing student, and any college would love to have you.
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Starting to get the picture? In ANY scenario, the only approach that truly conveys that you are a fantastic prospect is to have the most stellar (or just equally stellar) semester grade-wise yet!
So, I hope this word to the wise charges you up for the challenges of junior spring. I know they're big hurdles! If you need a coach to help you clear them, check out my resources for self-care and motivation, or reach out to me here—helping my students cope with the pressures of the college process is kind of my bag, after all. And good luck!
