At the end of our junior year in high school, the majority of us are excited to finally embark on our last year of high school. However, our ambitions and goals vary from person to person, one of the most important being to go on to a higher form of education, which is college. In our day and age, getting into a college is highly competetive, and standing out in order to get accepted is difficult when there are likely thousands of other students applying to the same schools that you are. The likely answer would to gain both education and experience by taking difficult classes (such as AP or honors), which display to colleges that one is both responsible and capable of taking on an education at a college or university level. On the otherhand, a schedule such as this could be overwhelming for a senior, especially after already spending twelve years in school, and only having a few months before graduation. Senior year is a person's life when they are stuck between their childhood and becoming an adult, and many would choose to still behave like a child while still getting rewarded like an adult. Colleges have caught onto this pattern, and fairly teach them a lesson that the choices you make have consequences that can cost you much more than they ever did in your childhood.
The term often used as "senioritis" is far from just a myth for the majority of seniors. It's difficult to balance our dreams of what a high school year should be like, mainly because in movies, the last year in high school year is depicted is being effortless and very enjoyable. Seniors often apply to colleges with a list of challenging classes in order to impress them and gain their attention, however many of them either drop out of the class or fail out after the college had already sent them a letter of acceptance. Does this mean that the student is accepted anyways? Most colleges would say "no", and that the student did not prove what he/she had promised, which means that he/she doesn't get what the college had promised. To begin, students that are willing to let their grades drop in high school are more likely to do the same while they are in college, and it would be foolish of a college to waste their time on a student that would eventually just become a drop-out. A higher education is both expensive and not available to everyone, and there is always someone more prefereable to take that person's place. Furthermore, a letter of acceptance isn't valid until the high school diploma has been earned, so if a student had failed a class that was necessary to graduate, but had already been accepted into a university, that acceptance would be invalid.
The reality that teenagers try to ignore is that their childhood is coming to a slow end, and that along with their approaching adulthood comes an obligation to work harder, not only to succeed, but to survive in general. In reality, now choosing between school work or friends is the difference between choosing a life of minimum wage or a life guided by a higher education, which entitles a more stable, higher-paying career after receiving a diploma. After living through a recession, it's evident that a high school diploma alone is not enough to sustain a life above the poverty level, and colleges are more crowded that ever because of this. Although is may be preferable to take the easy way out, no one will ever be able to realize the amount of intelligence or experience someone has if that person were to never reach out to succeed. For example, we can examine an person that takes part in a sport (such as track) and is physically in shape, but doesn't apply themself by practicing like the rest of their teammates do. It is highly unlikely that he/she would be able to prosper by talent, rather than relying on their gains they received from practicing (such as a better endurance, lower body fat, etc.). Relatively, the same would apply on an educational level, for students that have always done the "bare minimum" just to progress towards their high school diploma. It is now that our organizational skills, priorities, and acts of taking initiative shine over the numerous people that only have intelligence but lack ambition.
In conclusion, the act of colleges revoking letters of acceptance after students let their grades fall in their senior year is just an act of showing the true, bitter ways of the world. In our senior year, it is key to not only rely on knowledge, but to put forth effort and make decisions that we never had to necessarily make before, such as choosing between good grades and leisure time. Colleges would rather accept a student that displays both ambition and a potential for growth, because more often that not, these are the people that succeed in our society. Although there an idead that during our senior year, we need to enjoy ourselves as much as possible before we graduate, the fact of the matter is that this is the time when we need to try our hardest in order to prepare ourselves for our future that lies less than a year ahead of us. If colleges were to allow us to slack off during this crucial time in our life,it would not only teach us a lesson that is detrimental to everything we have learned and predicted that college would be like, but it would set an example that our entire adult life would be that way. This is nothing less than far from the truth, and by making us work hard during our senior year, colleges teach us our first lesson of the real world: that the actions we make as adults have real consequences.
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