Senior Year Is a Season of Slackers, Study Says

Call it what you will: senioritis, the senior slump, the Year of the Zombies.

Forget preparing for the rigors of college. The final year of high school is for sleeping in, flipping burgers, hanging out with pals, surfing, partying, fighting with your girlfriend and making up with your girlfriend.

Who can blame students? wonders Michael W. Kirst, a Stanford education researcher who issued a report on the problem Friday. Nobody--not colleges, not high school teachers, not state education agencies--holds seniors accountable for the way they spend one-quarter of their high school careers.

In short, Kirst concludes, senior year is a big waste of time.

Many seniors agree.

“You just get lazy. You figure you are going to college, so you don’t have to do anything,” said Craig Smith, 17, a senior at Fairfax High who was notified last November that he had won an athletic scholarship to attend Boston College.

Smith’s decision to throttle back is a rational response to an education system that has written off the senior year, Kirst says.

“What we have is a year that nobody has a clear purpose for except to maintain students in a custodial situation in an aging vat, until they’re ready to go on to what they’re doing next,” Kirst said.

A few practical changes would go a long way, Kirst said: High schools should link the senior curriculum to the education requirements of the first year of college. Colleges and universities should set explicit standards for senior-year performance and withdraw admissions offers if those standards are not met. And states should ensure continuity between high school and college by putting responsibility for educational planning in the hands of one agency.

Kirst said the timing of admissions decisions and the lack of a compelling curriculum have allowed too many students to check out mentally as high school winds down.

Across the country, most college decisions are made in the fall of senior year, so many students see no reason to worry about first-semester grades.

By second semester, they’re coasting.

“I don’t want to do anything,” said Jinjoo Son, 19, another Fairfax High senior. A resident of South Korea until five years ago, she will attend UC Santa Barbara.

Son said many students in her Advanced Placement courses are restless. They talk in class--some even doze off--as frustrated instructors try to continue teaching. But Son said that she is maintaining her grades.

Kay Ochi, college counselor at Fairfax, said part of the senior slump can be attributed to the lack of counselors in the schools and limited parental support.

“Who is supposed to support and motivate students to take a higher level of classes but parents and counselors?” asked Ochi. “It’s hard to give that support when you are stretched so thin.”

But some colleges are waking up to the problem, keeping students in line by threatening to withdraw their admission offers if requirements aren’t met or grades dip.

“This year for the first time, the UCs have taken a stand that if a student drops anything substantive needed for UC entrance, the student must e-mail the school and be reevaluated,” said Maureen Linkogle, a counselor at Palos Verdes Peninsula High.

The hard-line approach works. One student, warned by UCLA that he would no longer be welcome at the campus if he dropped a high-level math class, decided to bear down.

“He’s doing great in his calculus class now,” Linkogle said.

Many colleges attempt to warn students that what is given can be taken away--though it is unclear how many act on their threats.

An admission letter from the University of Pennsylvania says: “We do expect that your academic performance will continue throughout your senior year at the same high level.” And from UC Davis: “If. . . your academic performance drops significantly, the offer of admission may be revoked.”

Kirst’s findings are consistent with those of other researchers and educators. In January, the National Commission on the High School Senior Year, appointed by the U.S. Department of Education, found that senior year becomes a lost opportunity for many students. The 30-member panel is expected to issue recommendations next month.

Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the California State University system and a panel member, said the recommendations could call for requiring Advanced Placement, math or science classes in the senior year. The panel might also emphasize the importance of science labs and foreign languages.

Colleges have tired of the costly chore of bringing ill-prepared freshmen up to speed with remedial math and English classes, he said. Almost everyone entering the community college system in Los Angeles requires such help, one official said. And at Cal State campuses, the figure is 55%.

Some students complain that the pressures of college application season leave them so drained that senior slump is inevitable.

Masha Melnik, 18, a senior at Fairfax High said: “I just want to get out of here.”

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Times staff writers Jill Leovy and Rebecca Trounson contributed to this story.