Seniors sweat it

It used to be the season of slack, a payback for months of SAT preparations, for years of joining all those clubs and doing all that volunteer work because it looked good on the applications, the agonizing over earnest sales-pitch essays -- “I would improve the overall character of Harvard because.... “

Maybe during the first semester, you kept it at a solid “B,” but by second semester, school was effectively over -- you’d gotten the acceptance letter, so what more could anyone want from you? Even if you weren’t going to college, senior year was all about gut courses, study hall and cutting both as many times as possible while still making it across the stage at graduation.

But that was totally 20th century. And for today’s high-pressured seniors, it might as well have been ancient Rome. Forget ditch days at the beach and the mall; stricter attitudes from teachers and the competition for both four-year and junior colleges keep more and more students grinding away until the bitter end.

“There is this myth that it will be all about slacking,” says Adam Baumgarten, who is about to begin his senior year at Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies. “But I have to take four or five more [Advanced Placement] classes if I want to go to any of the UCs. So it looks like it will just be a sick, disgusting extension of junior year.”

Keith Myatt, director of the California School Leadership Academy, remembers a time when senioritis was so rampant that some schools began requiring seniors to be on campus at least four hours a day. Myatt’s youngest child, a senior this year, needs no such rule. “I’ve got three older children,” he says, “and this is the most serious senior of all of them. He’s gotta be.”

“Senior year now is very different from senior year 15 years ago,” says Linda Evans, co-principal of Crescenta Valley High, and Crescenta Valley incoming senior Pronita Saxena is living proof.

“I signed up for six AP classes, and I’m involved in a mock trial program at school and classical dance,” Saxena says. “There is a tremendous pressure to get into the right college. Everyone makes it seem like it will make or break your life. I don’t think there will be much time for slacking off.”

There won’t be, recent graduates warn.

Rebecca Lee, who graduated this year from North Hollywood High and is enrolled at Columbia University, admits she felt senioritis -- that itchy temptation that comes with the knowledge that unless you fail every single class, you will graduate. But the dire tales teachers repeated of slacker students who had their acceptances revoked, as well as an attendance-taking attitude of “school is over when I say it’s over,” kept her working pretty much every single minute of her senior year. “The teachers were all very insistent that we had to keep working -- my math teacher let us know she would not have any compunction about failing us.”

A cohort in a hurry

These are members, of course, of the hurried-child generation. Their pell-mell rush toward premature adulthood in everything from spending habits to sexual activity has been a source of general social concern since they were born. So it seems at once fitting and harsh that they be denied this last ritual of childhood. The senior year coast is, or was, one of the last socially condoned respites before a lifetime of multitasking and saving for a down payment.

The increased competition for acceptance to top-flight colleges is the primary motivation for many members of the new high-octane senior year. But there is also more pressure on the 40% to 60% of graduating seniors who will attend two-year colleges or no college at all.

“There was a time when you could graduate from high school, get a job and have a nice life,” says Laurie Wiebold, regional director for California’s Advancement Via Individual Determination program, which is geared toward students who in previous generations might not have gone to college.

Stricter requirements in the California State University system, she says, will eliminate remedial opportunities -- students who don’t do well on placement tests will have to go to community colleges. “And with budget cuts,” she says, “students see how precarious even an acceptance is.”

For years, schools across the country have struggled with students who thought they deserved a breather. Some states have considered axing senior year entirely rather than using taxpayers’ money to fund a year full of chorus classes and study hall -- Florida seniors can graduate with 18 credits rather than the 24 required in other years. Other states have developed programs to keep seniors interested enough to show up; in Washington and Minnesota, students can enroll in college classes during their senior year, while in New Jersey and other states, the Wise Individualized Senior Experience offers seniors for-credit classes in guitar or scuba diving.

In Los Angeles County, and California in general, fear has been a primary motivator for seniors. Class standards as well as graduation requirements have been steadily getting tougher: In some districts, students must now have three credits in math and science instead of two, and countywide one of those credits must include algebra. Cutting class even during the last semester of senior year is taken very seriously, and pranks that were once the hallmark of outgoing seniors often result in students not being allowed to graduate onstage or, even worse, disciplinary letters being sent to their prospective colleges or universities.

“The days of finishing most of your academics by 11th grade and taking only two core classes in senior year are over,” Myatt says. “Assessment testing means we now know how many kids in each school are reading below grade level or dropping out. Which brings down more pressure from the community -- if test scores are so low, parents want to know, why are you letting [the seniors] out of school at 10?”

Meanwhile, colleges, faced with budget cuts and ever-increasing application numbers, have been talking tough, making it clear in acceptance letters that a place at the school is reserved for a student contingent on continued performance at the previous level, a fact teachers and administrators make very clear to students.

“All the teachers have stories of kids who got their acceptance revoked,” says Lee.

“Some selective colleges want a midyear report [after acceptance],” says Eileen Doctorow, college counselor at North Hollywood High. “All colleges require a final transcript, and if the grades have really dropped off, the college has a right of refusal. In rare cases,” she says, “the acceptance has been revoked.”

A cure for senioritis

Four years ago, senioritis was so rampant that the U.S. Department of Education put together the National Commission on the High School Year. Its first, and so far only, report found that senior year was, indeed, too often a lost one, leaving students ill prepared for the rigors of college or the workplace. When the report came out, Evans says, it was a hot topic among the consortium of Los Angeles principals to which she belongs. And at her school, administrators began to think of ways to counter the trend, including offering more AP classes, creating a relationship with Glendale Community College to better prepare those seniors not applying to a four-year college, and making students and parents aware that colleges do look at senior grades.

“I started off thinking senior was going to be an easier year,” says Gabriel Sobel, who graduated this year from Hamilton High School in Los Angeles and now attends New York University. “I was slacking off. Then I got my 10-week grades and I realized I was going to have to shape up. So I worked really hard. My mom was much more worried than I was, though.”

Just as many colleges require a certain number of AP classes, and grade point averages well over 4.0, many are also looking for extremely well-rounded students, which translates into extracurricular activities and internships. This summer, Saxena worked with a nonprofit in India, creating, among other things, a report on national and international provisions for child rights and primary education there.

At John Marshall High School in Los Angeles, college counselor Tricia Bryan says senioritis is now virtually nonexistent. “We see some laziness about applying for scholarships,” she says. “And there will always be a few students who are having troubles. But most seniors know that all college offers are provisional and that they cannot afford to drop their grades or their course load too much.”

In conversations about senior years, the word “rigor” comes up with alarming frequency. But teachers and administrators argue that it is the unprepared student who is most likely to drop out after a semester or so of college or junior college.

“If we allow senior year to be a time of coasting, a reward for three years of hard work,” says Raynette Sanchez, senior project director of professional development at the Los Angeles County Office of Education, “then how well will they be prepared for college life? Research shows the rigor of classes taken in high school is the best predictor of success in college. And that has to include senior year.”

The piling on of AP classes has some parents and teachers concerned with burnout, and there has been some talk of limiting the number of college-level classes a high school student can take. But no one sees a return to the kinder, gentler senior year when students filled their schedules with Tanning 101 and Advanced Mall Crawling. For that, the students will have to wait until college.

Senior Saxena notes that “kids come back to CV [Crescenta Valley] from their freshman year and say, ‘You are going to have so much fun in college. You only have four classes a couple of times a week.’ ” Right now I have no time to relax at home. After all this, college will be a breeze.”