Senior-itis?

I realize most people here have much younger kids but maybe some
of you have advice about my daughter, a high school senior.

DD turns 18 next month. She has already been accepted to a good
college.She seems to be slacking off a lot in her school work. All
along she has been a very good student. She would keep track
of her schoolwork and get it done on time. I haven't been involved
in making her do homework ever. I would help when requested but
didn't check it over or get into details. And that was fine.

I can't decide if I should continue to let her deal with it herself,
suffering any drops in grades that result, or if I should get more
involved and insist that she cut back on some of her outside
activities so she has the time to do the schoolwork and also
sit with her at times and help her make a schedule to get things
done even if she doesn't like them.

bizby40...

What would the consequences be? Sometimes acceptance
to college is dependant on maintaining a certain grade point
average. You might want to check that out.

Also, how low are they dropping? Is she in any danger of
not graduating?

If the answers to the above are that her college acceptance
is safe and she's not in danger of failing, I'd probably just
stay out of it.

She seems stressed over the issue to me. Most of the time, if I
ask her if she has enough time to do her homework, she gets
all defensive and yells and says she does. This morning she said
she didn't feel well so I let her stay home and sleep. When I spoke
to her mid-day she was doing schoolwork.

She did go to her part-time job (which she says by her choice
and not because I made her) and before she left she told me
she had gotten a call from someone at school telling her about
more work she had to do.I think she's feeling both overwhelmed
yet uninterested in doing the work.

Suggestions from anyone who has been through this either
as the parent or the teen would be helpful. (I didn't slack off
in high school as a senior, I was too much of a goody-goody.)
I find it hard to talk to her because she interprets
ANYTHING I say as criticism no matter how helpful I try to be.

Cathy Kearns...

Last year my niece graduated from high school. She was accepted to a state
college in April of her senior year. Given her grades her last semester they
withdrew her acceptance. She is now doing junior college part time while
working retail. She is a very smart girl, but it's hard to dig out after
getting accepted and rejected.

Zipadee...

Wow. How much did her grades slide that they rejected her?

Ericka Kammerer...

Different colleges have a different criteria,
but it probably says in her admission offer that her
offier is contingent upon submission of her final grades.
Some large percentage of college applicants have A
averages. If her grades essentially drop below the
grades of the accepted students pool, she's definitely
in danger of having her offer withdrawn.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Cathy Kearns...

She got a "D" in one class.

One of our friends tell the story of his son getting into his east coast
prestigious alma mater. Then he got a bad case of senioritis and his grades
slacked off (but not as low as Ds). The alma mater pulled their acceptance
despite his father's alumni status, donor status, and doctorial thesis board
membership.

The dean of admittance from UC Santa Cruz said every year they have to send
summer letters to tons of students to tell them that their grades dropped
too much, and they were no longer welcome. It's devestating because at this
point there is no backup plan. This is one of those things that seems to
have gotten more strict since I went to college.

eliz_reid...

Eek.

Just out of curiosity, what's the rationale for this? If the kid has
gotten good grades for all of high school, clearly they can do the work
and the problem is senioritis... so why withdraw admission?

Banty...

Maybe it correlates pretty well with difficulties in college.

eliz_reid...

If true, that would make a certain amount of sense.

Ericka Kammerer...

Because they see senioritis as a lack of commitment
that is inconsistent with what they expect out of their
students, who are supposed to be in it for learning's sake.

eliz_reid...

That just seems so harsh to me... I mean, I'm motivated by love of my
job to some extent, but I'm also motivated by the fact they pay me. If

Ericka Kammerer...

Well, but when you've got a long list of applicants
who'd love to get in who aren't letting their grades slide,
it becomes a more challenging question.

Best wishes,
Ericka

they stopped paying me, I'd be less motivated! In my memory, an awful
lot of the work I did in high school had little to do with pure love of
learning and much more to do with needing to do it and get it done so I
could go to college, and after the 'payoff' had been received I
definitely got less interested, although I don't think my grades
dropped to any huge degree.

I guess I should be glad my university didn't know that. :-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

dragonlady...

It can be even worse than just this: when my brother applied to
graduate schools, one that turned him down said it was because his
grades had seriously dropped his senior year in high school -- that in
spite of his undergrad record.

It's worth knowing.

My daughter and I talked tonight. Managed most of the conversation
reasonably without her yelling. I said if she was finding that she
didn't
have enough time to get schoolwork done that she should decide to
cut back on either the part-time job or the social activities and that,

for now, I would leave that decision to her. If things really get to be
a
problem, the decision won't be hers...

toypup...

I had severe senioritis in high school. My calculus class grades reflected
that. I went from A's at the beginning of the quarter to F's at the end.
Luckily, that averaged out to a C and I passed. My grades had been good
until then and I had already been accepted and the acceptance wasn't
withdrawn. I agree with Bizby. If the acceptance to college is not in
peril, stay out of it.

Rosalie B....

My niece got senoritis, and her admission to a prestigious
Pennsylvania university was withdrawn and she ended up going to
Carnegie Mellon instead which was her second choice. She had been a
really good student until then and I think it was her calculus grades
that dropped also. This was particularly bad in her case because she
applied to the engineering school.

grandma Rosalie

Zipadee...

Carnegie Mellon is still an excellent school. But by the time final
grades came out and her original first choice withdrew her
acceptance, wouldn't she have turned Carnegie Mellon down
as well as any other schools that had admitted her?

My daughter got into her first choice early decision so she
didn't apply elsewhere anyway.

I guess I'm going to need a lot of patience for the rest of this
school year!

I did put one restriction in place though. Her school has a
very flexible PE requirement and there are lots of ways to
fulfill it (PE class or a team sport or verifyable outside activities).

She does it by going to a gym at least twice a week. She hasn't
been doing so lately so I finally told her if she didn't get back to
doing that, possibly by reducing her work hours, then she was
going to have to do it Friday and Sat nights when she'd rather
be socializing. It IS a graduation requirement (and I
am paying for the gym) so she has to do it.