<p>I heard the “momentum” argument a lot back when I was in high school. I didnt try 2nd semester, (still ended up with all As except for in AP Calculus in which I did laughably atrocious because I knew college admissions were sealed.) First year of college I got a 3.6 and made the dean’s list anyway.</p>
<p>From a high school senior in a very similiar mind set as your son, I can understand how he feels. College applications are in, our GPA is frozen, and graduation seems right around the corner. There’s no motivation to do as well as in previous semesters. This said, however, two things have kept me motivated to keep working: the fear or withdrawl of acceptance and the following blunt statement by my parents: “Don’t want to do your work anymore? Fine. We can’t make you study and pass. But we are not going to financially support you if that’s your decision. School is you job. We have ours. If you don’t want school as your job anymore, then go find another one.” I, like your son, have enjoyed a life not defined by financial hardships. Thus, the reality of working at a minimum wage job down the street scares the sense back into me.</p>
<p>Has he been watching the final season of Six Feet Under?</p>
<p>He’s already accepted</p>
<p>You’re making it a bigger deal than what it really is</p>
<p>As long as he isn’t failing then you need to get off his back</p>
<p>As soon as finals are over this week im doing the bare minimum to have an 80 in all my classes.</p>
<p>about the gap year, i found it difficult to restart my motivation after the time i’ve taken off. you get used to not having to do school work, and i’m not gonna lie, it’s nice.</p>
<p>To say and I quote “he is already accepted” is to imply this is irreversible. NOT! Every year, there are thousands of kids whose acceptances get rescinded due to a dive in their grades or some other stupid behavioral problem that puts them in jeopardy with whatever institution they were planning to attend. That attitude can only hurt and certainly not help.
In the last 5-7 years, the senior year has become an increasingly important chunk of the overall academic picture. It used to be 10th and 11th grade, but now most schools openly say that the first half of senior year is equally as important whether applying for reg. decision or even early action where even though admitted, they will still get your grades. Nothing is set in stone, it is very important particularly in a year where we have broken every record in terms of the numbers therefore competitiveness, to keep the grades up and stay on top of what got you accepted in the first place.
I am glad things weren’t as bad as you thought and that he pulled through in the end, though. I think its stressful for us parents to sit and watch them go into relaxation mode, when we know the importance of keeping up the good work.</p>
<p>^^^ you have to get REALLY bad grades for this to happen. like totally bottom out. the OP posted again, her son is doing okay afterall, as many of us predicted…</p>
<p>bulletandpima: </p>
<p>thank you. that’s probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me, especially coming from a stranger. You’ve got more insight about myself than I think I do! :)</p>
<p>i’m sorry if i lumped you into a category – it wasn’t my intention. That’s the inherent difficulty with online forums. no one (myself deifinitely included) explains themselves fully, and we rarely know where people are coming from in their opinions. So it’s easy to judge and jump to conclusions. I’m not excusing my actions, I’m just trying to interpret a trend I find pretty common here. I had a long PM discussion with one cc’er about finaid and parents, and after several long PM’s back and forath we basically realized we had agreed with each other all along despite all the bickering we went through. We were both just selectively taking information from each others messages to fit our own perogative, and not knowing the full story. After a while, we did get the full story. And all was cool. 
This should happen more often. </p>
<p>Anyone else notice how easy it is to be a prick under the blanket of internet annonymity (myself included)?</p>
<p>A few years ago the University of Michigan sent out a form letter to high schools which stated that several hundred of the seniors whom they accepted had their acceptances rescinded due to a drop in grades.</p>
<p>Colleges will revoke acceptance if a student’s grades drop.</p>
<p>There are a lot of articles online about how students screwed things up for themselves and had to postpone their plans. That might wake him up to the reality of the situation.
A few examples:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/education/edlife/rescind22.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=all[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/education/edlife/rescind22.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=all</a>
[UC</a> Davis Magazine, Fall 2004: Parents](<a href=“http://ucdavismagazine.ucdavis.edu/issues/fall04/parents.html]UC”>http://ucdavismagazine.ucdavis.edu/issues/fall04/parents.html)</p>
<p>The latter article mentions a kid who sued the university. Here is what happened to him (he didn’t make it):
[Number</a> 2 Pencil: Failing in his Tar Heel bid](<a href=“http://www.kimberlyswygert.com/archives/001293.html]Number”>http://www.kimberlyswygert.com/archives/001293.html)</p>
<p>Additionally, here is a very real thread from CollegeConfidential: student with a D in trig, GPA still over 3.2, but he got his admission rescinded.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-santa-cruz/356865-revoke.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-santa-cruz/356865-revoke.html</a></p>
<p>To be fair, that was a student in the UC system, which has much more stringent and rigid grade requirements than the majority of colleges.</p>
<p>Senioritis can be lethal to college admissions. A couple of years ago UW revoked its offers of admissions to slacking students:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[Local</a> News | UW revokes admission offers in severe cases of “senioritis” | Seattle Times Newspaper](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2003286270&slug=uwadmissions03m&date=20061003]Local”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2003286270&slug=uwadmissions03m&date=20061003)</p>
<p>
Clay, I found the opposite. Instead of playing world-traveler for a year, I was working a FT salaried job to work up dough for college. And after a year of that, I realized two things VERY plainly:</p>
<ul>
<li>The real world is DAMN lonely if you don’t really have much social life as a young adult. I’d go to work, come home for dinner by 7 or so, and watch my red sox or play some video games before bed around midnight. Every day. I lost touch with a lot of my HS friends (who never saw me anymore and had much less in common with me), didn’t have many people I could call, wasn’t invited to parties, etc.</li>
<li>I started thirsting for a challenging academic environment. After a really rigorous and stressful HS experience, working a job - even a reasonably demanding technical one - just isn’t nearly as stimulating. I wanted to be around people my age, wanted to be in a setting where I could learn things, wanted to try things that were <em>new</em>.</li>
</ul>
<p>So it’s no surprise that I was thirsting for the classroom by the time I got into school. It should also be no surprise that, (1) having been granted a “second chance” to get back on the wagon, and (2) having put in the hours for an honest job, that I was better prepared discipline-wise than most people coming out of Senioritis-ville. I blew away my classes freshman and sophomore year to the tune of a 4.0 in a fairly tough engineering school.</p>
<p>The best motivator for enjoying the luxuries of an academic lifestyle is to get a taste of the alternative. The real world sucks by comparison, especially for a 17-year-old.</p>
<p>^^^ definitely true for most people</p>
<p>after my first year off, my “gap” year, after high school, i was itching to go back. </p>
<p>then i got sick in 2005 and took a year long medical leave. this time it was a lot harder to go back, because i found a lot of things i’d basically rather be doing than school. And the return to waking up for classes and doing hw was much more difficult. I just took another health related semester off (will return this spring) so we’ll see how that whole motivation thing goes…</p>
<p>i’m just trying to give fair warning that it can happen :)</p>
<p>Sounds like your son has got it right. </p>
<p>Second semester of senior year in high school really doesn’t matter and it isn’t hard for good students to still pull A’s without doing much work. I barely did any work second semester and got nearly straight A’s and nearly all 5’s on my AP tests.</p>
<p>If he’s already in college, let him take it easy a bit. If he’s taking any classes that could be translated into credits that he will actually use in college, encourage him to stay focused in at least those select classes.</p>
<p>I did the same thing, telling my parents I wasn’t going to try second semester. And I still got good grades. In my opinion, there is a huge gap in the amount of time required to get a high A and a low A/high B. Chances are, any successful student cannot shut it off entirely unless he deliberately tries hard to.</p>
<p>Hi, I am also a senior in High School, if your son has already been accepted into his school of choice, then it is okay if he slacks of a little bit, the college he is going to wont turn around and say never mind, you cant come here, as long as your son is passing his classes he will be okay, and as far as his job, its quite alright if your son is looking for a job that he will enjoy and not so much the money, but you might want to tell him that even living a simple life will be hard. Let him know that he should consider the money he will be makeing, I aslo want to enjoy my job, but I also want to live my life without having to worry about debt or my next electric bill, so salary is also a big thing in my career choice. Hope this helps</p>
<p>Let him take a year off and take a gap year, he will travel around and do work experience for a year then attend school.</p>