Xatal

It’s no secret that the senior year in high school is the best of the four. Finally, you’re at the top of the tower and all of the lower grades look up to you. This is your last year of required education, and afterwards you’re free to do with your life as you please.

By senior year, you’ve probably already found your ideal set of friends and have made many new ones. Now that you have the traditionally tough junior year out of the way, be happy — senior year rocks!

So what’s so important about your senior year?

Basically, making the most out of high school. I can’t stress this enough. After this year’s over, this whole part of your life is over, and you won’t get it back. High school is awesome because of the balance between responsibilities and freedoms. You have more privileges than you’ve had before (driving, etc.), but you still don’t (always) have as many responsibilities like work and bills. If you’re going to be a senior, you’re already through with 3/4ths of your time there. Make the most of the last bit.

Academics are King

As a general rule colleges mainly look at your junior year academics. By the time you’ve turned in your college applications, it’s too much early to tell what your grades are going to be for your senior year, so these usually aren’t as big of a deal. If you did well your junior year, you just need to keep it up. So in your senior year, take classes that are consistent with what you’ve been taking. If you’ve been taking a lot of college prep classes, keep it up and take some your senior year too — don’t just drop down to a bunch of PE and art classes, this looks awful. If you used to take 5 or 6 honors/AP classes, you should be fine if you drop down to 3 or 4 honors/AP classes (unless you’re aiming for the most prestigious of schools). Keep your grades at a consistent level as well — taking hard classes means nothing if your grades aren’t what they used to be. In your second semester, once you’ve decided your school, it is okay to take it a bit easier, but make sure you’ve checked your school’s admission requirements first. Some will revoke your admission if your grades aren’t at a certain level. One girl at my school lost her admission to UC Berkeley because she let everything go! Don’t do that.

The People

Everyone has half-friends. You know, the people you talk to in class and get along with, but you never really hang out with them outside of the classroom. Try to forge stronger friendships with them if you can. Getting people together from your class to see a movie or something is great fun and not nearly as awkward as you would think. This is one of my biggest regrets about high school, and I really wish I had made more good friends out of these people.

Electives

If you’re tired of taking harder classes, try taking a few fun classes that interest you. As said above, be careful, but if you’ve always wanted to take a music class or maybe a psychology class, then go for it. Electives like these are almost always easy, and they’ll serve as great classes to look forward to. If you plan to major in the subject, this will look good on your application as well.

Mayhem

While you’re at it, go ahead and break the rules a bit. I’m not saying get yourself in jail or expelled, but cut class once or twice. Talk back to a teacher when they really make you mad. Pull a good prank. You want to be careful because every school has different policies and punishments, but minor infractions won’t really make a difference. A lot of times the memories you make are a lot better: almost all of my best school memories involve breaking the rules in one way or another.

Keep an eye on deadlines

Mark things on a calendar that you look at often. Things like college applications and scholarships can whizz right by you, and you definitely don’t want that. It’s always better to start on it way beforehand than at the last minute. It’s easy to procrastinate, but you don’t want to be that kid who turns in his college application at 11:59:59 PM on the last day they’re accepted. Get stuff done ahead of time so you can relax and have fun later. I’ve made this timeline to give you an idea of when important things will happen throughout your senior year.

The senior year of high school is by far the best of the four. As long as you keep your grades up and make an effort to enjoy it, there’s really no ‘wrong’ way to live it. Have fun!