Do your senior year grades matter?
Your senior year grades matter.
A student of mine, whom we'll call James (name changed to protect the guilty) applied to the University of Arizona and was admitted based on his junior year transcripts. The abbreviated story is that he got senioritis really bad. His GPA dropped and UA removed all his scholarships. Worst case scenario is that the student could have been denied admission even after receiving an acceptance letter.
About 100 students received the F.O.G. “Fear of God” letter from a prestigious university in Texas. This letter stated that they may or may not admit the student based on the poor performance their senior year.
It is not uncommon for colleges to rescind the admission decision or reduce the amount of scholarships because of poor performance in the senior year.
“It is one of the hardest things to send a letter asking for an explanation,” Lee Ann Afton, dean of admission and financial aid at Sewanee: The University of the South, wrote. “Fortunately we don’t have too many students who just stop studying completely, but if the drop is too extreme, we will rescind our offer of admission. I always remind students that every letter of acceptance has the sentence about the offer of admission is contingent on successful completion of high school work.”
Here is an article in the New York Times about this very subject.
The moral of the story is finishing the race strong. Don’t get senioritis of you may get F.O.G.’d.
