Smartest students resist temptations of ‘senioritis’

Sarah Rew, a Free State High School graduate and soon-to-be Kansas University freshman, did not give in to senioritis during her final months of high school. Some seniors who slack off their studies after being accepted to a college may find their admissions revoked if their grades fall too far.

During her final semester at Free State High School, honor student Sarah Rew admits to catching “senioritis.”

Already admitted to Kansas University, she said it was hard to stay motivated.

“Of course there were times when I didn’t want to work hard, but I knew that I had to,” Rew said.

But Rew kept up her studies, not wanting to risk high school graduation or college admission.

Nationwide, universities increasingly are revoking admission offers to students whose grades originally were good enough to gain acceptance but whose final exams and transcripts took a dive into Ds or worse. It’s a little-known practice, but it can dump as much as 2 percent of an incoming class.

For example, the University of California, Los Angeles, has begun to send out letters informing some students that their “academic record no longer meets the standards for admission.” So the coveted acceptances to the freshman class, celebrated just months ago, are withdrawn.

“It can be quite traumatic,” Susan Wilbur, director of undergraduate admissions for the UC system, said of the revocations’ effect on students and their parents. The timing is especially hard, she said, because the student usually has turned down other admissions offers by then and has few options left at four-year colleges.

Lawrence-area colleges seem to be more lenient.

Louise Cummings-Simmons, vice president for enrollment management and financial aid at Baker University in Baldwin City, said she couldn’t recall revoking an admission since 2004 when she began her position. But during her nearly 30 years in the business, particularly when she worked at schools in Minnesota and Iowa, she had to call students to tell them the school couldn’t honor their admission.

“I don’t know that it’s any more pronounced than it was 25 years ago, but I think that students, sometimes when they get to that senior year, they’re kind of on empty and thinking they can slide through,” she said.

At Kansas University, fewer than 50 of the nearly 4,000 freshman admitted annually fall into academic trouble during their final semester in high school, said Lisa Pinamonti Kress, KU’s admissions director.

At KU, freshmen are admitted if they achieve a high enough standard in one of three criteria: ACT or SAT examination, high school grade-point average, or rank in graduating class.

KU does make exceptions. Kress said only 1 percent of the freshman class is admitted without fulfilling any of the criteria.

She said it’s very rare for KU to revoke an admission or scholarship based on poor grades in high school.

But Kress said her staff advises high school seniors to stay focused, especially once in college because they can lose scholarships.

Lawrence High School counselor David Raney said he saw signs of “senioritis” last school year, such as students skipping classes.

“I don’t think it’s a huge population of seniors that drop, but I think there’s always a handful that do,” he said.

Rew, the recent Free State graduate, said she and most of her friends would talk about not wanting to go to class, but they did anyway.

“I didn’t want to throw away all of the hard work I’d done the last two years,” she said.