CRUNCH TIME: A Guide for the High-Stakes 11th & 12th Grade Years
So, you’re a Junior or Senior this year, huh?
Or maybe you’re the parent of one!
Well, first, congratulations! I’m excited for them and for you to embark on what I believe are the most exciting couple of years of high school. They were for me and I know they have been for so many of my students. They’re closing in on the end of their high school years AND they’re tip-toeing closer and closer to college (and finally getting to study the things they want to)!
But, that’s not to say these years are easy. As exciting as they are, they also are the most stressful for students. Junior and senior come with much higher stakes than you or your student have ever experienced before.
They’re transitioning into adulthood
The academic pressures feel more intense
And preparing for college, while exciting is daunting
The whole point of this post today is to help you best prepare for that. We’re still in the middle of summer, but the start of the school year is just around the corner. So, as much as we might want to put this off, summer is a great time—in fact, the key time—to prepare for all that’s to come in the coming year(s).
So, here are some practical steps to take during the summer:
1. Don’t completely fall out of a routine.
When summer starts, students want to completely fall out of every and any school year routine that they have. I highly recommend not to do that—especially now. For about half of my students, the school year starts again in just about a month. If they’re completely out of their routine, that school year transition is going to be abrupt…and rough.
So, maintain some semblance of a consistent routine. Maybe you don’t wake up at 6am, like during the school year, but can you commit to waking up at 8? or 9?
What about summer work? Have you even thought about it? Looked at it? Even if you haven’t, you (or your child!) still has plenty of time to get it done. They just need to make a game plan for themselves. In fact, to help with that, check out this amazing resource that I share with all my private tutoring students…
Last but not least, summer is a great time to build executive function skills. I always encourage my students to try to build a new skill over the summer. And it doesn’t even have to be academic or school-related!
One of my students was interested in graphic design, so she planned to learn how to use Procreate on her iPad for the summer. Another of my students was really interested in coding and decided to learn a new coding language. Not only does this help build skills like project management, planning, prioritization, study skills, decision-making, etc. but it’s doing it in a way that is fun for a student and keeps them engaged!
2. Stay Balanced
I actually have this conversation with a lot of the adults I work with in my stress management and burnout coaching business—you can burnout over the summer. For students, that might be really counterintuitive, right? Summer is for rest, fun, socializing, and all those things that they “didn’t get to do” over the school year, right? Or maybe this is the time where they get a job.
That’s awesome! Enjoy your summer, but also recognize that all the late nights, filled-to-the-brim social calendars, etc. might actually be draining you just as much as your full school calendar was. Heck, for a lot of my private tutoring students, they are just as busy (if not more so!) over the summer than they are during the school year.
That’s why it’s so important that students prioritize some self-care and some relaxation over the summer. I personally don’t think that students need any help with finding stimulation over the summer. Intellectual stimulation, maybe, but not stimulation as a whole. If anything, I think students need help finding some relaxation over the summer.
It’s important to understand that “turning off”, whether from social media or constantly socializing, is going to help them achieve true rest, which they probably need to recover from or prepare for the school year ahead.
3. Spend some time reflecting.
I know, it sounds so fun, doesn’t it? But summer is a great time for a student to spend some time reflecting. Whether you sit down with your student or have them do so by themselves, have them reflect on their last year. And don’t just focus on grades either. Ask them what they feel worked and didn’t work for them over the last year.
What about their study routines worked? What didn’t work?
What classes were they happy with how they went and felt? What classes weren’t?
Were there any classes that were more challenging than they anticipated? How were they able to adapt to that? What changes did they make to adjust?
What’s the biggest thing they feel like they need to keep doing and the biggest thing they feel they need to do differently?
How did their organizational systems work for them? How are they going to make adjustments for the coming year?
Self-awareness is a powerful thing. All of these questions are powerful questions that help us to go past grades and move towards lifestyle changes that help make your student a better student and a more successful person. Plus, you can use that reflection to help your student (or yourself) set even better goals for the upcoming academic year. Goals that they can actually buy into.
4. Fill in your Knowledge Gaps Over the Summer (But Make it Fun!)
After you’ve reflected on your past year, summer is also a great time to fill the gaps in a student’s knowledge. Is writing something that is a challenge? Is it a foundational piece of math from a math class? I mean, we all know COVID and online learning really messed with some student’s fundamental and foundational skills.
Once you identify those things, have your student set aside some time each week to develop these skills. If they need to work on their essay writing, have them pick a topic they’re interested in and write a research paper about. One of my students and I wrote an essay about Game of Thrones because she had very strong opinions about the fate of Daenerys Targaryen. If they need to work on their math fundamentals, have they go to a place like Khan Academy, IXL, or Brilliant.org.
The important thing here is to make sure that you create consistency. Otherwise, students might find that they have trouble remembering and retaining.
So much of the content students are learning in high school is building on itself, so having these foundations and fundamentals established is going to be crucial for making sure you’re not finding yourself getting farther and farther behind.
5. Start Your SAT/ACT Prep or College Essays
If you’re a rising Junior, this is the perfect time to start prepping for the ACT and the SAT, especially because this preparation will serve you in your classes and build those foundations we discussed in the last point. I recommend students do as much of their test prep as possible over the summer OR over the first half of their junior year.
The reason for this becomes 2-fold. Firstly, the start of your Junior year is generally lighter, your test prep will overlap with Juniors taking the PSAT, and—importantly—if Juniors finish their test prep by December 2023, they’ll avoid having to deal with the Digital SAT launch in early 2024. So, there’s lots of motivation! Plus, who wants to prep for the SAT/ACT while preparing for AP exams and finals?
If you’re a rising Senior, well, it’s crunch time. If you haven’t already taken your SAT OR your score isn’t where it needs to be for your school, which you can pretty easily be found by Googling the school in question and adding the words “SAT/ACT score range”, you likely are going to need to start preparing and preparing intensely for any and all remaining exams.
If you’re taking the ACT, I would recommend planning to take both the September ACT and the October ACT at a minimum, potentially even considering the December ACT too. Taking as many exams as possible is best because you can leverage super scoring (which most colleges allow). The only caveat for rising Seniors is if you plan on applying Early Decision or Early Action. In this case, the September exam is going to be your best bet and you’re going to have to throw your everything into that test.
If you’re taking the SAT, I would recommend planning to take the August, October or November, and December exams. Again, more is better to take advantage of super scoring. Even if you’re applying ED or EA, you should still have enough time to take both the August and October exams, which I would recommend.
Need help prepping? Click here to learn more about working with me.
6. Start planning and preparing for college essays and college applications
Whether a student is a Junior or a Senior, it’s never too early to start thinking about your college essays and college applications!
For rising Juniors, use this time to start brainstorming what your essays could be about. The great thing about college essays is, for the most part, the admissions essay prompts really don’t change from year to year. So, you can get a jumpstart on identifying what topic you could see yourself writing about for your personal statements. OR maybe you find you come up with no ideas. Well, that’s no problem either because now you have the whole of Junior year to change that. You can brainstorm experiences you might want to engage in, plan to get involved in new clubs, or start a new hobby to push yourself out of your comfort zone (colleges love that!).
Junior year is also an important time to start figuring out what colleges you’re interested in. Visiting colleges and scheduling tours can be a massive time suck, even more so if you’re a student-athlete taking a lot of trips to tournaments and what-not on the weekends. So, planning further ahead will be crucial. Plus, the sooner you know your college list, the sooner you can make sure your SAT/ACT scores goals and class schedule will fit the rigor needed to stand out to your intended colleges.
For rising Seniors, now’s the time to lock in your college list and tour (even virtually) any of the colleges you’ve yet to visit. It’s also time to really start putting pen to paper regarding your essays. I recommend getting organized and creating a spreadsheet of your schools. Shameless plug, I actually have a place to do that inside of my Student planner in Notion. But, spend some time getting organized. Create a spreadsheet of all the schools you’re considering, the due dates of their applications, whether it’s a reach, in-range, or safety school, their SAT and ACT score ranges, and any necessary supplemental essays you’ll need to write. This is also a good time, if you’re planning on applying ED or EA, to determine which school you want to apply to ED/EA so that you can prioritize that school.
Once a student has all of this, they’ll have an idea of how much they need to do and what timeline they’ll need to do it on. Make sure you leave some space for the unexpected that way you’ve got plenty of time to complete everything!
