Junior year is the year most people look forward to.  Finally being an upperclassmen gives a majority of students a certain type of excitement everyone wants to feel.  Whether it’s the seating during pep rallies or just finally no longer being an underclassmen, the thought of junior year is an incredible one to most. Once you finally become a junior, however, the feelings change.  What once used to feel like the happiness after spending a day at the beach now feels like the bitter, not so sweet taste of getting slapped in the face with an overwhelming amount of homework and stress.  

Junior year is a very important one, and it is very crucial in helping one go to college. A majority of colleges, if not all, look at the student’s cumulative GPA of their junior year and only the first semester of a student’s senior year GPA.  So one could say that the grades you get during junior year are the most important out of all the high school years. Since a student’s transcript during their Junior year is so vital when it comes to which colleges they will be able to attend, a majority of students take as many college level courses as they possibly can. Not only do they enroll in a lot of APs but they also try to get involved around the school in things like sports, honor societies, and clubs.  At first glance, a student might think they are able to tackle these challenges, but ends up finding out they can’t handle the amount of work and stress that comes with all of it.

Along with work and stress that comes with the regular day-to-day school life, the typical junior also has to balance their social life and maybe even a job into the equation.  Not only are grades important when it comes to acceptance in colleges, but so is well-roundedness.  A majority of colleges actually prefer students who have a lot of extracurriculars and an average GPA versus a student with a high GPA and no extracurriculars.  Most colleges prefer these types of students because it shows that they have well time management skills, which can come in handy with real world situations, including college life.

Not only does junior year include perfecting your GPA and getting involved to get into the colleges you want, but it also means it’s time to strap down on reality.  Junior year means it’s time to finally decide what you want to become in life and what college you want to attend to help make that happen.  Not only do a majority of students take their SATs and ACTs during their junior year, but they also decide what college they want to claim as theirs.  Finding the college you wish to attend is very important to do during your junior year so when senior year comes around you know which ones you want to focus on and apply to.

As you can clearly see, colleges and junior year go hand-in-hand. Whether it’s the GPA, the extracurriculars, or just simply it being the time to look at colleges. It’s clear to see that junior year plays a big role.  Most people don’t realize the stress and hard work that comes with being an upperclassmen until they finally are one, but once the hard work and stress of junior year is finally over, it’ll be worth it.