The Importance of Junior Year

I’m currently about to start what everyone around me labels “the most important year of your high school career”. Yes, junior year is upon me and most of my friends, the year that our high school counselors threaten could make or break us, and yet surprisingly very few of my peers seem to understand why your junior year in high school holds so much importance.
There are more obvious reasons for junior year’s importance, like the fact that this is when you take the ACT, PSAT, and SAT. The scores you amass from these tests can be essential depending on what sort of college you’re looking to go to. My top choice schools have very little interest in standardized test scores, but despite this it’s still a wise choice to study and take them in case you apply to a variety of schools. Another bonus of taking these tests is that you can often re-take them in the spring, and if the college doesn’t require the score and you did extremely poorly, you can leave it off of your application.
Beyond that though is the fact that junior year is your last year to work on your grade and become involved in things that interest you. While you can always improve these things in senior year, the reason that junior year is so much more important is because that’s what colleges will see.
I’m a firm believer that when it comes to extracurriculars you should do things that interest you, not what you think a college board will most like to see. Despite that though, you need to remember that when you’re writing all of your college essays during senior year you’ll need something to talk about. If you did stuff related to the major you’re interested in, great, if you did stuff that reflected your interests and strengths, even better. Junior year allows you to put yourself out there and get involved with things that are important to you, not only allowing you to enjoy your interests but also giving you the opportunity to display to colleges what sort of person you are.
Academically junior year is also a massive deal. Your grades from the previous two years are important in determining your GPA, and junior year is your last chance to improve or maintain your grades. The college counselor at my school recommends saving extremely difficult elective courses for senior year, when a college will be able to look only at your schedule and the level of the classes you’re taking, but not at how well or poorly you might be doing in them. This isn’t to say that the grades you get in senior year aren’t important, as some colleges only accept students who by the end of high school have achieved a certain GPA, but oftentimes grades that you get during your last year have very little importance compared to those earned the year before. Because of this any students who have achieved poor or mediocre grades in the past are strongly pressured to improve during their junior year in order to strengthen and improve their college applications. While many colleges will not immediately throw out a student’s application based on their GPA, many take it into consideration, so the stronger you can make it the better chances you have.
To anyone else entering junior year, simply remember that this is your last chance to make an impression or greatly improve yourself before high school’s over, so try to take advantage of the upcoming year as much as possible. Good luck.