High School and Higher Expectations

Year by year

When a student becomes a freshman, everything starts to count toward graduation and college. Freshman courses, grades, and credits all become part of a student's transcript, and freshman grades are used in determining a student's grade point average (GPA). Freshman activities, honors, and awards can also be listed on college and scholarship applications. High school is the big time! All that preparation you've been doing, developing good habits and encouraging academic excellence, will really start to show in high school.

This doesn't mean you can slack off with any of the involvement you've already practiced. Your teen might not act like it, but your involvement in their school is still important to them. Now is the time to become familiar with high school graduation requirements. Sit down and figure out with your student which classes she should be taking. Investigate test requirements. If your high school has an exit exam--a test your student must pass in order to graduate--you should know about it now. Continue to attend any parent-teacher conferences, and start going to college financial aid nights and/or college fairs. No, it's not too early. While you're at it, look into any career orientation programs or resources, and visit the college resource center. Familiarize yourself with these things now--you're going to be using them a lot in the next few years.

Sophomore year is an important one for personal growth and the development of the interests that will carry your student into an adult future. No longer a freshman but not yet an upperclassman, the sophomore has a certain amount of freedom to explore. Use it! Get your student involved in any activities that interest her--you're working on identifying strengths, abilities, aptitudes, and interests here, so encourage a wide range of possibilities.

• Keep track of academic progress to make sure goals are being met.

• Testing starts in tenth grade, so you need to prepare for practice SATs and ACTs.

• Join career development clubs on campus.

• Volunteer!

• Keep college in the conversation.

As a junior, your student needs to register to take the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) and the ACT (which used to stand for American College Testing but now goes only by the acronym ACT). If test-taking isn't your student's strong suit, then you might want to consider taking a course specially designed to help kids get through the SAT. Ask at your counselor's office or look online for a course near you. While you're online, you can investigate colleges. Send away for brochures from any that meet your requirements (you'll need to read the college chapter in this book first). Take the time to narrow the choices down to about six, seven, or eight colleges that your student could see himself attending. And, as always, keep an eye on general academic progress. Slips in grades now can still be remedied in summer school.

Everything comes together for a senior. The rewards of all the hard work become visible. You still need to keep careful track of dates of tests, college application deadlines, and scholarship application deadlines. Academics can't be allowed to fall victim to senioritis (the disease that affects those soon to be graduated): Despite senior parties, senior proms, and senior status, homework still has to be done and projects still need to be completed. Once applications are done and college acceptances start arriving in the mail, you need to help choose a college.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the demands of high school. Your student could easily feel lost or drowning. If they didn't get time-management lessons in middle school, now is the time for a crash course.

In their four years of high school, they need to learn such things as how to take notes, how to do research, and how to write up the results of both. Good study habits learned earlier need to be reinforced. Students also need to keep up with the technology around them. Kids usually don't have a problem with this, but as parents we have to remember to encourage what we ourselves might not be all that tuned into. Computers and the Internet are necessary to a student's survival, so typing classes are a must.

At the same time, a college-bound student needs to take as much math and science as is offered as well as all their college-required courses. If you think this sounds easy, then try running it by your teenager. They'll tell you it can be fiendishly difficult. But it's not impossible.

As if this weren't enough, colleges are looking for students with a solid grounding in nonacademic subjects as well. Participation in service clubs, church, sports, or any volunteer activity is, to a college admissions officer, an indication of a well-rounded person and an attractive candidate for college admission. Even better, if your student takes a lead role in student government, school spirit groups, or extracurricular activities, then colleges are going to notice and respond favorably.