As CESJDS seniors count down their final days of high school, the number who have been accepted into colleges steadily goes up. With future plans intact, it can become more challenging for seniors to remain focused on academics.

Seniors began to be accepted into college as early as September. Many have been accepted through binding early applications, which means that they are already committed to attending a certain school.

Senior Shira Graubart was accepted to her first-choice school, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, in early November. That particular school does not consider senior year grades for international students, so Graubart has found that she had little motivation to keep her grades up.

“I’m someone who is very ambitious, and I’m normally very focused on school, and it’s really important to me not just because I want to have good grades but because I genuinely enjoy a lot of my classes,” Graubart said. “But what I’m finding now is that I put in the minimum amount of effort required.”

According to Director of College Guidance Sue Rexford, Graubart’s case is unique. Most seniors are not committed to certain universities before they graduate in February, so they still need to maintain their grades.

Even acceptance is not permission to slack off. The majority of colleges make it clear that acceptance depends on “successful completion of your senior year,” with the universities defining what they view as “successful completion,” Rexford said. For that reason, schools can retract acceptances if a student’s senior year grades are slipping dramatically.

Senior Brooke Cohen, who got into her top choice school, Washington University in St. Louis, in mid-December, thinks that the threat of the university retracting its offer because of grades has ensured that she continued to try hard in her classes.

“The colleges see your final transcript so I still try in school, but if I’m really stuck I’m like, ‘whatever it doesn’t really matter that much as long as I’m still doing my work and trying,’” Cohen said.

Before working at JDS, Rexford saw multiple instances of students whose admission was revoked over the summer because of their poor performance during senior year. For this reason, the JDS college counseling team stresses to seniors the importance of their grades.

“We try to talk to the student about this, we want them to finish strong,” Rexford said. “I think the fact that they have some finals to take helps some, and the classroom teachers are working hard to keep them motivated.”

English teacher Thomas Worden teaches advanced English classes for seniors. He says that he definitely sees a dip in students’ motivation both when they get into college or when they receive bad news from colleges.

In both circumstances, Worden feels that he cannot necessarily employ a class-wide strategy to increase motivation because everyone reacts to news from colleges differently. He thinks that it is beneficial to have “independent, very brief check-ins” with students, and specifically with the ones who got accepted to let them know that his class is what they make it and it is up to them to decide what type of learning experience they want to get out of his class.

“Sometimes it’s hard to intervene,” Worden said. “You have to gauge those moments very carefully and remain tactful because at the end of the day, it’s their educational experience and they need to work through this on their own to a certain extent.”

In addition to the efforts in the classroom, Rexford believes that the Israel trip helps ensure that students do not lose too much motivation. In previous jobs, Rexford has seen that it is often very difficult for teachers and counselors to keep second-semester seniors motivated; therefore, she is grateful that the Israel trip makes it so that seniors only need to get through one semester.

Rexford also stresses that though students may struggle with lack of motivation, overall, acceptance into college can have positive effects on a student’s mental health. According to Rexford, there is clear relief when students get into college and she can see that they become more relaxed and overall less tense.

Graubart has also found that her early acceptance had some benefits for her academic career. Though she recognizes that it is not ideal that she cared less about school after she was accepted, she also thinks that it helped her discover her interests.

“I put in effort and I focus more on the topics I really enjoy,” Graubart said. “It’s interesting because it’s really showing me what I’m inherently fascinated by and what I genuinely want to do, not just what I’m forced to do.”

Cohen also found that already being accepted into college before she graduated helped her learn how to stay self-motivated. Overall, she feels that this helped her to more relaxed about school work.

“People know me as like very stressed out about school, but know- ing that I’m going to college obviously has taken some of the weight off. But I still try,” Cohen said.