As each class enters their final months of high school, a common theme emerges. The senior class of 2025 is slightly over 2 months into the school year and the “senior slide” is beginning to make its presence felt.
Senior Henry Horstman Olson said the senior slide is real and causes educational problems for seniors .
“It’s a real thing (and) it’s mainly to do with the end of senior year—seniors lose motivation to do their schoolwork and end up getting worse grades or attending fewer classes,” Horstman Olson said.
Junior Ellanor Foreman said, from what she’s heard from upperclassmen, the challenges of junior year contributed to the supposed senior slide.
“I had friends that were seniors last year and they would always say that junior year was really hard and they were expecting senior year to be (just as hard), but they realized that because they were seniors, in a way, it didn’t matter,” Foreman said.
Math teacher Erik Ahlquist, who teaches both seniors and juniors, said seniors not having a goal to look forward to at the end of the year is a major reason why seniors might slide.
“If you don’t have a culminating event at the end, seniors could slide. Once they get into a college they tend to relax,” Ahlquist said. “Their colleges may just ask them to make sure that they pass the classes and they’re in good standing. Some colleges might not even ask for a final transcript, so seniors feel like they can slack off on the content and the coursework.”
Foreman said she thinks she will have a similar experience when she is a senior. She said she might feel unmotivated due to a sense of completion with high school and a lighter workload.
“I’m not going to be motivated because it’s senior year. I’m going to feel like I’m done with high school (and) have less of a workload than junior year,” Foreman said. “I have a lot to do right now, (and) senior year, it’ll potentially be a little less.”
Ahlquist said he thinks juniors should prepare for their senior year by pushing themselves academically junior year and working on making their high school experience as similar to a college experience as possible.
“Continue to work hard and take as many AP and IB classes or college (classes) in the school classes as you possibly can,” Ahlquist said. “Make sure that you are having as much of a college experience as you can in high school, make sure that you get to a place where you understand yourself as a student and how you need to study, so that you make the transition to college as seamless as possible.”
Horstman Olson said he thinks juniors going into their senior year should use their summer to prepare for the upcoming senior year to get ahead.
“I know it can be hard to get college applications done during junior summer, but I would definitely recommend spending a good amount of time before the school year starts,” Horstman Olson said. “Either focusing on writing your college application or focusing on knowing where you want to apply because if you can get one of those done during the summer, you’ll be much better off during the school year.”
