15 Ways to Have A Successful Junior Year of High School

Oh, how time flies. Just yesterday you were a freshman excited about high school and look at you now, about to be a senior; they grow up so fast. You can’t have fun just yet. 15 tips will be provided, advising you to make the best decision to finish junior year off strong! Tip #1: Stay Focused and Make Goals

Junior year is the most stressful year of high school. With the ACT and SAT, college admissions, scholarships, and society, it’s extremely easy to lose focus on the bigger picture. Remember why you need this last semester to be perfect.

• Write on sticky notes what you hope to accomplish and stick them everywhere.
• Set daily goals. For example, you can make a goal to speak with your teachers on ways to improve your grades.

Tip #2: Get Organized!

College mail, test prep materials, study guides, and scholarship information can pile up rapidly making a cluttered mess. Junior year is not a time to have clutter! Grab all those loose papers and find a nice comfortable place to sit. Make a “trash” pile and a “keep” pile and divide the loose papers into those two categories.

If you don't have one already, get a good planner. You can use planners track your homework, events, holidays, and much more. Here’s a good article to show you how to organize your planner. Don’t see a planner you like? No worries, you can use a personal journal and decorate it to your liking. Here’s an article showing you how to make and use a bullet journal.

Tip #3: Begin Thinking About College

Don’t fall behind the rest of your peers by skipping out on the college search. The college admissions process is competitive and gets even more competitive the closer it gets to application season. You can access college websites and forums discussing colleges. Here is an article on choosing the college best fit for you.

Tip #4: Visit Colleges

College visits are highly important. They can make or break your decision on a school. If you walk on campus and you just get a feeling of home that usually means this is the school for you. You also can get first-hand testimonies from current students and can meet different reps from the school. Who knows, you might just stand out on the visit and get a surprise email from the admissions director. Visiting colleges aren’t always accessible to everyone. Here is an article about learning about colleges without visiting them.

Tip #5: Begin Looking for Scholarships

On the YouGotIntoWhere? blog, monthly scholarships are posted to help you with the scholarship hunt. There are many websites that match you with scholarships. Scholarships.com, Fastweb.com, Cappex.com, and CollegeGreenlight.com are common sites to find scholarships. Also, check to see if your local banks and churches offer scholarships. Here’s an article to assist you in search of scholarships. Don’t get discouraged or frustrated. Good luck!

Tip #6: Prep for Standardized Tests

• Here is an article comparing the new ACT to the new SAT.
• People are willing to tell you their experiences. 
• There is an article on seven ways to improve your score.
• Lastly, there is an article informing you on how to get through the SAT/ACT by the end of your junior year of high school.

Tip #7: Begin Asking for Recommendation Letters

Your favorite teacher, your track coach, your vocal coach, your pastor, or even your supervisors are good people to ask for recommendation letters. Colleges and scholarships both as for recommendation letters.

An article was written about a beginner’s guide to recommendation letters. You should check it out.

Tip #8: Meet with your Counselor

The good old counselor, your best friend throughout your junior year of high school. You should meet with them initially to make sure you are on the right path to graduation. They can motivate you, and essentially they can make the second semester of junior year easier for you. Building this relationship also means you can have another person who can write you a recommendation letter.

Tip #9: Expand your Resume

Expanding your resume means to add more things on your resume to make you stand out in the application pool. As a junior in high school, a resume is a must. It can be used to get jobs, to get internships, to get recommendation letters, and to get admitted to colleges. For colleges, an activities resume will be most common. There are many templates out there in the world for activities resumes but if you like to make your own from scratch, here’s a guide for you to use. 

Tip #10: Get More Involved

Join more clubs and extracurriculars in your school and community. Clubs and extracurriculars on your resume show that you want to learn outside of your required eight hours. It also shows your initiative to better yourself. The longer you’re in a club, the better.

Attempt to become the president, vice-president, secretary, or treasurer. For sports teams, try to become captain or co-captain.

 This will tell you everything you need to know about choosing the right clubs. 

Tip #11: FAFSA?

Yes, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. FAFSA is what colleges will use to accept and award financial aid to you. The application opens October 1st of every year. This will explain what FAFSA is. 

Tip #12: Find a Form of Income

There are many articles about getting part-time jobs in high school but here is the article I wrote on making an income during high school. My parents won’t let me get a job? There still are ways to find income. You can babysit, house sit, or pet sit. You can become a tutor and more. There are pros and cons of having a job in high school. 

Tip #13: Get Closer to Your Classmates

These are the people who will walk across the stage with you. These are the people who you will see at your class reunions. These are the people who will support you in life. If you haven't made good friendships yet, now is a great time to start.

Tip #14: Get Healthy

You should pay attention to your body's physical and emotional needs due to the stress that you will be under from school work, activities, and more. Exercise, eat healthy, and talk to someone if you are not feeling as happy as you believe you should.

Tip #15: Relax and Have Fun Finishing junior year of high school is stressful but it doesn’t have to be the death of you. You don’t have to think “do this, do that, I need to find this, I need to stand out” every day. Devote days or hours to relaxing, and no, sleep does not count. Meditation, running, cleaning, and doing any of your hobbies are good ways to relax. There is an article on de-stressing or relaxing productively. 

I hope you enjoyed my 15 tips on finishing your junior year of high school strong. You will do good this semester; I have faith in you. Good luck!

3 Ways to Start Preparing for AP Exams

Although it may seem early to start preparing for AP Exams, May will be here before you know it. The earlier you can start preparing, the better off you will be when it comes to actually taking the test in a few months. With that being said, many of us don’t even know where to start when it comes to preparing for exams. In hopes of helping everyone out, I have a few tips on how to start preparing for AP Exams.

Preparation Tip #1: Utilize Prep Books

If you don’t know where to start when it comes to preparing, a prep book is probably the best option. Prep books, or review books, are basically books with a shortened and simplified explanation of everything that will be covered on whichever AP Exam you are taking, as well as some practice exams or materials.

The book search

Before using the prep book, you need to find the right one for you. Barron’s and Princeton Review’s review books are arguably the most popular; however, there are many others published by different companies. To choose a prep book, I would ask people who have previously taken the course which one they found most helpful if they used any. If no one you know has taken the AP Exam you are planning on taking, read reviews of the books online. However, when you are taking advice from others remember to take it with a grain of salt and gather your own opinion based on many sources. Ultimately, you probably won’t know your preference until you have the book in your hands.

Buying your book

Once you have chosen the book that you want to use to start preparing, you need to actually obtain the book. If money is an issue, many libraries do have prep books that you can borrow. If they don’t have the specific book that you need, many libraries will order one for you if you request it. The downside to borrowing a book is that you cannot write on the practice exams or highlight and annotate the actual book. If this is not a problem, then borrowing is a free option! If you are willing to shell out some money to purchase your own prep book, then that is a great option as well. Having your own prep book means that you can write and highlight in the book. This can be especially helpful if you like highlighting essential information to refer to later. Often, amazon.com has the best deals on prep books, as well as fast shipping. However, if you want to make sure you are getting the best deal, you can utilize the website slugbooks.com. Just type in whatever prep book you are looking for (ex. Princeton Review AP European History) and it will pull up price comparisons from across many different websites so that you can purchase your study materials at the best price!

Strategizing your studying

Now that you have your prep book, using it should be pretty straightforward. Many books provide test-taking strategies, which would be great to read at this point, as AP Exams and tests that you take in class are often two very different things. Read the material that you have covered in class up to this point. Most likely, your textbook does not cover everything on the AP Exam, so doing this will ensure that you have a more complete perspective of the information. It also doesn’t hurt to take one or two of the practice exams, if your book has one. This could give you an early evaluation of where you are so that moving forward, your studying can be more focused and relevant to your struggles. Keep coming back to your prep book as the AP Exam approaches, it will be a useful tool in preparing you utilize it in its entirety!

Preparation Tip #2: Utilize College Board

Another great resource for preparing for AP Exams is the College Board website. The College Board is the organization that creates and administers AP Exams, meaning that they have a wealth of inside information on their website.

To utilize the website’s tools, go to “AP Courses” (https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/apcourse). Under this link, there are all of the AP courses that are offered. You can select whatever AP course you are taking and utilize several resources there. For example, under every AP courses link, there are four tabs that are very useful. The tabs at the top are “Course Overview”, “Course Details”, “About the Exam”, and “Exam Practice”. All of these have extremely valuable information. Read all of these tabs to familiarize you with the exam, as well as providing a focused overview of the course. This is important to look at when you start reviewing, as you will get a sense of the general topics that are most important in the eyes of the College Board. As I said, they are the ones who create the test; so knowing the overview and the topics that they find valuable can be a great tool.

Preparation Tip #3: Make Graphic Organizers

Finally, something that you can do to prepare is making graphic organizers! Graphic organizers can be a way of organizing information visually in a way that makes sense to you. I recommend making these when you begin to review, as it is a great way to force yourself to look at all of the information that you have and to organize it comprehensively. For example, if you are taking a history exam, try putting all of the relevant historical events into a master timeline. Or if you are taking a science exam, you can organize notes by-laws, theories, etc. This is a great option for last minute studying, as it allows you to have an overview of what you are learning, as well as review all of your materials.

I wish everyone the best of luck on your AP Exams! Happy studying!

For more advice on AP Exams, check out these articles as well:

AP Human Geography: A Guide to Success in the Course and Exam

AP Overload: 5 Tips On How To Push Through a Rigourous Courseload

The Home Stretch: How I Plan to Avoid Senioritis

It is now winter break, which means that the first semester of the school year is just about over. Numerous college acceptances have been sent out, breaths of relief have been released, and many students are now ready to coast through the second semester until graduation. Admittedly, it’s hard not to get in a relaxed mindset after being accepted to college; you worked your hardest to get the GPA and test scores that you wanted, and you deserve a bit of loosening up, right? The fact of the matter is that it’s one thing to ease up on yourself now that you’ve crossed a major bridge and another thing to fall into a slump where you begin to slack off in your academics. The latter is a prospect that should make you uneasy. It definitely makes me uncomfortable, so here are the ways I plan to avoid senioritis and finish out my senior year with a bang!

Making Small Goals for Myself

In order to keep myself from losing motivation throughout the rest of my senior year, I have started making reachable goals that I can accomplish and feel proud of. For example, I am now aspiring to make a high A in my AP Probability and Statistics course instead of the lower-range A that I usually get. It’s nothing major, but it gives me something to work towards that will make me feel happy in the end. By creating these little objectives, I can ensure that I will not lose interest in my classes and will continue to try my very hardest.

Staying Organized

Organization is a huge part of my life that keeps me driven all the way up until the finish line. In school, I stay organized by using a nice eye-catching planner and colorful pens to make sure I remember all of my assignments. Before I used a planner I felt like I was stumbling through my academics, but now it’s smooth sailing and I am always eager to cross off every item that I write down. Even now, during break, I use my planner to plan out my schedule for each day so that I can stay productive while I’m not in school and keep up with scholarship deadlines. It keeps both my mind and my goals in check, and I cannot recommend to you enough that you should get a planner as a first step to being organized and staying motivated!

A messy backpack, locker, or desk can also lead to a decrease in motivation, for as crumpled papers pile up you’ll continue to procrastinate in cleaning and have a disorganized mind as a result. By keeping everything in order, from assignments to permission forms, you will be on the top of your game when it comes to all aspects of your life!

Remembering That Not Everything is Final

I might be a bit paranoid, but even the slightest prospect of having my college acceptances revoked is enough to scare me into doing the best that I can. Senioritis hits some students that hard, though, and they can be threatened if their grades slip past a certain point. In general, just knowing that my guidance counselor has to send mid-year and final reports on my grades to colleges, forces me to snap out of any state of stagnation I am in and keeps me running with my eyes on the prize. It’s important to remember that colleges don’t just accept you and forget about you until your enroll, and instead continue to monitor your grades and make sure that you don’t slip up.

Thinking About the Future

Now that I’ve reached the home stretch of my high school career, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the future. I think about how hard I’ve worked to get to this point and how I don’t want to diminish that by slacking off now. Furthermore, I don’t want to set a precedent for my freshman year of college, which I am now counting down the days to in pure excitement. If I don’t put in my best effort now, who knows what I’ll be like when I start college next year? You do not want to go into college feeling like you can’t try your hardest, so I recommend keeping your future in mind as you finish up your senior year. A strong conclusion to it will practically guarantee a strong beginning to the next chapter in your life, and if you invent your best self now, you’ll definitely shine bright later in your higher education.

I plan to follow through with all of these points so that I don’t become a victim of senioritis, and I know that you can too! It may seem tiring to trudge through your responsibilities when all you want to do is coast until graduation, but your last semester in high school is just as important as the previous ones. It’s now or never; you only get one shot at having a great senior year, so make sure that you make it the best that you can!

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WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT COLLEGE ADMISSIONS? CHECK OUT THE YGITW BOOK HERE!

LOOKING FOR A HIGH SCHOOL OR COLLEGE INTERNSHIP? APPLY HERE!

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Facing Your Fears: How to Talk with College Representatives

There can be a number of intimidating encounters that you will experience along your college admissions journey; among them is when you’re directly communicating with college admission representatives at college fairs. You may feel as though you have to be careful with your words and the way in which you present yourself to them, or that they come to college fairs to hunt down information on prospective students. However, these common misconceptions are false. College representatives come to college fairs simply as resources. All they want to do is provide you with as much information about their school as they can and to answer any questions or concerns that you have. They are not there to find out your deepest darkest secrets and put your name on a list of future rejections. So no need to fear, here’s a guide on topics you can discuss with college representatives.

Be Specific

When speaking with an admissions representative, you should always ask questions that are specific to the particular college or university that they are representing, rather than asking broader, general questions that can simply be answered on the College Board website. For example, instead of asking what the GPA or SAT/ACT standards are for that school, ask about the kinds of aspects that the school particularly looks for in prospective students. Try asking more open-ended questions rather than yes/no questions so that you are given as much information as possible.

Do Research

You should also do a bit of research on the colleges that you are interested in looking into before you attend the fair, so that you have a better understanding of the school as well as some things you may want to ask the representatives. Ask them about specific academic programs at their school or the campus environment. Not only does this allow you to have more accurate information, but it also shows the representative that you genuinely have an interest in that particular school. Don’t worry too much about that last part though; like I said, they’re not hunting for prospective students. This is just something that they appreciate, and may take note of when they review your application. However, do not be afraid to talk to representatives from schools you have never heard of because you might end up liking it a lot more than other schools you researched.

Act Casual

More than anything, the discussion between you and a college representative is nothing more than a conversation. So don’t treat it as if it’s an interview that your whole future depends on. Act casually, and speak to them like they’re actual people that you’re interested in speaking to. This doesn’t mean that you should rest your feet on a table and share a joke or two with them, however. It’s just important to keep in mind that these people are just here to help you; nothing more, nothing less.

So just keep in mind that college representatives are simply sources of information about particular schools, and there's absolutely no harm in speaking with them. You'll probably leave the college fair with so much more information than you expected if you do.

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WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT COLLEGE ADMISSIONS? CHECK OUT THE YGITW BOOK HERE!

LOOKING FOR A HIGH SCHOOL OR COLLEGE INTERNSHIP? APPLY HERE!

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