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For other seniors, it is not the academics of high school that fail to captivate; it's the social environment. By the end of her junior year, Sarah Ferszt, 17, of Wakefield, R.I., had already been to four proms. When most of her friends graduated, she began cutting class and losing focus. "High school was torture," says Ferszt. "I'd grown out of it. For some people, senior year just doesn't make sense." Kevin Quinn, Ferszt's counselor at South Kingstown High School, helped make her final year more meaningful by directing Ferszt to a dual-enrollment program at the local community college. There she is finishing earning her high school credits and beginning college-level classes. "Seniors need something to gravitate to and be re-energized by," says Quinn. When South Kingstown High began offering dual enrollment 10 years ago, it was primarily for top students who wanted the chance to take courses at nearby Brown University. Now 15 to 20 students each year, about 7% of the senior class, choose to enroll in a variety of institutions, including a culinary school and several technical academies. For Ferszt, who plans to transfer to Florida International University in Miami in August, the move was "a stepping stone," she says. "I wasn't ready to go away to college, but I was ready for more freedom."
The best cure for some cases of senioritis is a strong dose of reality. More than 50% of students entering college in the U.S. require remedial course work once on campus. Two years ago, the California State University system launched the Early Assessment Program (EAP), which encourages 11th-graders to take a test to gauge their college readiness in English and math. Some juniors who expect to coast to college find out they will have to work even harder their senior year to improve the skills they will need to thrive in a Cal State school. Other students who had not considered themselves college material discover that they are better equipped than they thought and are inspired to make the most of their final high school year and start thinking of college as a serious option. "A lot of students aren't using their senior year as effectively as they should," says Allison Jones, Cal State's vice chancellor of academic affairs. "We're trying to give them an early-warning signal so they take the courses they need to take, instead of taking it easy."
Andrew Halstead, 19, got the signal loud and clear when he didn't pass the math portion of the EAP test two years ago. "I was ready, essentially, to take senior year off," says Halstead, now finishing his freshman year at California State University, Fresno. "Then I learned that I was worse off in math than I thought." So although he didn't need the additional credits to graduate, Halstead took extra math and science classes that he thought would help better prepare him for college-level work. "When my friends were going out senior year, I was studying," he says. Next week Halstead, who is contemplating a history major, will take his math final. Since he has been scoring above the class average all semester, "I feel pretty confident," he says.