Preparing High School Seniors for College

Making sure high school seniors are ready for college is a top priority for parents today. The motivation behind parents putting the extra effort to increase their child’s chances of college acceptance is to gain financial assistance to pay for college tuition. The best way to go about this is for a high school senior to score high on the ACT college entrance exam, which is what schools look at when deciding to award scholarships to students and is usually the determining factor for most four-year universities when deciding which students receive acceptance. Colleges also look for high school seniors who maintain cumulative grade point averages of 3.5 or better.

According to USA Today only 32 percent of seniors who graduated from the class of 2001 were anywhere close to being college ready in a study by the Manhattan Institute (Toppo, The USA Today, 9D). This article seems not to support the idea that students are being prepared well enough by educators and parents, but that was eight years ago. The statistics have changed since 2001. The Wall Street Journal reports during the 2008 and 2009 school academic year that only about a quarter of America’s 2009 graduating high school seniors who took the ACT admissions test had the skills to succeed in college (Tomsho, The Wall Street Journal).

Students are encouraged at a young age by parents and educators to plan well in advance for college and pressured to do great on a daily basis in school. Some high school students do not put forth enough effort to plan for college until their senior year. Some high school seniors think by making great grades they do not have to worry about getting into college, while others plan and prep as if it is the only thing that is important...

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...nfair to students who actively try to get into an accredited university or college who are thwarted in their goals by a simple thing as nerves and the ability to handle standardized testing in a stressful environment. If schools would compromise with one another and combine their efforts to improve the school systems, they could have a massive effect on students’ confidence and ability when testing for college entrance exams and their capacity to handle the work load that is expected of them once they reach college.

Works Cited
Tomsho, Robert. (2009, August 19). College-Entrance Test Scores Flagging. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 14, 2009 from the Internet: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125065253283242295.html.

Toppo, Greg. (2003, September 17). Study: Most high school grads don’t have what it takes for college. USA Today, p. 9D.