Junior year in high school is often regarded as one of, if not the most challenging year of high school. This is because of the importance of grades during your Junior year. However, this school year is finally coming to a close. It is almost time for Seniors to check out and graduate while Juniors have to stick around one more year. While Junior year may be the hardest year of high school, Senior year is often the busiest. With all of the end-of-year events such as prom, graduation, and grad night, Senior year is a year of excitement that Juniors are about to transition into.

After polling both Juniors and Seniors from Edison, I have gathered more information about how Juniors feel about going into their Senior year and information about how Seniors think about this year and what Juniors should expect.  

The first poll given to Juniors was compiled of a series of questions to gauge the extent of Juniors’ attitudes toward becoming a Senior. When asked how challenging this year has been for Juniors on a 1-5 scale, the responses were skewed to the right with the majority of responses being a 4. This shows that although some students had a relatively undemanding Junior year, the majority of Juniors polled found their year to be on the more challenging side of the spectrum.

When asked on a 1-5 scale about their preparedness for becoming a Senior, the answers were much more spread out. While more students lean to the right side of the scale, there are a substantial amount of Juniors who answered the question as a 1 or 2. The last question for Juniors to answer on a scale is their perception of the difficulty of Senior year. A few students answered 4 and 5, but the majority of answers are 3 and below, signifying that Juniors generally think that their Senior year will be less challenging than their Junior year.

The final, and possibly most interesting question is an open-ended question asking Juniors to describe their feelings about becoming a Senior in one word. The responses varied with a couple of people stating that they feel excited for their Senior year. Personally, I am a part of this group as well. Other people expressed their fear of moving into their Senior year by choosing words like scared, nervous, and bad. 

AP Classes 

During Junior year, the AP classes offered are: 

AP United States History 

AP Psychology 

AP Calculus 

AP English and Spanish Language and Composition 

AP Art History 

AP Chemistry 

APUSH and AP Psych are the most impacting on this list, and APUSH especially is a class that most Juniors who take it have some issues with.

Moving into Senior year, the AP classes offered are: 

AP English Literature 

AP Physics  

AP Statistics 

AP Environmental Science 

AP Biology 

AP Government and Economics 

AP Calculus BC 

AP Spanish Literature

AP Chemistry 

AP Art History 

Seniors are offered a wide variety of AP classes which comes with its benefits and downsides. If you are looking for an easy year as a senior, you may not want to overload your schedule with AP classes. However, because there are so many available, it is difficult to choose which ones to take. In order to figure out which AP classes you should take during your senior year, there are several factors to consider. The first step is considering how many AP classes to take.

Between the range of 1-3 AP classes is the usual amount of AP classes taken. Anything beyond this could be overwhelming and cause lots of stress. Unless you are an overachiever who is up for the challenge, 3 or fewer AP classes are the way to go. The next factor is the impact of the AP classes you plan on taking. Classes such as AP Biology, AP Government/Economics, and AP Environmental Science have large workloads, thus making them more impacting on your schedule.

The final and possibly most important factor is how the AP course will benefit your education. A great example of this is taking AP Physics if you are in the engineering pathway. This is common because passing AP Physics can provide college credits for a class that most engineering students would take in college anyway. 

 So before you decide on which AP classes to take during your senior year, make sure to research the classes and talk to your counselor if necessary. Make sure to take into account the workload, topic, and overall schedule when choosing your AP classes.