Do I Need to Keep My Grades Up After I’ve Been Accepted to College?

December 23, 2019 :: Admissionado Team

You’ve probably started asking around already. Surveying your friends, hinting to your parents that you’re gonna start slacking off, testing the waters a bit. And why wouldn’t you? You’ve been working your butt off for the past three and a half years—more if you were a rockstar in middle school, too. You deserve a break already.

So, what you’re dying to know is this: do I need to keep my grades up after I’ve been accepted to college?

While no one is saying you don’t DESERVE a break, letting your grades fall off a cliff at the tail end of your senior year is a terrible idea. Here are the facts:

• Colleges DO look at your third and fourth quarter grades
• Colleges ARE looking for major grade point drops
• There ARE waitlists full of students who want your spot
• Your scholarship CAN be taken away from you if your grades drop significantly
• Your acceptance CAN be withdrawn if your grades drop significantly
• You may need letters of recommendation from your senior year teachers for other things in the future—jobs, scholarships, internships, etc. You don’t want their lasting impression of you to be that you got lazy at the end.

That being said, if you go from being an A+ student to an A- student, or you get one B+, it isn’t likely that you’ll lose your acceptance. The conditions of your scholarship, however, may be based on maintaining a certain GPA, so make sure you know all the facts before you go into total chill-out mode.

Keep studying and doing your homework, but allow yourself to have a lighter attitude about it. You can continue to have pride in your own good work, and do it for you. The judges have already made their decisions, so at the very least, you can relax some of those worries about being evaluated. While it isn’t over (it never really is), you made it through this first big hurdle, and you made it through on top.

(Image source here.)