<p>Is it simply because junior year grades are a complete set?</p>
<p>um that and the fact that junior year you can focus more on academics, instead of college apps fro example. Think about it, by the time you are a junior you are mostly likely eligible for the hardest classes at your school, and the colleges want to see those hard classes taken. </p>
<p>For some schools it is traditional that Seniors have a lighter schedule than juniors do. For myself I had 6 AP tests last year and 2 the year before, and now i have none as a senior!</p>
<p>of course I still have weighted classes</p>
<p>1) a lot of people work hard senior year because they’re doing college apps and thinking about college, whereas working hard junior year shows a longer term commitment </p>
<p>2) teachers may go easier on seniors in terms of workload or grading, reducing the credibility of senior year grades </p>
<p>3) they can only see quarter grades or semester grades, not full year grades</p>
<p>Like Djokovic said, the junior year is the year in which a person can take the most high level courses. Results from senior year are generally not going to be taken into account by adcoms and freshman/sophomore years are too early for most people to be taking advanced classes.</p>
<p>In my example, I only took 1 AP exam as a 9th grader, 2 AP’s as a 10th, 5 AP’s as a junior, and now 2 AP’s as a senior. Just look at that, the junior year can be viewed as the most “academically challenging and critical year”</p>
<p>While it is true that junior year is weighted the most; colleges are now putting more emphasis on senior year. Taking 2 APs senior year after taking 5 in junior makes you look like you took AP courses in Junior year because you felt obligated and now are resuming regularly scheduled programming. Colleges naturally don’t like this and would probably prefer 4 APs junior and 4 APs senior. For every college it is different but an increasing population of colleges are scrutinizing senior year course rigor and grades. </p>
<p>The fact that seniors are doing college apps in addition to their course load only further magnifies the importance of those grades. Your performance at the start of senior year shows how well you perform under stress. I have not heard of teachers adopting a lenient grading policy for seniors.</p>
<p>Hm I guess that makes sense.</p>
<p>Here, most people take the greatest number of APs senior year (I did 2 last year and 6 this year), just because its the track you have to follow, with honors classes first and whatnot. But honors classes are just as hard as APs (actually I think they’re much harder), so AP #s might not be indicative of course rigor</p>
<p>I would have thought that colleges would want to see your work at its worst, even when you’re stressed with apps and all that, but I guess colleges arent as evil as I thought :)</p>
<p>I do not agree with ADHDFTL</p>
<p>The reason I do not have AP classes this year as a senior as opposed to my 6 AP classes last year is that I basically ran out of AP’s to take.</p>
<p>So now I am doing most of my classes as dual enrollment and/or other advanced classes that are not ‘AP’</p>
<p>It basically depends on which school</p>
<p>"I do not agree with ADHDFTL</p>
<p>The reason I do not have AP classes this year as a senior as opposed to my 6 AP classes last year is that I basically ran out of AP’s to take.</p>
<p>So now I am doing most of my classes as dual enrollment and/or other advanced classes that are not ‘AP’</p>
<p>It basically depends on which school "
I did not say that was your motive, I said it looks like that from an outsider’s perspective. If you’re taking classes at a community college/having rigorous courses in general you’re fine. The colleges know how many APs your school offers and they’re not looking for you to take another 2-3 APs senior year if your school doesn’t have them. However, many people take an AP sophomore 4 in junior and 2 as a senior which doesn’t exhaust the supply of rigorous colleges and looks meh. If you take no APs as a senior and your school has 3-4 more that isn’t going to look fantastic.</p>
<p>choklit rain summed it up</p>