Some high school seniors may have scoffed at warnings about partying instead of studying this spring. But nagging counselors and parents turn out to have been right: A senior-year slump can have painful repercussions.
In June and July, elite universities in California and across the country increasingly are revoking admission offers to students whose grades originally were good enough to gain acceptance but whose final exams and transcripts took a dive into Ds or worse. It's a little-known practice, but it can dump as much as 2% of an incoming class.
For example, UCLA has begun to send out letters informing some students that their "academic record no longer meets the standards for admission." So the coveted acceptances to the freshman class, celebrated just months ago, are withdrawn. Gone. Revoked. Frittered away.
"It can be quite traumatic," Susan Wilbur, director of undergraduate admissions for the UC system, said of the revocations' effect on students and their parents. The early summer timing is especially hard, she said, because by then the student usually has turned down other admissions offers and has few options left at four-year colleges.
But with so many strong applicants previously rejected at competitive campuses, "it is absolutely incumbent upon us to uphold the integrity of the process and maintain the high standards," Wilbur said.
Universities say they are open to appeals about special circumstances, such as an illness or a divorce that affected grades. They may forgive an otherwise stellar student who stumbles in one ambitious course.
And some, especially private universities not bound by state entrance formulas, will allow students to repeat courses in summer school, delay admission for a year or admit them on a probationary basis.
Still, the increasing competition at elite schools is making some institutions less tolerant of senioritis and more willing to eject a student who had already sent in an enrollment deposit, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Assn. of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "Schools are becoming more stern about that than they were in the past," he said.
"If it is a case of [a student] deciding that 12th grade was a time for merriment, it is hard to cut those kids some slack in these competitive times," he said.
