advice for high school juniors 🌵 what you need to know about classes, activities, + life

[Music] hey guys in today's video I'm going to be giving you some advice for your junior year or eleventh grade year of high school this is specific to junior year but I feel like some of these tips will apply for all of high school or beyond I've just graduated from high school about a week ago so I'm going to be looking back at my junior year and what I feel helped me and it didn't help me for my senior year in this video I'm going to be covering tips about academics extracurriculars general life skills and the college applications [Music] let's start off with academics and school my first tip for this is to take the SAT as early as you can for most people I would recommend you study the summer before your junior year and then take it at the beginning of your junior year that way you can either get it out of the way as soon as possible if you get a score you like or at least give yourself as many retake opportunities as you can I'm personally really happy that I took my SAT the August sitting right at the beginning of my junior year I got a good score that I liked and I didn't have to worry about it ever again it freed up a lot of time for me during a fairly stressful and busy junior and senior year on the other hand I experienced the stress of doing it wrong with my SAT to Subject Tests which I forgot I had to do until the fall semester of my senior year I kept putting them off and it was stressful not only because I had to study when I was already super busy with college apps it was stressful to know that I had to basically nail at that first time otherwise I wouldn't really ever have a chance to redo it so I just recommend getting that off your plate as soon as possible my second tip for academics is to consider taking as many AP tests as are available to you you might as well shoot your shot maybe you'll at least get a three even if you don't think you can absolutely ace the material sure a three isn't that helpful for like looking fancy on college apps but a three can get you quite a few credits in a lot of schools getting all of these credits in high school can save you a lot of time while you're in college whether you want to graduate early or just have a lot more time to explore interesting classes instead of trying to cram in all of your major and gen ed requirements for example I took a total of seven AP tests and got to Community College classes under my belt during my junior and senior years of high school and that means I will be entering college as essentially a sophomore in the amount of credits that I have even though yes it will be hard in the short term it's good to play the long game and think about what lies ahead in college and how you can prevent yourself from possibly paying way too much in tuition from graduating in five years instead of four next let's talk about extracurriculars if you watched my freshman advice video you might remember that I mentioned at the beginning of your high school journey I recommend getting involved in a really broad range of things and just exploring all of the things you might possibly be interested in but as you progress through your sophomore year and now your junior year of high school it's time to start cutting out the things that didn't really end up interesting you this year I recommend making those final cuts down to your core interests that you're going to be focusing on these are individual decisions that are completely up to you but three factors you might want to consider are what activities you find the most fulfilling what activities you enjoy the most and thirdly what you're good at you can continue to do things even if you're not absolutely spectacular at though it's just that being good at something usually further motivates you to pursue it which becomes that self-enforcing feedback loop of I'm good at this thing so I'll park visit more which makes me better at this thing and then it just keeps going around but again you don't have to do only things that you're good at or that will look impressive on the college app or anything like that for example most of the things I kept were things like yearbook or working on my youtube-channel things that I'm fairly decent but I also kept going at cross-country and track just because I like them not because I'm a d1 varsity athlete potential recruit or anything and instead of continuing to attend the meetings of those clubs that I initially thought might be interesting but ended up realizing I didn't really click with I cut those out and devoted more time to the things that I actually did end up being interested in this whole process of exploring and then cutting it down to just what you're interested in is a lifelong process and I don't expect you to be able to do it perfectly this year but it's something to start considering right about now somewhat counter-intuitively to my previous tip though for your extracurriculars I recommend getting involved in at least one thing you think you'd fail at maybe apply for a scholarship or internship that you think you're just absolutely not qualified for or join a club for something you'd be a complete beginner at maybe you can start an independent project that you're not sure we'll ever get off the ground writing a book or starting a business or maybe you can take a class that's really out of your comfort zone not so out of your comfort zone that you think you'd literally fail it as in get an F but instead just something that offers a healthy level of challenge that makes you a little bit nervous sure it's important to focus on the things that you already know you're good at but you might want to be a little bit overly ambitious at times the only way to grow is to push yourself out of your comfort zone and usually these leaps of faith end up working out pretty well for example in my junior year I took a calc class Calculus BC that I felt fairly unqualified for because I went straight from pre calc to calc BC but I ended up doing fairly decently in the class and I improved my study skills a lot because of how demanding it was also in my freshman year I started this YouTube channel and I thought it would literally go nowhere and I would just being me talking to myself in my room but I guess that went fairly decently because there are people watching me now like you next let's move on to life skills the first thing I want to recommend is to learn how to journal I don't really mean the perfect aesthetic dear diary glitter gel pen kind of journaling although if that's something you're into please of course go ahead with it what I mean is just any way that you can express your thoughts to yourself and to nobody but yourself whether that be writing in a notebook really really messily like I do or typing it out on a Google Doc or recording it on a voice memo it's a great way to deal with stress because you can just vent everything that's on your mind and something about writing down all of those messy jumbled up thoughts that are kind of just knotted together under this giant mess of brain mush helps to untangle it all so journaling has two other side benefits that I want to point out one is that getting good at writing and reflecting on your thoughts can actually be very helpful for college apps it helps you develop your written voice and you get used to being really vulnerable and reflective on paper also your extended commentary about things that are happening in your life and any photos that you might add in can be helpful for helping you document your life to look back on later like I started journaling in eighth grade and looking back on that stuff right now is just fascinating like I don't know what the heck my brain was up to back then but it's really interesting to get a peek into that the second thing I recommend is to get a job I know I sound like those boomers who are like geez why are Millennials and Gen Z so lazy why can't they just good old I recognize that for some people working is not necessarily a thing you can do to improve your life it's a necessity in order to support your family and being able to consider working optional is coming from a place of considerable privilege finding a way to one earn money and to work with others in a teamwork goal-oriented fashion rather than a school working by yourself towards a grade fashion can be really helpful to your life you learn a lot of skills in a workplace environment because it's completely different from how people interact at school you gain a lot of those buzzword skills that people are always saying they look for like communication and teamwork you can babysit or mow people's lawns or work in retail or be a barista it's really up to you also having an income is helpful for you to save up for the future whether that be you paying for your own tuition or just having some extra spending money for when you're in college or maybe you want to save up for your first apartment again it's up to you what you want to save for but getting an income will teach you how to manage your money because now you have money to manage and the third skill I very very very highly recommend if you only take one thing away from this video let this be it that is learn how to type quickly being able to type quickly is very useful for both school and work this can help you take notes in a lecture where the teacher or a professor is just talking at a mile a minute it's very useful for writing papers at the last minute and for sending out emails if that's something you do for your job it saves you so much time which is honestly your most priced commodity in high school and college and probably in life and beyond I don't know I'm only 18 so I don't really know and if you have not yet learned to type using all 10 fingers instead of tapping it out with a couple of fingers there are a lot of free online games out there most of them are targeted at kids which makes them extra colorful and fun you can google and find a typing lesson resource that works for you last but not least let's talk about planning for college this was something I did not do very well so this advice is mostly based on me telling you the things that I wish I had done I am going to college luckily I didn't mess it up that bad but I could have saved myself a lot of unnecessary stress along the way if I had to just done these things I'm about to tell you the main thing to work on throughout your entire junior year is to get started on researching colleges because holy Frick I wish I had done this in junior year instead of just trying to cram it all into the three months before my senior year so in your process first start by getting some basic information down about what types of schools you might be interested in there are a lot of articles and quizzes on the Internet about which type of person matches best with certain types of schools and those can be a helpful resource as well as just thinking about what worked for you in high school and what didn't maybe you really like those tiny seminar classes or maybe you enjoyed big lecture classes where you never had to talk to the teacher different schools will teach classes in different ways so you want to consider all those factors there are also smaller things you might want to consider like their sports teams and extracurricular groups but in my opinion the location and school type and size will be the main determining factors because those are just the two most unavoidable parts that will have the greatest influence on your day to day life you're always going to be at the school and the campus atmosphere is always going to be around you you don't have to know literally every single thing you want out of a school in a incredibly detailed checklist instead just get a good idea for these general factors you can use a lot of matching tools like the College Board's super match tool or whatever it's called to filter out schools based on the traits that you're looking for then make the first draft biggest messiest list ever of all the schools that might ever possibly be on your radar and then from that giant list just cut them down as you research them and realize that you really like one or you really like another a couple ways to research are to visit their website and just look at the offerings of classes and clubs and organizations and internships and everything else that is posted on their website you can also check out books like the Fiske guide to colleges or the Princeton Review guide to colleges that are available at your library or online and you can visit the school in person if that's going to be an option I also have two tips for visiting colleges one is to visit schools that aren't really on your list even if you've basically written off something as an option you might visit it and realize it's actually really nice there like I thought I would not be into gigantic Statesville at all but then I visited some that I actually really liked and I ended up applying there also most of us don't have the time or resources to visit literally every single school on our lists so what I recommend instead is to visit a variety of types of schools such as a small liberal arts school a bigger public school maybe one of those schools that doesn't have a campus and is instead a collection of buildings in a city you can get a feel for the vibe at each campus and figure out what type of campus you like best again a personal example I visited NYU and I discovered that I don't really like the kind of campus that is just a collection of buildings instead of having a sectioned off central campus then I was able to apply that to other schools like say Boston University and I could infer that I probably wouldn't really be into their campus either because it's quite similar to NYU so visiting at least a few schools and each tight grouping can help you just narrow down what category you'd really be looking into those are all the tips I have with this video and I hope you found it helpful I upload new videos every week about school and studying and all that fun stuff and I also post photos of my notes and bullet journal on my Instagram which is at study quill see you next time pasty show me

Channel: studyquill

Views: 102,015

Rating: 4.9773421 out of 5

Keywords: studying, college, school, junior year advice, junior year of high school, high school survival guide, high school tips, high school advice, college application advice, junior year tips, junior year high school advice, junior year glow up, junior year, advice for high school juniors, junior year college prep, how to succeed in high school, advice for teenagers, how to succeed junior year, teenager advice, how to thrive, college app timeline, high school hacks, studyquill

Id: 2Jr5q98o_Fc

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 14 2020