Junior year has always been considered the most daunting school year. It is often characterized as the “year of hell” as students are forced to juggle extracurricular activities, standardized test prep, and studying. However, senior year can be almost as terrifying as junior year. College applications rule students’ free time, and soon, college is all anyone can talk about. It may feel hopeless, but with these simple steps it can be extremely easy to breeze through your final tough semester:

1. Organization!!!

Organization is the key to everything, especially when it comes to college applications. Write down the deadlines for college applications, write down the scholarship opportunities, write down the colleges you get accepted into. For school, make sure to keep track of important tests and quizzes and homework. If you are deferred from any schools, having a strong transcript for the first semester of senior year is impertinent.

2. Focus on College Apps

College apps will dominate most of your time outside of school. If you are not careful, you could fall into the trap many students stumble into: procrastination. If you wait until the night before, your essays will suffer, which will lower your chances of acceptance. Although it doesn’t sound very fun, starting applications in the summer as soon as they are released (Common App usually releases its prompts around August 1st) can give you an edge over classmates, and will also reduce stress overall.

3. Balance Your Time

Time is one of your most precious resources as a senior. You will constantly find yourself at the end of the day with a still relatively large workload, resulting in many late nights. Balancing the time dedicated to different activities will help you retain productivity, while also preventing those 20 hour days.

4. Focus On Your Passion

This is the most important tip out of the entire list. Many students toss aside their passions in order to fully dedicate themselves to school and college applications, but this is a huge mistake! First of all, engaging in those activities that you enjoy will help you get through the tough days at school or the rejection letters from your dream colleges. When you follow your passion, you usually build a community surrounding that activity that you can always count on, no matter what circumstance. Second of all, these passions are extremely important to colleges. College admission counselors would rather see you progress through the levels of a certain sport you have been playing since elementary school, than engaging in a plethora of activities that you started last year.

5. Have Some Fun

Although all the previous steps have been very dreary, revolving around college applications and schoolwork, it is extremely important to not go crazy. Even though you will be working your tail off to get into college, it is also your second to last semester at school. So make sure to dedicate a little bit of time for fun on the weekends. Go explore a new place with some friends, or hang out with your family.

Now that you have the tips, senior year will feel like a breeze to you. Just a warning, the first semester will fly by. Next thing you know, you will be returning in January for your final semester at school, filled with nostalgia and bittersweet excitement. Good luck, you got this.

"High school is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless" - John Mayer