Senior year is the last hurdle before students go off to participate in college, and most students wish to take it easy for their last year of high school. One of the options that rising seniors have is IE2 (Investing in Educational Excellence), which allows seniors to remove one to three classes from their schedules if they are on track for graduation, though athletes have a mandatory five classes that they must take. In order to participate in IE2, students must apply for it; however, those who plan on going to college should NOT apply.

College classes are several times more rigorous than high school classes, and students will need to mentally prepare for the workload. Students who sign up for IE2 become lax in their workload and scare away colleges by seeming to be unprepared.

Junior Guillermo Castillo expressed the same belief, saying, “IE2 is not really that good for students to me. I just think that maybe if someone is really attempting to get into a college they shouldn’t really do IE2, whether its a top tier college or [a] two years [college].”

Many students apply to colleges within their senior year, which can turn the eyes of said colleges towards the students’ academics. Colleges can be reluctant to accept students who apply for IE2 due to them lacking a full course-load for their final year. Students who are truly serious about going to college and attempting to reach a minimum of a bachelor’s degree will want to have a full, serious class load and finish their last year of high school strong.. In short, students should avoid taking IE2 and keep working on a rigorous class load for their senior year so that they may apply to colleges easier.