Why are 12th graders called seniors

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I raised in Illinois have never used the term, though I understand it. It seems to me like something an Indian might say. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer.

Community Bot 1. I've encountered Americans to whom it never occurred that "sophomore" and "junior" would not be comprehensible in the UK. In my experience, in addition to high school 11th and 12th graders being called juniors and seniors , high school 9th graders and 10th graders years old are also known as freshmen and sophomores. Then you go to college and start over as a freshman again.

So if someone failed half his classes his first year, he might begin his second year still a freshman, and become a sophomore part-way through the year. Customarily there is a formal dance for this year's students, called senior prom. Some schools hold a combined prom for juniors and seniors, while others segregate the two grades into separate dances. Senior skip day also known as senior ditch day is a day during which the seniors do not attend school and cut all their classes.

In some areas it is countered with an officially recognized senior day off, or by allowing graduating seniors to skip their final examinations "finals". This official senior day can also be used to sponsor a "senior trip" where the graduating class would, for example, go to a theme park or some other vacation-type activity. In some schools, Seniors receive a class ring at the beginning of their senior year.

They were assigned points or sides that they were instructed to debate, their arguments were called sophisms, the students being called sophisters, the second and third years being divided into junior and senior sophisters.

In US schools today, Sophomore is typically the year students begin to prepare for college applications, consider their extra curricular activities and start to think about what they plan to do in their future. Junior relates to the third year of study at both high school and further education, senior to the 4th and last year.

The names are thought to come from the need to define the two levels of upperclassmen in Universities, junior and senior. The use of the terms in UK Universities did not catch on in other education institutions and is no longer used in Cambridge. The origins of their use in the US can be traced back to Harvard, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Named for its benefactor John Harvard who had attended Emmanuel College Cambridge, it was originally based on the Cambridge model and the system spread to other American institutes of education.

Interesting and it all makes perfect sense! Great information to have. Funny I should find this hub. Just in the time that my kids left school to now having my grand children in school Soooo much has changed about school in general. Interesting information. I love stuff like this. Ill be poking my little nose into your other informative hubs. Sharing and thanks. Personal Finance.