<p>S2 is doing very poorly in his AP Calc/Physics class. Until now he was #1 in his class and had a 4.0. But chances are he will receive a D or F (we're praying for a miracle of a C). Obviously, his ranking and GPA will no longer stand.</p>
<p>How strange or bad will this look to colleges, especially top colleges? Are there some schools out there who will not accept him based on a D or F when all other grades are straight As?</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone will be able to answer you question with any confidence. Certainly 98% of colleges aren’t going to care in the least. The top colleges are looking for any reason they can find to reject an applicant, since they have way more fine applicants than they accept, so a D or an F is as good a reason as any, I imagine.</p>
<p>FYI – He will not be applying to any Ivys. But we were looking at some LAC’s in the 20-50 range of USNWR.</p>
<p>Get him a tutor, pronto.</p>
<p>Yes. He is starting with his tutor this week.</p>
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Is this one class? With both Calc and Physics? Do you mean AP Physics C? Yes, that seems like a tough class.</p>
<p>Good luck, a tutor is probably a good idea, to at least squeak out a C.</p>
<p>Ditto on the tutor. More important would be to figure out why the failing grade. How are the other kids doing in the class? What is the perspective of the teacher?</p>
<p>Is this a content-related D or F? A senioritis, I’m-not-doing-my-problem-sets D or F? Or I am too swamped with college apps and don’t have time to study D or F? Can he identify if the calc is where he struggles or the physics concepts? </p>
<p>It will be a very helpful exercise for him if he is able to identify the source of his difficulty. It will require real conversation and discussion in his part, not the typical grunts and “I dunnos” that some of our teenage boys use as a means of communication. 
He needs to be able to explain to <em>you</em> what is going on and how <em>he</em> plans to attack the problem. He will need to know how to do this in college. (You can guess how I have come by this knowledge. 
At least mine use complete sentences, though it was still like pulling teeth.)</p>
<p>Big difference in one source of the problem vs. another, contrasting approaches needed.</p>
<p>My 3.8 senior failed a class last year. She was always a high achieving, motivated student and the wheels fell off the cart last year when she was taking AP classes. </p>
<p>Curious as to what the heck was going on (we knew lack of sleep was one major part of the issue) we had her tested and found out the kid had been compensating for ADHD, inattentive type for years. We knew she had a tendency to be “flighty” and she always asked a hundred questions about the simplest things, but she was super organized (she’s had color coordinated notebooks/folders/binders since elementary school) and was able to compensate for years. It wasn’t until she had 100 pages of reading a night that she just couldn’t keep up and everything fell apart. </p>
<p>All that being said, her guidance counselor (who, luckily, really likes my kid) addressed it in her letter of recommendation and my daughter wrote her essay about her struggles. She wanted to make it very clear to the schools that the F was an anomaly and that she has made changes to take control over her grades. </p>
<p>She’s not applying to super top tier schools (her GPA fell to a 3.5), but we are hoping the second tier schools to which she is applying will be understanding. Especially since the class she failed was AP History, but she got a 4 on the AP test. Go figure.</p>
<p>^^^Yup. Both my kids have dealt with ADD-inattentive issues and were able to adapt accommodate throughout HS (though with S2, it started cracking in the middle of senior year). At some point, the volume of the workload and/or the difficulty of the work kicks up to where their usual “tricks” no longer work. It then becomes adapt or struggle. </p>
<p>The brighter they are, the longer they can maintain the facade.</p>
<p>Just as an FYI, a friend’s extremely bright and interesting kid with significant LDs found Clark in Massachusetts to be a school that really appreciated him, and set up excellent support systems for him BEFORE freshman year started.</p>
<p>Yes, this son was diagnosed with ADHD 10 years ago. But we had felt this was something he had outgrown – especially based on his grades. I don’t know if this is the reason or not. Or if he’s just not a math/physics guy.</p>
<p>But back to the original question – do you think this will prevent him from being accepted by very good but not tippy top LACs and Universities?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t think so- after all not everyone is going to even have taken AP physics.
Is he still going to take the test?</p>
<p>My son got a C- in Chemistry in 10th grade, and it didn’t stop him from getting into the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins, among other schools.</p>
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<p>That is one of the schools to which my daughter is applying. </p>
<p>Sorry to hijack your OP. Are his applications all in? Is he applying EA or ED? I would think the schools would understand, particularly since he has an ADHD diagnosis, but you may have to have his guidance counselor at least address the issue and provide some kind of explanation. You don’t want them to think he’s slacking off or on some kind of a downward spiral.</p>
<p>If this allowed him to discover he really isn’t a math and science guy, it might be one of the best things that ever happened to him.</p>
<p>4gsmom – Actually S is a junior. But he already has a school he really likes and we were toying with the idea of letting him do ED next fall. But this gets tricky with our financial need situation. Anyway, maybe this grade issue is more of a reason to let him try ED and of course still apply to his other choices and safeties too. Not sure.</p>
<p>I actually agree with mini…there is such a thing as hitting the wall.</p>
<p>If he can figure out right now why he’s getting such a low math grade, make a plan, work the plan, see an uptick in another term, and reflect on that-- even keep a log if he’s a logging kind of guy == then he might refer to it head-on during a short-answer question or personal essay in his college app.</p>
<p>I do NOT mean a whole essay about one bad grade! Rather, some overall understanding about his own learning process and what works for him, positively and negatively, among different academic areas.</p>
<p>Obviously the top LAC’s would rather encounter a no-problems transcript but when they don’t, they will look to see how the candidate addresses it. </p>
<p>On the current family plan, it sounds as though the tutor is one part, and bravo! It shouldn’t be the only part of his plan. For example, if he also doubles his study time allocation on that subject, that’s his part of the plan. Or…if he is a good reader and picks up some interesting magazine articles or well-written essays on mathematical topics, just for fun and to gain some courage, that’s also part of a plan, IFF that appeals to him. I’m just tossing out ideas here. These don’t replace the hard work on the poor grade subject, but sometimes a bit of side-enrichment helps him self-motivate. Ask him; he’ll know already and if that’s no help, just drop it. </p>
<p>He might conclude from this experience, for example, that he needs to be watchful of college grades from the first weeks of every term. Or, once he improves with the tutor he might conclude that he flourishes from 1:1 help. In that case, he knows he’ll be one to run, not walk, to a peer tutoring center when in college. </p>
<p>I know you’re worried about the LAC applications. One of our kids had ED success by addressing the math deficit in the essay roughly prompted “Why I want to go to this school?” No whining or complaining, just owning the problem and analyzing how that school in particular offered coursework for students with math weaknesses. </p>
<p>I want to emphasize this was part of a much larger essay about a personal learning process that referred much more to strengths than weaknesses.</p>
<p>One negative grade is not going to tank an application for the vast majority of colleges so I wouldn’t be worried about that. I’d be more concerned what is going on right now.</p>