<p>We just got our son's grades for his first semester at school. With 3 F's, B and a C+ you can only imagine what is going on at our house. No offices are open right now to find out if he can even enroll next semester. From what I can find on the school's website it looks like they are a little lenient with 1st semester freshmen. Other than not studying as much as he should, he doesn't really know what he was doing that caused his failure. I don't know how to help him, IF I should help him or what the next steps should be. If he can re-enroll next semester he will retake all the F classes. Any advice?</p>
<p>If he did not see it coming, and does not have a concrete ideas how to prevent it from happening again, I think it would be a waste of money to send him back next semester. He may be better off going to community college for a year or two.</p>
<p>What did he get for midterms? Is this a total surprise to you or to him? Did you ask him how he was doing prior to his finals? If you didn’t offer your help before or if you did and he didn’t want it, what make you think he would want it now?</p>
<p>My son knows someone who got similar grades. The school notified him that FA was lost, but they told him that he could stay for the second semester. He could not afford to stay so he withdrew from the school. I’ll send a PM to you with more info in case it is of some help.</p>
<p>3 Fs? Was he going to class? Was he doing assignments? Partying? Video gaming? He has to know. He either could not cope with the work. In which case there is not much point sending him back. Or he was not doing the work. In which case what will he do different this time round. 3 Fs really takes some doing (or not doing anything).</p>
<p>Sorry, but this cannot have come as a surprise to him. He had to have had a pretty good idea that his grades were bad. And I am sure he has an idea why. He needs to be more forthcoming with you before you can make a decision about what to do next. I absolutely would not even consider paying for another semester until he is honest about why this happened. </p>
<p>Does his school allow retaken grades to replace Fs? Some schools will allow a certain number of Ds or Fs to be retaken, but there is usually a strict limit.</p>
<p>Staceys3, my S2 had a first sem. with 4 F’s and 2 D’s. It was due to a combination of things he was dealing with at the time. He was on Probation, went back in the Spring and re-took three of the four F classes (three is the most you can take) for grade replacements. He got the hang of it that semester and has done fine since. This semester (two years later) he got a 3.46…would have never thought it possible 2 years ago when I was in your shoes. </p>
<p>Your S has to figure out if he really wants to be there? Does he know what happened to derail him in the F classes? Is he determined to turn it around and be successful?<br>
Does his college offer “grade replacements” to make it possible to get back in good standing if he has a successful semester?</p>
<p>I’m sorry you’re going through this. If you decide to send him back to school, it’s a good bet he’ll be on academic probation and will have some sort of requirement to check in with an academic counselor at periodic intervals.</p>
<p>He acknowledges that he didn’t study enough. A lot of first-semester students let the new freedom of college go to their head and stop attending class. Then they’re either too embarrassed to show up in class after missing so much or they do go to class and discover that everyone else has moved ahead while they’ve been off doing whatever it is they were having fun with. A counselor can help him set up an accountability strategy, but it will still some down to his own commitment to stay on top of expectations. His GPA will definitely have a hard time recovering, though. </p>
<p>I hope your family can work through this bump in the road to everyone’s benefit in the long run.</p>
<p>Assuming you’re paying for the school you deserve a better explanation from him as to what the issue is and a commitment from him to turn it around. I wouldn’t accept his explanation of ‘not really knowing what caused the failure’. He needs to fess up on this. For most students who fail this badly it boils down to - severe illness (in which case you’d likely know it), not going to class, not doing any of the work, not studying at all, and the previous few items are often caused by the student either partying/drinking/drugging excessively, playing video games excessively, or just killing time by watching TV and sleeping or doing some other time waster.</p>
<p>But he’s not the only one who’s been hit with a bad first semester. He needs to own up to the problem and correct it right away assuming he’s given the second chance by the college and you of turning it around this next semester.</p>
<p>assuming he is currently at a 4 year college, I suggest he go to your local JC next semester to retake those 3 classes. Then with B or better in all three he can return to the 4 year college.</p>
<p>The JC’s are more similar to high school campuses compared to most colleges/universities. He’ll appreciate the college opportunity after 4 months at a JC.</p>
<p>Given this: "he doesn’t really know what he was doing that caused his failure. "
I’d say to him that he doesn’t need to go back to that college or any college- no matter who is paying- until he figures that out.</p>
<p>If he does go back, set firm. exact goals to meet. If he succeeds, wonderful! If not, then get a job and be self supporting in his own home.</p>
<p>Stacey,</p>
<p>My recommendation is to let him figure it out at community college. It is less expensive and will likely be a huge wake up call. Let him know that when he can make the Dean’s list at Community Community he may return to his present school. </p>
<p>My daughter did the same thing. She decided she was going to major in nursing. I told her she had to make a 2.0 to maintain a ‘Daddy’ scholarship. She laughed and said “Anybody can maintain a 2.0.” The trouble is, I knew what kind of student she was and what was likely ahead for her. By Thanksgiving she had a ‘D’ and 2 'F’s in her science courses. She did not bring a book home over Thanksgiving nor indicate any intent to study. There were many tears shed that Christmas. She made the Dean’s List at Community College her second semester and returned to UNCG as an Art Major. She has thrived there since and will graduate this May (Total 4 years of college). </p>
<p>I hope your son finds his path. Best wishes whatever path you choose.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>To be honest, in our house we would not care what the college folks said. With three F grades, our kiddos would not be returning to that college. We would pay for a community college within commuting distance of our home for one term and if the student improved, we would continue to pay for that community college for a full year. After THAT we would discuss returning to a four year college. </p>
<p>Even at the cost of an instate university, one semester is approaching $10,000 a semester (tuition/room/board/fees/books). To be quite frank, you son didn’t earn any credits towards his degree in this last term. He spent $10,000 and got nothing for college credits for that money. I can’t imagine sending a student back to the same situation until they tried to show me they were ready for college study. The community college will cost you far less than that four year residential college. It will give your student a chance to take some courses and learn how to manage college studies. Maybe even taking just 12 credits at the CC might be an option…or even going part time. </p>
<p>And above all, this student and you need to discuss what went wrong. This needs to be discussed and perhaps a plan made.</p>
<p>At this point, an important thing for you parents to determine is WHEN your child needs to withdraw enrollment so you can get a full refund of your costs for the next term.</p>
<p>I tried to look at your older posts- it sounds like your DS is at an ABET accredited engineering school, in computer engineering, within electrical engineering. That is a really tough path and maybe it was simply over his head. He surely has a lot of company (so many engineering schools do the ‘look to your left, look to your right…’ and only a subset of students can stick with it, and not for a lack of trying).</p>
<p>For that matter, I wonder aloud how most of us parents would have fared in his program this term :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ouch this is a tough one. Most kids can put their finger on the situation…I didn’t study enought, I skipped class too much, I shouldn’t have skipped the intro class, I quit going to class yada yada yada. How much is “not as much as he should?” Was he really simply over his head and needs a different major? What does he want to do next semester? What classes did he sign up for? What does HE think is going to happy now? How willing are you to sacrifice another semester worth of tuition/room/board? How would you “help him?”</p>
<p>I suspect your S was not attending classes on a regular basis. Even with a difficult program, most professors will give at least a D for regular attendance and a show of at least some effort.<br>
As someone else said, it is not uncommon for freshman to get caught up in this newfound independence and blow off class. It doesn’t take too many absences to get so far behind that you can’t catch up.
While I would be upset by his grades, I would be more upset that S says he has no idea what happened. Unless he spent the entire semester in an alcohol induced coma, he would have to know. It is time for him to own up to it and come up with his own plan to correct it. It is as important to his education as his classes.</p>
<p>You should be able to find the information about what’s going to happen, from the school’s end of things, in the student handbook, and that should be available online. Search for things like “satisfactory academic progress.” I would expect him to land on academic probation rather than being dismissed after one bad semester, but you’ll also want to look at things like whether it is mathematically possible for him to raise his GPA as much as he needs to while taking a reasonable course load for one semester. He might lose money he needs before he is actually asked to leave school.</p>
<p>Maybe instead of asking him what he was doing that caused his failure, you should be asking him what happened and what he did in response to those happenings – and then prodding him to answer you in as much detail as possible. I’d be listening to find out whether he had looked at how grades are calculated and put effort into succeeding at the sorts of things that each professor required him to succeed at in order to get decent grades (for instance, if there were serious consequences to his grades if he missed even a few class meetings, did he go to class regularly?), whether he noticed that he wasn’t doing as well as he needed to when assignments and exams were graded and handed back, what changes he made in response to the discovery that he wasn’t doing well enough (did he do all the things a student ought to do in that situation, and if he didn’t, did he not do them because he didn’t know to do them or because they were embarrassing or time-consuming or whatever), and things like that.</p>
<p>Even something like not studying as much as he should could mean that he assumed if he half-listened in lecture he would get all the information he needed to pass the course so he never cracked a book, or it could mean that if 80 hours of studying a week didn’t produce the scores he wanted he thinks the obvious move would have been to try 90, but he was too tired so he stuck with 80.</p>
<p>As the payer (and as the parent), you’re entitled to real answers. Don’t settle for an eighth grade “I don’t know” response (I’m currently dealing with that one … but it’s from an actual eighth grader).</p>
<p>I’m with ucsd_dad and thumper. Your son is a young adult. With apologies to Hunter Thompson, it’s time for an agonizing reappraisal of the whole scene.</p>
<p>If a student has F’s at a four year university, it does no good to retake those classes at a CC. Yes, the credit will transfer but the grades will not. To be able to get his gpa up and get off probation, he would need to retake those classes he failed at his university so he can use those as grade replacements. When that’s done, the F’s no longer figure into his gpa (still appear on transcript but that will be the case regardless). The new grade he gets on the “re-take” classes will figure into gpa causing his gpa to rise dramatically. </p>
<p>This is how it worked for S2. He re-took 3 classes. At the end of spring sem. the new grades replaced the F’s. His gpa shot from a .33 to 2.1 Voila, off probation and with somewhat of a clean slate and a chance to do it the right way. His gpa has steadily improved each sem. since. Letting him return to college was def. the best thing for our S. I know everyone’s situation is different. </p>
<p>Talk to your S. and get the real story . Then discuss options…if you’re willing to let him go back and try again…if there will be strings attached…told our S2 he had to give us his Blackboard password so we could check on his grades…I didn’t check them every week or anything but just his knowing that I could (and how much was riding on it) may have given him a little more impetus to work a lot harder…or if you want him to sit out a semester and go to CC and what kind of implications that would have on his return to university. </p>
<p>S2 emailed his advisor(she was back in her office the week after New Years) to find out what his next course of action should be. She advised that to get the biggest gpa boost he needed to retake all three failed classes immediately (rather than retake them one at a time over several semesters. He dropped three classes he had previously registered for and added the three replacement grade classes. It all worked out for S2 (only 3 semesters left to go). Good luck Stacys3.</p>
<p>Same drill at our house. Our S has a 1.4 freshman semester also a Computer Science Major and at a Top 5 school. If he returns, he will be repeating required classes. The official letter from the Dean arrived by certified mail christmas eve! And that’s how we learned of the mess our S had dug for himself.<br>
You can see the responses I’ve received in the thread I posted to the past few days “Please Help”.<br>
My S has now admitted he stopped attending classes mid semester but doesn’t know why he did so. In the end, he managed to earn an A on one final to pull a D to a C.</p>
<p>I have no answers since our S wants none of our advise or help yet. I hope your S is able to communicate and you are able to see a plan.</p>
<p>I hear many posters suggesting community college. Reality, Computer Science and Engineering majors cannot really take any classes that will be at the necessary level nor transfer to their program. They take advanced math and science classes- -well beyond those that are offered at community college. A few required humanities classes are all that are possible-- and a CS major would be miserable and unmotivated if that is all that could be taken in a given semester.</p>
<p>I offer only good vibes but no good advice that has not already been offered.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not to be snarky, but considering the topic is a kid with an uber-low gpa, I think unmotivated is already a problem and misery can’t be that far off! Does it honestly matter that a kid who isn’t going to the classes his parents are paying for is unhappy that he can’t continue taking classes he’s not attending anyway?! I’d say that would be excellent motivation for him to get his act together and start working toward regaining the opportunity to get a good education! </p>
<p>Anyway, I agree with the other suggestions and will add that I find it incredible that a college student wouldn’t know why his grades are so low. They certainly have access to their grades and profs and should be able to make a reasonable estimation of whether they’re passing or not at any point during the semester…I can even see their grades since all of mine voluntarily gave me access. It’s never been a big concern, though I do look at their accounts from time to time, but I’d sure as heck require them to give me access if it were!</p>