<p>This may be out-of-the-question, but has your D considered transferring to a JC for a year, and then to a UC? Just fyi, it is VERY hard to get admitted to a UC (even Davis) straight from a 4-year university (esp. with a below-avg. GPA); many more students are admitted from JCs. Something you may want to consider, if she is unhappy with Duke and is serious about transferring to a UC.</p>
<p>Best of luck!</p>
<p>OP, reading that letter for the first time, my impressions were that you were disappointed with your daughter, wanted her to transfer, wanted her to switch to a science major, and blamed her for your financial sacrifices. Whether you intended to give that impression or not, that is what I got out of it. I also agree with other posters who say you are tangling many threads.</p>
<p>You’ve mentioned several times how you don’t want to switch jobs and it feels like you’re blaming your daughter for “forcing” you to switch to support her education. Well, she is not forcing you to do anything. You are the adult, decide whether you are going to change careers or not. There is nothing wrong with sticking with a job you want; stick with it and tell your daughter you only have $XXX to fund school, she can make up the rest in loans or transfer out. Or switch jobs and use the extra $XXX for school (or anything else you want.) But don’t make your daughter the scapegoat for your own decisions.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And unspoken is the “… as long as it’s in a major we find ‘worthwhile’” (that is, science).
There seems to be a point missing: Students usually do better (grades-wise) in fields that interest them, versus fields that they are going into because their parents want them to.</p>
<p>What if a D in calculus is indeed the daughter’s full potential when it comes to math – but she’s a great writer / analyst of literature / etc.?</p>
<p>I attended a u of similar caliber and I took a computer science class, in part because my father had some belief that “computers were the future” and that I was a fool for not majoring in it. I got poor grades in the class but was able to drop it before the point of getting final grades, so ultimately no harm no foul. I went on and did just fine in my major, magna cum laude, PBK, blah blah blah. What’s the essential difference here, other than I was able to drop my course with no harm to my GPA and the daughter here wasn’t able to? It’s a condemnation of her abilities in that one course, not her abilities or study habits overall, since she’s clearly making A’s in enough of her classes to make up for the D.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Exactly. That’s what doesn’t make sense. If your finances have changed such that you can’t afford to have it only be $3,500, well, then, so be it. Here, honey, you need to come up with $4,750 and here’s how. But that’s SEPARATE from her performance. </p>
<p>What I get is that you have various buckets of money potentially available – more if she goes science, less if she goes English. More if she goes 3.5 and above, less if she goes 3.0 and below. Hey, if that’s how you roll, fine! You don’t need to justify it to anyone. But then say THAT - “we’re going to indeed pay-for-play, take it or leave it”, instead of making it about “our finances aren’t what they used to be.” Because that’s manipulative, to suggest that your finances aren’t what they used to be, but boy, honey, if you ace your next semester, we’ll find some money somewhere. She’s not stupid – she’ll know that your finances are exactly what you want them to be.</p>
<p>FLV- sometimes parents post here with some ambivalent feelings and hear things played back to them that they don’t want to hear. (The legions of posters who write about their sons spending 18 hours a day playing online poker or playing fantasy games or whatnot-- and they get a reality check when instead of people posting back, “Oh yeah, that’s normal for a 17 year old”, people suggest they get some help or intervention asap.) Sometimes parents post here thinking that something is quite pathological and they have a big problem and they hear that many, many posters have faced this problem and their kids turned out just fine.</p>
<p>So the OP is free to ignore anything she wishes. But if her motivation in posting was to air the subject with people who don’t know her or her kid and are just going to formulate a POV based on whatever details she chooses to post- well, caveat emptor. Many of us have dealt with kids who delivered “I’m not a Rhodes Scholar” grades from Freshman year at competitive universities. I think we’ve tried to help the poster see that one bad semester (which in this case sounds like one bad grade) isn’t fatal, isn’t necessarily a reason to change course, and certainly isn’t a reason to think that her kid is a failure, which intended or not, is the tone of the OP’s comments about her kid.</p>
<p>The OP is free to ignore all of our advice. Collectively, the posters here have had kids at tough, grade deflated U’s, with kids majoring in all sorts of things. Some of us have shared that grades- particularly Freshman ones- are not the only measure of what our kids have taken away from their university experience. Some have posted their experiences with grading in science courses at various UC’s. Some have posted their experiences with kids having differing amounts of “skin in the game”.</p>
<p>If you believe that we’re attacking OP- so be it. I believe that there are kids who are wringing every blessed nickel of value out of college even with mediocre grades- they take campus leadership roles in organizations they care about, they get immersed in public service projects which lead them towards a satisfying career, they make friends with faculty members who go out of their way to help them down the road-- they get to hear Kofi Annan and Christiana Amanpour and Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and Yo-Yo Ma and may even have lunch or dinner with one of them. </p>
<p>My own kid was amazed when he started looking for a job senior year at the number of people who volunteered to help- grad students who had been TA’s, grad students who knew him when he worked for one of his professor’s, members of the faculty who had taught him and those who just knew him from “around”. This had nothing to do with classroom- and had everything to do with the random conversations and nice interactions and what not that you get at a university. He got emails even two years after graduating saying things like, “I just heard from someone who is hiring an XYZ. Would you be interested and can I recommend you?” None of this is reflected in grades, but much of this is the “value” of attending a place like Duke vs. getting an online BA from No-Name college.</p>
<p>But it’s the OP’s money and the OP’s kid- and she gets to set the rules. But you can’t post what she posted, with it’s questioning as to whether her car might be more valuable than a degree in English from Duke, without getting alternative perspectives. If she wanted to debate this with her husband-- she would have done so.</p>
<p>Would I be happy if I were paying full freight at Duke at my D was majoring in Beer Pong? No. If that’s the case, then the OP may be justified in trying to aggressively nudge her daughter towards a cheaper option. But that’s still not what the OP has told D in the letter- nor is that apparent in the facts we’ve been presented. If that’s the case, I’d be a little more direct- and none of the dead Aunt, how can I work for an HMO BS is at all relevant.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And you’ve referred to what her entering stats were (< 25th percentile, apparently). It seems to me that you see her ability to “play at Duke” to have always been tenuous – that she was a “slide-in” admit who got lucky rather than a full, deserving admit. And I disagree with that (on general principle, of course, not knowing your daughter). If Duke admitted her, she’s as fully deserving and capable of playing at Duke as anyone else in the freshman class.</p>
<p>Okay, I can’t resist just one more comment.</p>
<p>Yes, I was dissappointed in the D, but mostly I was scared. You did not see her at Christmas. You do not now know what is was like sending her back. You do not know what we have been through. I did not think I needed to share that here to get feedback on the addendum. That’s all I really wanted.</p>
<p>I wanted to know</p>
<p>Does anybody think it is appropriate to offer an incentive for new skills to a kid in college. Granted, there was more to it than that, but as far as I know I SHARED very little of that with her.</p>
<p>Yes, I was dissapointed that she got a D, especially knowing she’d handled it the way she saw fit. Is that so horrible? Being dissapointed in a D? Yeah, she probably figured I was dissappointed in a D, but the D wasn’t the big deal.</p>
<p>Until last year it was all about UC’s. We knew she was a great kid, and UC’s were great schools. Then she started getting letters from schools. I came here to figure it out. We decided to let her send in an application to Duke. We were ALL blown away when she got in. What I have learned since then has been beyond what I could have imagined. To bad I didn’t know it all before. This thread has been a learning experience as well. </p>
<p>Some of what I’ve read here is very reassuring. Reassured me that getting a D in a math class is not a big deal, even if she had to work very hard for it. Reassured me that this was not a reflection of what I learned here about the “problem” with getting into a school in the bottom percentile. Reassured me that I should trust her seventeen year old appraisal of how she would respond to being in this academic environment. Reassured me that lots of students have second thoughts and want to transfer during Christmas, but I should dismiss those concerns when they are home for summer break. Reassured me that I don’t need to worry about UC transfer applications because she couldn’t get in anway. </p>
<p>I have NEVER gotten this much attention in my life! </p>
<p>Forum dynamics REALLY fascinate me. I belong to several. One of the most fascinating pieces might be how much is lost from relying on the written word. While I have shared more intimacies here than I have ever done in real life, I am left feeling you know me less well than my most casual acquaintances. No one in real life would accuse me of the things I have been accused of here. </p>
<p>And to the poster who suggested my problem was my practice, as it was not lucrative; That is not what makes me happy. What makes me happy is being able to provide a range of services to the kids I treat, not just pushing pills. Pushing pills makes a LOT more money. Would I go back to that? Under some circumstances.</p>
<p>Okay…really…no more from me…</p>
<p>FLV, the OP came to an open internet forum and asked total strangers for their opinion on her course of action. She asked for critique and judgement. She then seemed surprised when the vast majority of respondents not only didn’t support her position, but found some of her statements disingenuous and manipulative. She asked for free feedback and she got it.</p>
<p>Perhaps the OP and H are only trying to renegotiate the deal they have with their D, but by post #42, it’s clear to me that there is much more going on than the shortfall of $2850 in the D’s contribution. If they can’t afford to pay for Duke, fine, say so, but don’t base it on not being on academic probation. If they don’t want to afford Duke, fine, then tell the D that the gravy train has been derailed and if you want to stay there start taking out some loans. But if the majority of the board is interpreting the OPs words as less than supportive of a Duke non-science major, why should anyone assume that her D won’t respond that way as well? </p>
<p>To me the OPs words sound like one big guilt trip designed to get her daughter to come around, maybe that’s not the case, but that’s the way it feels. Many of the complaints about the OP have been about the method of her message. Most of the advice here has been of the “stop beating around the bush and just say what you want” variety. Given your predisposition toward a straight forward “basic economics” approach, I’m surprised you don’t endorse that course of action.</p>
<p>There have been millions of jobs lost…I saw a figure of 8 million LOST JOBS, as in CHIEF WAGE EARNERS, since January 08. Foreclosures are skyrocketing across the country. This is a major recession and could get worse. So I suspect that this discussion is taking place in a lot of homes, not just the homes of kids who didnt get good grades at dream colleges like Duke. </p>
<p>We are entering senior year for D2 and its a completely different paradigm because of her school issues…much improved, but with ADHD its a day to day thingie…and as such, the college list and application process has been so different from D1. D1 had issues freshmen year in college, but rebounded nicely, then did MARVELOUSLY sophomore year…and is on course for graduating with high honors and still has time to strive for summa cum laude. So sophomore year things do get better.</p>
<p>Sometimes kids have to get the heebie jeebies out of their system freshmen year, irrespective of where they are attending college: locally or across country, public or private. </p>
<p>Yes, Duke is a tough school. But I know lots of kids there who are doing well so it can be done if they are disciplined. </p>
<p>Finally, sometimes you can be top 5 or even valedictorian in high school and be in for a real surprise at the workload and different expectations in college. Which is why going to a match or safety is sometimes a better decision. Not for everyone, but for many. </p>
<p>Just my two cents. Good luck.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I honestly don’t see point #2 in Shrinkrap’s posts. It doesn’t seem to me to be the case that Shrinkrap & H are willing to let their D stay at Duke as long as she works to her full potential IF that ends up putting her at the 25th percentile for her class as an English major. That’s what’s bothering some of the posters FLAVADAD sees as “judgmental.” </p>
<p>Not everyone at the 25th percentile at a top university is goofing off. Most kids at top colleges are good students who work fairly hard. Some work harder than others, true. But reality is that GPA and effort do not correlate perfectly. We cannot assume that the fact that Shrinkette got grades at the 25th percentile means that she failed to live up to her potential. </p>
<p>Lets say Shrinkrap’s D works her rear end off and raises her GPA to a point where she’s at the 33rd or 40th percentile of her class as an English major. Will this be enough for her parents? Based solely on Shrinkap’s posts, it doesn’t seem to me that it will. </p>
<p>That’s fine–AS LONG AS HER PARENTS HAD TOLD HER THAT BEFORE SHE WENT TO DUKE. They didn’t. They said that all they asked was she not end up on academic probation and her dad “hoped” that she’d come around to a science major but never told her that.</p>
<p>NOW they are “grappling” with the issue of whether it’s worth it to spend big bucks for Duke if D is not top of the class. The time to grapple with that issue is long past.
That issue should have been grappled with before Shrinkette applied to Duke or at the very latest when she got the thick envelope. Shrinkette had every reason to believe that it had been because her parents told her all that they asked was that she avoid academic probation. Now, they’ve apprently decided that being at the 25th percentile isn’t good enough–but they STILL haven’t come out and told her that! </p>
<p>It’s changing the expectations that’s the problem, at least for me.</p>
<p>PS. I typed this before I read post #147, but I don’t see anything in it that leads me to change my conclusion that the real problem here is that Shrinkette’s grades put her at the 25th percentile of her class and it’s self-evident that she’s not going to be able to major in science at Duke and end up at least in the top half. It seems that if her parents had known this her senior year of high school, they would not have permitted her to go to Duke. Add in a worsening of their financial circumstances, and Duke seems even less “worth it” to them.</p>
<p>shrinkrap, </p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with being upset about a child “underperforming”. The problem comes from reading too much into a single event. This is especially easy to do when you’re thousands of miles from the scene.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, S1 struggled mightily as a freshman, by sophomore year he had found his way, (he is a doer, not a studier). In two weeks he starts his last semester as an undergrad, the delay coming from traveling on research trips for the school. When he strolls the halls of the graduate school, full professors approach him for advice on how to handle underwater collection issues. If all goes well he’ll start a Phd program in September 2010. My wife and I have always seen our job as teaching him to pick himself up, dust himself off and get back into the fight. During freshman year I was certain we had failed, three and a half years later I am both stunned and proud of the man he has become.</p>
<p>Ghost, I agree with you 100%. But my kids react in a very mature fashion when told that we can’t afford something, our constraints have changed, everyone has to adjust to the new normal, etc. They really surprise us with how willing and eager they are to let go of unrealistic wants/needs/expectations.</p>
<p>They react much less favorably when we use money as a club or a carrot or a vehicle for trying to get them to do what we want them to do without spelling it out. Or trying to make them think that something was their idea when it was ours. Or that something is a better option when in fact it may be an ok option but it’s definitely cheaper and cheaper is what we’re doing right now.</p>
<p>OP’s d may be a model of maturity and self-restraint and so she may not care how something is pitched to her. I was citing the benefit of my own experience, that kids are remarkably resilient and cooperative when something is out of reach financially–and much less so when they’re being manipulated.</p>
<p>vinceh: How heartwarming. Thanks for posting that.</p>
<p>Bear with me on this analogy, folks. We all work for incentives. We work hard in school, we get (hopefully) good grades, good letters of recommendation, etc. We work hard we get good job reviews, bonuses, pay raises, we get to keep our job when others are let go, etc. Those employees at work who are underperforming get put on a “performance plan” where there work is more closely scrutinized, and their outcome is tied to their performance. They, like underperforming students, get put on probation. </p>
<p>Sure in the ideal world its better to lay out all the parameters in advance, but stuff happens. Who knew the stock market would tank, that investments would plummet in value, that fewer patients would be able to afford to come in to a private psychiatric practice (I am guessing here but wouldnt be surprised), that Aunt whats-her-name would pass away and funding would change, etc. It is very easy to get caught up in the excitement of a top “reach” school acceptance for a student who has been performing well enough to be accepted. Who wants to send their kid off to school with the double message “we are so proud of you but if you slack off or screw up we are pulling the plug and making you transfer”. That might be a tough send-off message to an excited, nervous freshman. Sounds like OP’s daus is being put on a sort of probation, with an incentive built in to encourage effort. Its really not out of line. Perhaps some posters are reacting to the content of the OP’s letter rather than its purpose. Reality bites sometimes. </p>
<p>Surely the OP didnt wish to be in this position of having to weigh the risk/benefit of continuing to pay top dollar for a top school. I applaud her for her willingmess to foot the bill the first year, unlike some posters who are always trying to find angles to hide income or get someone else to fund their kid’s top-school-only education while they go off on exotic vacations, buy expensive meals, or expensive “toys”. The OP isn’t doing any of that. She and her h. are entitled to drive a nice car, and probably it was in the budget when the stock market and businesses were doing well. Again, things change, and sacrifices might need to be made all around. In the current economy, it might make sense, even with an English major, to take premed requirements (if that student was so inclined) to keep their options open down the road. We have good friends whose dau graduated with a journalism degree from a top school. She is waiting tables. Not what they’d planned. Stuff happens, and she had no fallback option. Many students (many of my older s’s friends) opted for grad school or law school because the job market was looking bleak (well, some actually wanted to be lawyers 
). </p>
<p>To me, this is a variation on the “is the top school worth the $$ and loans” argument, only with a year’s experience under their belt. They voted “yes it is” based in the info available to them last year, but they are having to revisit it now, with the new data they have (finances, class attendance, grades, etc). Are they putting the screws to their dau? Yes. But maybe she’s responded to this before. If dau takes out loans, she has an investment in the outcome. </p>
<p>Some folks are being, IMO, unnecessarily harsh on the OP (and playing psychologist/psychiatrist as well). I might have worded the letter differently, but the idea of writing out the parameters and discussing it when everyone is level-headed and prepared, and not blind-sided, is perfectly reasonable.</p>
<p>I do share OP’s sentiment. I am also not into throwing good money away and I do view education as an investment. The only issue I have with this whole thing is OP not stating any of it before her D started college. It wasn’t spelled out very clearly from the very beginning. It is fine to revise the plan or expectation later as things change, but I would also state it more clearly. I actually had a bit of a chuckle in reading OP’s email because for a shrink, she had the worst way of expressing herself to her daughter, and could have even been psychologically damaging (I did read it as OP was considering pulling her daughter out of Duke because of her performance, instead of possible financial problem with the family). I don’t think it was OP’s intend, but someone could read it as such.</p>
<p>I know many parents believe in hands off, let kids figure it out, they are grown up now. But for me to spend 50,000 a year, I have the right to know how they are doing, not blow by blow, but at least getting some sort of heads up before they get that big “D” on their report card. If they should get that “D”, there better be a powerpoint presentation on why they got it and how they are going to remedy the situation. If they don’t want to owe me that explaination, they could fund their own college education. I have to answer to my boss and my company on how I am doing.</p>
<p>I have been torn about this thread. I think what hit me was there was no clear expectations set. It’s hard to know how to behave when there is no boundary.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with the idea of probation – I, too, wouldn’t pay $50K for my kid to major in beer pong! But it’s just not clear as to whether the D’s bad grade was a function of goofing off (=unacceptable) or trying really hard but subject material just not clicking (=how life goes sometimes).</p>
<p>If it IS clear – and it is indeed D goofing off – then that issue needs to be addressed independently of everything else, because really, it’s no more acceptable to goof off at “inexpensive, easy” UCD than it is at “expensive, hard” Duke.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That might have been me… I wrote something like that – but the POINT of my post wasn’t that you shouldn’t be happy, it was that you seemed to be conflating your daughter’s college performance with the issue of your own job satisfaction.</p>
<p>Believe me – I certainly understand choosing to do work that you enjoy or which feels important and fulfilling over a more lucrative position that leaves you feeling like a slave to your pay check. I have spent my whole life following that path – which is why my law practice was not lucrative, and why my kids qualify for need based financial aid despite the fact that both parents have law degrees. </p>
<p>But I wouldn’t mix up the issue of my job satisfaction with the issues of the expense of my kid’s college. (If I were in your shoes, I’d simply keep the practice, keep the daughter in college, and dump the fancy leased car … but that’s me.). The point is that YOU have 100% control over what you choose to do for a living and how you spend your money – your daughter isn’t making you do anything – and there is no difference in your economic status whether your daughter has a 2.98 GPA or a 3.4 GPA. This is especially obvious when you talk about rewarding your d. for good performance – if the issue was really one of economics, you might be encouraging your daughter to work to earn a merit scholarship, since an influx of outside money would be useful. But you wouldn’t be taking away with one hand, and then offering to give the same back with another. </p>
<p>I’ve always felt that as a parent, I needed to leave my kids out of my personal inner drama over career satisfaction. I was comfortable telling my kids --“no, I’m sorry, I can’t afford X” – and “it’ll be tough, but if you want Y, I’ll find the money”… but I try to avoid casting myself in the role of a martyr (“oy! what I’ve given up for you!”). The choices I made to come up with whatever money I offered really were mine – I didn’t think my kids should be burdened with that.</p>
<p>Jym–</p>
<p>Preliminarily, I think the OP and H already sent the message that they thought their D was at risk of failing out of Duke by telling her before she started Duke that their only expectaton was that she avoid being put on academic probation. That said…</p>
<p>If the letter said what you are saying, that would be one thing. It doesn’t. At all. </p>
<p>It doesn’t say, we are asking you to take out greater loans because we think you need more “skin in the game.” It doesn’t say that the lower your gpa, the more PRINCIPAL you are going to have to borrow and pay back yourself. </p>
<p>Nope, it doesn’t say that at all. It says that because of a change in our financial circumstances, you have to borrow more $. That’s the primariy message. If that’s the message the OP wants to send, so be it. No problem. But there’s no link whatsoever here between the D’s past behavior and the fact that she’s being asked to borrow more $. That seems to be the REAL reason, but nobody has told her that–at least in this letter. </p>
<p>The incentive is put in an addendum. What is the incentive? That if Shrinkette goes to every class, her parents will pay the interest on her loan for fall '09. If she gets better than a 3.0 (a pretty low standard for someone with a 2.98, IMO) her parents will pay the interest on her loan the following semester. (The interest doesn’t have to be paid until after graduation, so there’s really no impact on Shrinkette’s life style during the next 3 years.) </p>
<p>This will, according to Shrinkrap’s calculations, reduce her D’s debt by $2,000 in principal if her D and parents reach similar agreeements each semester. She must pay off this additional $2,000 over 10, 20, or 30 years, depending upon the option Shrinkette chooses. </p>
<p>I don’t know about your kids, but that financial incentive would do ZILCH for my offspring. Paying $25 or whatever more a month some time in the future–how much is $25 going to be able to buy 20 years from now, anyway? --just wouldn’t work. </p>
<p>The college kids who work in my office DO pay off the interest every month. However, they come from relatively poor, usually single-parent homes, and it takes them 5 hours of working to earn that $25 after tax. Shrinkette comes from a family that leases a $50,000 car for $800 a month…I’m not saying that to be critical; I’m only saying it to explain why I seriously doubt an additional $2,000 bill to be paid off over 10,20 or 30 years is going to act as any major incentive to improve her grades IF it is in fact the case that lack of effort is what caused her grades to be what they are. </p>
<p>Moreover, I’ve never seen a better approach to bribing your kid to lie to you. Unless Duke is one heck of a lot different than any other top university, unless you cut a LOT of classes, there’s no way it’s going to come to the attention of your parents. So, while I agree 100% that Shrinkette ought to be going to class, I think there’s too much incentive for Shrinkette to say that she isn’t cutting…when she is. And, there are times when it makes sense to cut–like when you are really sick.</p>
<p>I find the suggetion that Shrinkette take pre-med classes at Duke WHOLLY unrealistic. According to her mom, she struggled to get a B in Rocks for Jocks. To think she could take organic chemistry and do well in it seems to be a bad idea. This girl isn’t cut out to be a pre med.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s “inappropriate” but I don’t think it will help a young person toward maturity and independence.</p>
<p>Your “incentives” can also function as a strong disincentive, depending on your daughters’ personality and the type of relationship you have with her. As a psychiatrist, I don’t think you really need me to tell you why (The book Punished by Rewards explains the concept). At the very least, by offering money to attend class regularly, you are giving your kid your blessing to not attend – and attached a rather modest value to that decision. </p>
<p>I think you are trying to extend your parental grasp at an age and time when you should be drawing back. The “new skills” your daughter needs is the ability to make better decisions for herself about time management and school responsibilities … I don’t see how a parental incentive accomplishes that.</p>
<p>One more question:
</p>
<p>Was this statement in reference to the decision to send your daughter to Duke? If so – if you come back – is there information that you would like to share with parents who may be making a similar decision in the coming year? (That is: what is the part that you wish you had known, and how would it have changed your decision).</p>