Academic dismissal from Ivy League school

Parents Forum
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<p>Cornell engineering is tough and competitive. The quality of the overall enrolled class is stronger than what you will find at other colleges. Elite engineering schools have very bright students. The student should strongly consider switching majors. If the student can not pass the classes required for affiliation by their 5th semester, he/she will have to withdraw from the college. Below is Cornell’s affiliation policy.</p>

<p>The Engineering Undergraduate Handbook offers helpful information about the affiliation process (applying to your major). Most students apply for affiliation (apply to their major) during the first semester of their second year. Students apply directly to the Major with which they wish to affiliate. In order to be accepted into their Major, students must have a cumulative grade point average of >2.0 and have satisfied the Major’s specific course and grade requirements. Students who are not affiliated or “conditionally affiliated” with a Major by the beginning of their fifth semester will be withdrawn from the the College of Engineering.</p>

<p>Most families can not afford to allow their child to take 5 years to graduate, forget about 7 years.</p>

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<p>You really could substitute hundreds of college names for the original post “Ivy.” Smart kids go to college and some smart kids struggle for lots of reasons. I wish the OP’s son the best in working this out. There are a few odd comments as others have posted. At the very minimum if the son isn’t willing to switch majors he should take a break from college and figure out what he really wants to do and how he will get there.</p>

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<p>Historical note: I don’t know about now, but 15+ years ago, it used to be the case that the GPA/SATs required for getting into Columbia SEAS* was much lower than the College as freshmen. </p>

<p>Thus, if they ended up transferring into the college under the then prevailing policies, they’re much more likely to be in or even below the bottom 10-20% or so of admitted students to the college. </p>

<p>This was so well known among students with high STEM grades and SATs that many used SEAS admission as a backdoor to the college. This was probably a factor in why Columbia U no longer permit easy administrative transfers between SEAS and the College after spending one year in good standing and then submitting some pro forma paperwork. </p>

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<li>SEAS was much more forgiving of low humanities/social science grades and verbal/writing SATs than the College was for low math/STEM grades and math SATs.</li>
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<p>If he does take a Leave of Absence, then he needs to find out EXACTLY what the rules are.</p>

<p>A friend of mine’s son struggled at MIT and took a LOA after one year. The intent was to get some help for depression and then return after a gap of a year. During that gap, he took some classes at the local state school…not realizing that would be an issue. At the end of the semester, he sent those credits to MIT. He then got notified that he could not return to MIT because he had violated the terms of the LOA (no classes elsewhere)…and the student/family hadn’t read the fine print. Obviously very upsetting…and the kid had to go elsewhere. (I often wondered what MIT would have done if he had returned to MIT and then later sent the other transcript.)</p>

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<p>The son’s unwillingness to consider switching majors is likely the mindset that got him into trouble in the first place, i.e. substituting fact based decision making for very typical late adolescent “magical thinking”. It’s magical thinking to go into finals period knowing that you’ve got a low C or D average and think you’re going to get an A on the final, thereby giving you a C or B- for the semester. It’s magical thinking to assume that “you’ll get the hang of it” for the harder classes if your foundational classes in the first year are proving challenging (and potentially revealing some substantial holes in your academic prep… no matter how great your grades were in HS). It’s magical thinking to walk into a meeting with academic advisors and deans and/or professors and think you will be able to convince them that since you worked so hard, you want to be allowed to stay in the engineering program.</p>

<p>And it’s ridiculous to assume that flunking out of an engineering program is a better “golden ticket” for employment than graduating with a degree in urban planning or European history or linguistics or “horrors”- economics (which is where a lot of kids who are good in math but find that engineering is whupping them, end up).</p>

<p>You can help your son by explaining to him that whatever it is that appeals to him about engineering can be found in a lot of other intellectual pursuits. And that once he lets that fantasy go, another, more realistic dream can take its place.</p>

<p>U Mass or Rutgers or U Maryland or U T Engineering will be no easier than his current school. So moving to a community college with an eye towards transitioning into another field is a fine plan. But thinking that the kids at your state flagship are dumber or less motivated or less competitive than at his current school- well, that’s just magical thinking.</p>

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<p>I don’t think this is the case anymore. I can’t find the stats, but I think SEAS has a slightly higher accept rate (like 10% as opposed to 6%) but accepted student GPA/scores just as high as CC.</p>

<p>If anyone knows where I saw that data or knows where it is, I’d actually like to see it again.</p>

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Some selective colleges have open enrollment between majors, so that a student in the bottom 1% of his entering class can choose to major in whatever he wants. Other selective colleges admit by school and make it difficult to switch between schools, leading to admission stats for schools of engineering tending to be dictated by supply and demand. If such a college wants to increase the size of their engineering class, it may reduce the selectivity of their admitted engineering class. For example, there was a period where Columbia school of engineering admitted class had worse stats than the college as a whole and had a far higher admission rate than the college as a whole. I expect this has changed in recent years due to the increased interest in majoring in engineering . The current data on Parchment shows about equal stats between the engineering school and college as a whole, so bottom 10% for engineering is expected to be similar to bottom 10% for the overall college. </p>

<p>Having lower stats also doesn’t necessarily mean engineering will be difficult or the student will be unsuccessful. Most would consider my stats among the bottom 10% in my entering class at Stanford. Nevertheless, I completed 3 engineering degrees, with grades towards the top of my class. If you are going to look at stats that are correlated with failure to complete engineering, the Duke study at <a href=“http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/grades_4.0.pdf[/url]”>http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/grades_4.0.pdf&lt;/a&gt; found the two factors that had by far the greatest contribution to dropping out of engineering were gender and strength of HS curriculum – not the typical stats. Test scores added little improvement in prediction beyond the other factors. When individual test scores are considered, writing score tends to have as much or greater contribution than math score. </p>

<p>Selective colleges generally do not admit someone unless they believe he can be successful, and they seem to do a good job at this, considering the high graduation rates, including both colleges with and without open enrollment between majors.</p>

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<p>See Malcolm Gladwell’s “David and Goliath,” chapter 3.</p>

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<p>Doesn’t pass the smell test to me either. Think this is a ■■■■■.</p>

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<p>I’m not thinking ■■■■■, maybe a parent whose first language isn’t English (probation officer) or a first generation student who was afraid to change majors due to family or self imposed belief that only engineering would lead to employment. However the student got here, sounds like s/he needs to hear from the school what the options are then make a decision. Posters have made loads of suggestions on how to proceed. I don’t think being in the bottom of the class explains anything - medical or emotional issues or motivation would be where I would look.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure about that considering engineering was already a popular major 20+ years ago when my class was in their mid-later stages of HS and thinking about colleges. It was moreso at my admittedly STEM-centered magnet. </p>

<p>Impression I have is that for some reason, Columbia SEAS weren’t able to draw on the same level of applicants as their college counterparts back then. In contrast, Cornell didn’t have such issues. </p>

<p>One factor I heard cited here on CC and elsewhere was Columbia’s urban location in an era when the image of NYC being crime-ridden from the late '60s till the early ‘90s was still fresh in most parents’ minds of that period. And Columbia was located in what was widely considered an extremely dangerous neighborhood*…not the quiet bucolic town of Ithaca. </p>

<p>This was illustrated in my early '90s HS guidebook’s section on colleges where Columbia College was placed alongside Cornell in gaining admission based on GPA/SAT scores based on past admission stats. In contrast, Columbia SEAS was placed in a lower B+ GPA tier alongside schools like NYU-Stern. </p>

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<li>This perception still seems to affect some newly arrived international students and really sheltered suburbanites…some of whom chided me for “not being careful enough” after recounting how I routinely took walks around the Columbia campus/neighborhood at around 2 am after wrapping up a session doing research in their libraries or hanging with HS friends on campus in the late '90s. Amusing hearing this considering I am a NYC native and am old enough to remember when NYC was a crime-ridden city.</li>
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<p>Does this mean that 90+% of Stanford frosh took, while in high school, even more and more advanced college courses than you did, also getting 4.0 college GPAs in those college courses taken while in high school?</p>

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<p>If the school is Cornell, then it is possible that he needs a 3.5 to transfer to a different division.</p>

<p>[Office</a> of Internal Transfer](<a href=“http://internaltransfer.cornell.edu/College-Req.html#3]Office”>http://internaltransfer.cornell.edu/College-Req.html#3)</p>

<p>Those divisions which list criteria for internal transfer tend to require a 2.5 to 3.0 college GPA. If the student has a 2.0 GPA or less, then he may need a few semesters of 3.5+ GPA in order to become eligible for an internal transfer, depending on which division (and possibly major) he wants to transfer to.</p>

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<p>TNMom…your son needs to find a college major where he can pass the courses. Engineering does not seem to be that course of study for him. </p>

<p>I think you need to find out WHY he failed a lot of courses…or got very low grades. Was it because he wasn’t attending classes? Did he NOT do assignments? Did he not understand the material presented? Was he taking higher level courses than he should have been taking? Did he seek assistance from the tutorial center? Did he see the professors during office hours? Was he partying too much and studying too little?</p>

<p>Why did he fail? Until he figures this out, and figures out a way to remedy this, he should not waste your money or his on college courses he will fail again.</p>

<p>Other colleges won’t care that he was studying engineering at an Ivy. It just won’t matter to them. </p>

<p>When a family member we know had a similar issue, the Ivy INSISTED he leave the school and take courses at another school to prove he was capable of doing college work. This student did that, and did well at a CC taking college courses. He returned to the ivy and flunked out. It just wasn’t the right school for this student.</p>

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Note that I said “most would consider.” My combined GPA between HS classes and dual enrollment classes was in the bottom 10% of my entering class. I’d expect most on the site to consider this bottom 10%, rather than heavily weighting GPA based on curriculum.</p>

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<p>Obviously, Stanford’s admissions office knew better than what you consider “most” people, since they obviously weighted your 4.0 college record much more than your less impressive high school record. That is not all that surprising – college performance is a better predictor of future college performance than high school performance and SAT/ACT scores are.</p>

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<p>I don’t think this is a ■■■■■, although I would like to see the OP come back and answer some of the questions that have been raised.</p>

<p>I do think this scenario is likely more common than people realize. If the OP’s son’s stats were at the bottom end for admitted students, he might not have come in with a lot of confidence. I am guessing he may be experiencing other forms of culture shock as well. If he is coming from, say, rural Tennessee, both the Ivy environment and the east coast mentality might be throwing him. He might have been a rock star in his high school but is now a very small fish. That can be unnerving as well.</p>

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<p>Answering some of the questions that came up…</p>

<p>My son was well prepared. He took 8 AP classes, got a 5 on his Calc BC test, etc. He got As and Bs in his AP courses. But his class rank, test scores, put him on the low end of accepted students.</p>

<p>He needs a 3.5 next semester to bring his GPA up to the minimum 2.0 required by the school.</p>

<p>I was not trying to belittle other schools when asking if there would be any consideration based on where he is now. Classes are graded to a curve. When most of your fellow students are valedictorians, NMS, and have 700+ SAT scores per subject, it may be harder to get a B vs the state school where the average student had significantly lower stats coming in. Sure, both places will have kids at the very top, but maye the competition for a B wouldn’t be as hard? I am asking, not judging…</p>

<p>I agree that other majors are worth considering. My son loves STEM stuff. Perhaps some time away would allow him to explore other fields that may interest him and challenge him.<br>
He does not enjoy literature, foreign languages, english, which is why humanities are probably not for him.</p>

<p>He has not been diagnosed with any learning disabilities but he has never been tested either. He was going to office hours and going to classes and using the student center that has free tutoring, etc. </p>

<p>He likes physics, math, wildlife biology, robotics, mechanical stuff, aeronautical stuff, etc.</p>

<p>My main concern, is how to proceed now. Should he change majors and stay there ( he could change to Biology but would still need a 3.5 next semester-- would the school negotiate on that?)</p>

<p>Should he take some time off and learn from this and see if he can go back?</p>

<p>I have not talked to the person who is handling the academic probation. The school wants to deal with the student not the parents.</p>

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<p>We are just trying to understand what the options are right now and see how best to proceed. This is a bump in the road and he has and will continue to learn from it. We don’t want to go in a direction that could have more serious long term consequences so we are looking at the pros and cons and are seeking guidance from college confidential parents who perhaps have been thru something similar.</p>

<p>Thank you for your input.</p>

<p>And my son is a great kid. He has a heart of gold and really wants to learn from this. He has a lot of excellent skills- he can fix anything. And he was one of the only freshman selected for a project team at his school. He knows how to apply a lot of the engineering and math principles but seems to have trouble doing it on a test. At his school they don’t test you on what was taught but how to apply what you have learned. This is stated over and over again in documents from the school and by students who go there.</p>

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<p>Do you mean to say that he has three semesters of 1.5 GPA?</p>

<p>Which courses in the subjects that he likes are the ones he did best at?</p>

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<p>More selective schools tend to have more grade inflation. Ivy League schools listed at [National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/]National”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/) have average GPAs of 3.28 to 3.61.</p>