<p>I really need some advice here. I am a single parent of a freshman/now sophomore national merit engineering major almost full scholarship recipient who is in eminent danger of not only losing the scholarship, but flunking out. The short version of the story is that he has been lying and hiding his grades, while living off the scholarship money with his girlfriend who is 21 that he met in the honors dorm and working at a job / playing intramural sports while tanking his grades. He will not talk to me at all, but will not give back the car that my family gave him if he kept a 3.5 GPA, which he decidedly does not have. He photoshopped a copy of his grades, in order to keep the ar over the summer. The university does not seem to want to involve me since he is an adult, even though I completed their paperwork which gives me the right to see his records, as my dependent. My question is, should I continue to try to get the university to prove that there is someone there that is advising him, and try to get him to move to a different living arrangement in order to salvage this situation, or should I just take the car (through legal means, as he will not respond to any communication from me, and is currently hiding it) if I can and let the natural consequences take place? It seems that there were many other students at this dorm who had their parents come and remove them to other living arrangements while making them take summer school classes to try to salvage their full scholarships. I have been trying to trust that my son was using some judgment and not swooping in to save him, but I am wondering whether he has really been made to understand what the consequences of his decisions are by anyone at the university. Somehow, probably by some administrative/bookkeeping error, he still has most of the scholarship money. His decision to move off campus and continue to have his girlfriend spend most of her free time hanging out seem to indicate that he really does not understand how much serious studying an engineering degree entails.</p>
<p>You sound ready to tear your kid apart! Legal means? You don't want that, it will by far make matters worse. He will probably completely cut you off for a long time if you snatch the car away, and how do you know that he's flunking & photoshopping grades, if the university is not showing you any reports? Heard it from a friend or something? Plus, a court case of son vs mother and getting other entities involved will alienate your child, as he may choose to only communicate with his attorney, and not communicate with you. You have to think very carefully when deciding to take a family matter to the court.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Somehow, probably by some administrative/bookkeeping error, he still has most of the scholarship money.
[/quote]
I don't get how that could possibly be, just by sheer dumb luck a bookkeeping error allows the money to stay...are you sure you're getting your information right? You're not nagging him to the point that he wants no communication with you whatsoever?</p>
<p>Hi Mom of NM S-it sounds like he is still receiving the stipends from his scholarships based on imput from the univ. which may down the line be pulled. If you have reviewed with him the possible consequences of his actions/inactions, then as a parent you have done your job, in my opinion. It may prove to be a hard life lesson, or a blessing in disguise. You have held up your end of the "bargain"-now he needs to find his way to hold up his.</p>
<p>^Yet it's very hard for a parent to see their kid fail right before their eyes, knowing they may have had the power to stop it.</p>
<p>You said it yourself...your son is childish and doesn't know what a serious college education entails. APOL got it right--it's up to your son. Not much you can do about it. He clearly has a mind of his own. Sorry...he's going to have to learn his lesson.</p>
<p>I always worry when something like this pops up as someone's first post. Is the OP a troll? </p>
<p>How could her son have managed to register for the fall--and it's only Sept--if any of this were true?</p>
<p>I seriously doubt the OP is a troll. He could have registered for the fall and been on academic probation for the fall semester. Lots of scholarships don't go away immediately, they put you on academic probation for one semester and give you a chance to get it together.
Let's not assume she is a troll and avoid posting anything that would support her right now...</p>
<p>My thoughts exactly, dmd. Further, how could <em>she</em> have done the paperwork to see his grades? As far as I know, it is the student who has to sign the release to allow parents to see grades. The rest of the storyline is so bolloxed up that I can't figure out what is going on, much less comment.</p>
<p>I am new to this posting thing...hope I get it right.</p>
<p>I did eventually fill out the paperwork that allowed me to get my son's transcript and financial information, as well as class schedule. There are several grades on the transcrips for courses last semester and over the summer that are E and K. I have no idea what that means, but this transcript is not what he showed me over the summer. </p>
<p>I agree that the scholarship award makes no sense. In general, after getting this information, I am more confused than I was before. All I can figure is that because of the way this university gives the scholarship money (they break it up into little chunks based on funding source) that he is still in some of the databases or something. Or else, they gave him a semester to get his GPA back up, and some of the E grades are some kind of incomplete. </p>
<p>In any case, this is why I really want to know if there is someone there at the university advising him about what will happen at the end of this semester. </p>
<p>About the car; no, I do not want to go the legal route, but If he keeps it, it will not be giving him any consequences. Also, I am still paying for the insurance, and I do not want him driving an uninsured car that is registered in my name. I also do not want to pay for the insurance anymore. </p>
<p>My son does not want to have us find out about his grades, and I can sure understand that. He also probably does not want to lose the means to drive his girlfriend around, as she has no working car and no job. But sooner or later, this is all going to end, and since this semester has just begun, it seems like as his parent, I should make one last effort to get his attention. The other parents got their kids out and into summer school. I trusted mine, and perhaps I should have been paying more attention.</p>
<p>Honestly, why would your first thought be that this person is a troll? In the event that she's not, you could at least give her the courtesy of PMing her to get details rather than try to publicly discredit her before you have any details. Geesh.</p>
<p>Okay, kpm2c3, if your son is on academic probation and at risk of losing his scholarship, rest assured he knows about it. There isn't a college in the country that doesn't have a procedure for that.</p>
<p>As for the car, if it's registered in your name, you can suspend the registration and the insurance; give your son a week's notice and then do both.</p>
<p>If he were my son, I certainly would not continue to allow him to have the car, just as you feel. It seems that the logistics of taking away that "perk" are complicated in your case. How far away is the school? If it were physically feasible, and it were my son, I would just inform him that I no longer am insuring his car, cannot have him driving it uninsured, don't want him distracted by it, don't want to him to have the reward of the car when he does not continue to earn it. Then I would drive down myself and drive it away. If he were within a few hours of my home.</p>
<p>I also agree that the beginning of the semester is the right time to get his attention. You mention that he is "almost" full scholarship. Who is paying the differential?</p>
<p>The other part of the puzzle which seems to have you confused (and I might be to) is whether there is any system in place within his University which has warned him/offered him support/given him a timeline to bring his grades back in line. If you don't want to be the one to bring his situation to the University's attention, I think you can call the University financial aid office - without stating your name - and ask them how the situation is handled when a student's grades fall short of the scholarhip minimums. I think someone in the office will speak with you about the general procedures, which might help you. You also could specifically discuss your son by name - what the pros and cons of that approach are, I haven't thought that through.</p>
<p>Ok, sounds reasonable. I do not know what a troll is, so I do not know what all that was about in some of the other posts. I will just ignore the posts that seem mean-spirited, and take what I can from the rest. Yes, this is a confusing situation, and certainly a parent's worst nightmare, sending a promising student off to college. Thanks to those of you who responded.</p>
<p>FYI, This is the text from the website of the school my son attends; There is a link to the Dept of Education website that says the same thing.</p>
<p>" If you are the parent/s of a dependent student and meet the requirements of Section 152 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, you may examine your son or daughters education record without their consent. You must read, complete and submit the Access to Student Education Records by Parents of Dependent Students form to the Office of Curriculum and Registration. Please make copies of this form, as one must be submitted for each term in which you wish to have access to your son or daughters records."</p>
<p>kpm, since you're new to posting, you may not realize how easy it is to identify people from their postings. For example, just from the quotation above, I can tell that your son is a student at the University of Arizona. A quick search of the UofA web site turned up this document: <a href="http://web.arizona.edu/%7Escholar/Renewal.doc%5B/url%5D">http://web.arizona.edu/~scholar/Renewal.doc</a>
which makes it very clear that students' scholarships are not continued unless they have the GPA to match: "Continuing students must have 24 graded credit units and a cumulative GPA to meet the renewal requirements for their particular award."</p>
<p>Oh, and as for the meaning of E and K grades, this chart <a href="http://catalog.arizona.edu/2002-03/policies/grade.htm%5B/url%5D">http://catalog.arizona.edu/2002-03/policies/grade.htm</a> says that E is flunking and that K means the course takes more than one semester and a final grade has not been given.</p>
<p>Sounds bad--had a friend who went through a similar situation in sending a kid away for his first year of college. Quit going to classes mid-second semester. Parents finally found out about it--drove up and brought him home. Turned out that he had gotten into meth and has had a devil of a time in multiple rehabs.</p>
<p>Not a happy story, but it could be that your S also has bigger problems than just losing his scholarship...</p>
<p>Thanks for the information. You can see why I am confused about why they did actually give him scholarship money. Hence my original comment
"Somehow, probably by some administrative/bookkeeping error, he still has most of the scholarship money".</p>
<p>After talking to the assistant dean, before I saw the transcripts, all he would tell me after checking my son's records ws that he was proceeding as they would expect a student to proceed. Which just meant that he was still enrolled and did not owe them any money. I did not know how that could be true, since he was on out of state tuition, and did not have tuition money. So I was surprised by the combination of grades from last semester and the fact that they gave him money. </p>
<p>In any case, it seems that he needs to give some thought to whether he should just withdraw while he can, or make big changes to enable him to be more successful this semester. If he is unwilling to do either, then sooner or later they will let him know that he cannot return. Which is certainly the natural consequence of not taking his courses seriously enough.</p>
<p>and, yes, this had occurred to me. Which is why I was hoping that there was some system in place that they could contact him to see whether there was more going on than meets the eye. </p>
<p>I live very close to where my son lives, but his car is never there anymore and he does not answer the door or the phone. So I guess that my next move is to go to his classes, now that I have the schedule, and see whether I can talk to him that way. If he is going to class.</p>
<p>I had a full ride on an academic scholarship way back when and I promptly lost it with all C's and one D my first semester. I dropped out when my parents would not pay for anymore college. They did offer to let me live at home, paying room and board, while I found a job since college was not an interest.</p>
<p>To make the story short I worked for about three years, living in an apartment, and then decided to go back to school. The University let me back in on probation and after a successful semester they reinstated my scholarship.</p>
<p>Sometimes we just have to grow up. I was not ready for school at all. That may be an issue here as well. Best thing my parents did was to let me fall flat on my face. Some support was there so I would not starve but that is about all.</p>
<p>kpm</p>
<p>I don't advise showing up at his class. </p>
<p>Did you say that the car is legally in your name??? He must be parking the car somewhere on campus, you need to find it. Secretly hide out near his dorm at a time when he is likely to leave to go to his car. Secretly follow him to find out where he hides the car. Do not confront him. Later, take the car.</p>