<p>I was wondering if you all have any stories, positive or negative (but positive would be more fun!), of big changes in performance from high school to college. </p>
<p>I have read some negative stories of students doing poorly in college, but once getting into the details, have noticed that many of them also did poorly during at least senior year of high school as well. I'm interested in a complete change versus high school.</p>
<p>I have a positive story: Friend of son's who graduated high school with a 2.7 GPA and somehow squeaked into our state flagship is now a sophomore and has a 3.95 GPA. He claims that the coursework is much easier than what he had in high school, and that it's also easier not to have classes all day, every day, but maybe he also grew up a bit.</p>
<p>One of my brothers had straight D’s one semester of his sophomore year. C’s were not allowed in our house (we were better than that!) so you can imagine the scene. He decided high school wasn’t worth the effort. The following semester and from then on, he did well, graduated from college with a degree in Chemistry and was accepted into medical school.</p>
<p>My story is dated, but back in the day (graduated 1982!), I had maybe a C+/B average in HS. This was before any notion of grade inflation, and our school offered no APs. But I really worked at school for those Bs! And when I started at college, they initially wanted me to go into the ‘remedial’ section of English 100 (I talked them out of that). </p>
<p>In hindsight, I was actually a gifted student in a crap home environment and an anomaly in my school environment too. Some teachers picked up on my abilities, and gave me ‘special’ assignments (in a few cases, I missed whole courses to help in the school with other things), but otherwise my grades were mediocre (at least by today’s standards). </p>
<p>Yet, I saw college as my ‘ticket’ to a new life, and I was the only one who went to college in my large extended family, and one of few from my highschool to go on to college. I found my passion and academic strength at university (it was soooooo much better than my highschool! and I could take what I was interested in!!). Flash forward: I ended up with an undergrad, two masters, and a PhD, and as a professor at an Ivy. I’m now tenured, I get courted by a lot of schools to consider a chaired position, and my research has been cited enough that I have won almost every research award in my field Who’d have guessed from my highschool record!</p>
<p>I know a guy who got 100 (perfect score in my school) in math. 1 in the first term, 0 in the second term and 0 in the third term(the marks were out of 100). He ended up getting a A+ in his first calc course in freshman year. College makes people change!</p>
<p>I don’t know if any of them are actually getting better grades, but I have heard from several recent graduates of our HS who say that college is noticeably easier. And they are going to pretty good schools.</p>
<p>S (UCLA’05) had an average HS career - ~3.0 UW GPA, tested well (was a NMSF and admitted that, if he had remembered about the PSATs, he would have tried harder on the math section!), but getting him to focus on anything he didn’t like such as math or science was a real chore. Miraculously got into UCLA based on the strength of his design portfolio and blossomed while he was there - because that was his love. Graduated just a few tenths short of cum laude and got mostly As and a few Bs.</p>
<p>Interestingly, even though he tested out of math for college, he thanks H and me for making him study math all through HS because when he now does programming for his design work (when there’s no appropriate SW available), he applies his math skills. Best reward ever!!!</p>
<p>Unfortunately, S went in the other direction. In HS, he had a 3.84 GPA and was captain of the academic quiz team. Now he’s a freshman with a rousing 1.54 GPA, including a D and F in his intended major. But he’s gotten really good at ping pong…</p>
<p>As a professor who sometimes teaches freshman classes, it is just heart breaking to listen to students who were “good” in high school come in with D’s and F’s on quizzes and exams. Most of these students ARE bright and coasted through high school, studying less than an hour the night before for their exams. That doesn’t cut it in college, and it sometimes takes failing grades to get across that the standards are higher and absolute – no extra credit opportunities. Last semester, 1/3 of my freshman biology students failed, 1/3 got grades of C, and 1/3 had A’s and high B’s. All of the students came in with good (3.0-3.5) high school grades and decent standardized test scores (75th percentile or above).</p>
<p>Back in the 70’s, my HS teachers punished me via grades for daring to disagree with them, regardless of how polite I was, and I was not close to National Honor Society. In college, I did not change my ways–but the professors were willing to consider the merits of my counterarguments and I was an Ivy Phi Beta Kappa, much to my amusement and my parents’ relief.</p>
<p>A lot of HS kids get turned off by the busy work, or the pompous and/or boring teachers. Others, meanwhile, struggle at colleges if the professors stop looking for memorization and start looking for analysis.</p>
<p>And then there are the kids who spent too much time in HS on sports or partying and wake up in college–and those who make up in college for not having partied in HS.</p>
<p>As advertisements for stock mutual funds warn: “Past results are not guarantees of future results.”</p>
<p>I don’t know if I would say vastly different but my S1 was a solid B student did just enough to get the B, never pushed himself…just got it done…barely at times, took the “rigorous currculum path” with a couple Cs in math classes and graduated loathing anything math. He just loves college and gets all As in most classes, a smattering of Bs and has 1 B- or C, can’t remember, in the required math class he had to take that he still dropped once and finally completed because he just had to. I totally think he’s successful and will graduate next spring. His college application essay was about what he disliked in high school and how he was totally looking forward to college.</p>
<p>In high school, younger S was a high Sat (NM commended), low gpa (2.7 unweighted, almost didn’t graduate from high school due to procrastination senior year) student. At graduation – when he saw all of the honors his friends got – it hit him that he wanted to be like his peers and graduate with honors and special cords, etc.</p>
<p>After a gap year with Americorps, he went to the LAC of his choice on his own dime (big loans, scholarships, job, savings). Our agreement was that H and I would kick in only after S got decent grades for a year. To keep his merit aid, he also had to maintain a 3.0.</p>
<p>S is now a junior, with an overall gpa of about 3.5. His last 2 semesters, his gpa has been a 3.75. In addition to taking a heavy course load, he works 9-14 hours a week and is very active in a variety of arts extracurriculars related to his major. He has good friends, is happy, and is very proud of how he has risen to the challenge of college and has done so well on his own initiative.</p>
<p>My first Son hated HS.The only classes he cared about were Math and Film. He was a B- student.
He took a year off after HS. Worked in his field. Attended every event where he knew prominent people from his field will be in attendance.
He could write a book about networking.
One Org. where he was a volunteer, gave him a scholarship that covers his tuition.
He has an internship every summer at a major Co. with the promise of a job once he graduates.
He is currently a Junior and loves his school. He has a good GPA, and he is debating whether it’s worth it to go to Grad school.</p>
<p>Isn’t it nice to read the long-perspective:</p>
<p>By his sophomore year, my brother was kicked out of school for a bit too much partying. The school made him take a year off and re-group. During that year, he lived with my sister who was a graduate student at URochester. During one horrific night, brother was coming back from his job as a dishwasher. There was a blinding snow storm and his cute sportscar was crushed by a huge snowplow. He came home in tatters.</p>
<p>He eventually went back to finish his degree, and then over the years, completed several graduate degrees and certifications. He is now a highly sought-after, successful public defender.</p>
<p>He’s immature (having bipolar disorder doesn’t help) and never had to learn how to study in HS. I asked him to write down his daily schedule including sleep, meals, classes, studying, and leisure. There was a grand total of one hour listed for French homework–no studying at all. He also has a problem with getting his butt out of bed in the morning.</p>
<p>This semester he’s in an academic success seminar for students on academic probation, but he’s not terribly enthusiastic about it. He says he wants to change, but at this point I give him 50/50 odds. We’re paying the expenses for the second semester, but he’s been told he’ll have to take out a loan if he loses his scholarship. He’s also been told that if he gets kicked out of school, he’s also getting kicked out of the house and will have to go live with his dad (which he definitely doesn’t want to do).</p>
<p>He’s not a partier (I know, everyone says that, but he specifically requested a substance-free room because he didn’t want to deal with drunks). When I talk to him on Skype on the weekend, he complains that there’s nothing to do because everyone’s out getting drunk. I know it’s a novel concept, but what about studying? :rolleyes:</p>
In HS, he had a 3.84 GPA and was captain of the academic quiz team. Now he’s a freshman with a rousing 1.54 GPA, including a D and F in his intended major. But he’s gotten really good at ping pong…</p>