<p>Calmom, I don't believe that it is the best thing to make a child take the hardest possible courses and insist on the top grades. I also don't believe that tailoring your life to get into top college or getting your child into a top college is an enviable goal. If the activities that fall in that category, are also things that your child wants to do anyways, that is a different story, but much of life is the journey, not the destination. You do live those moments too, and to be cracking the whip at a kid who just does not want to do it, is not a good quality of life. </p>
<p>But there are certain work ethics that a kid has to learn if he is going to be self sufficient and have a reasonable life quality. Thoroughness of the job, doing unpleasant, uninteresting things, following direction, doing what the boss wants, are all important life lessons. When I say my son is having difficulties with completion, it is not just with academics. There are other issues in there too, I'm sure. Hopefully, his goals and work somehow meet. There are many out there who work to eat, and that may well be his destiny.</p>
<p>Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Einstein.... there are many such geniuses. But for each one of them, there are hundreds of thousands of lazy or unmotivated geniuses who never found their matches or niches in life, and are very unhappy about it. As I stated in my earlier posts, colleges do accept underachievers, kids who are untraditional IF there is something tangible there that the kids have achieved that makes them stand out and desirable. I have seen such kids. If a kid is so talented that he does not have to dot the i's and cross the t's, there will likely be some recognition of this. Unless such tangible evidence exists, an underachieving genius is right in there with other slackers, and he may never be recognized for talent nor have an opportunity to show everyone what he can do.</p>
<p>"Going back to the OP, I am still surprised the young man did not get into JMU or VPI. I double checked, and kids with far lower stats than his, including grades have been accepted to those schools."</p>
<p>I wonder what the recommendations looked like. For that matter I wonder what the application looked like. I'd make a small wager that the whole application package would make a good case study in "how not to do it" because based on stats alone he should have breezed into JMU.</p>
<p>I agree with NewHope33 on the recommendations comment. I, too, wonder what his teachers wrote. Sure, a kid can be a fantastic student but a real jerk in the classroom. I have met teachers who have had kids with big-time grades but could not recommend them for college because of attitude. I watched one write out a recommendation for a kid seeking an Ivy school spot. All he wrote was, "good student." What does that tell a college? Either the teacher hates writing recommendations or does not particularly love the student. In this case, it was the latter. He did not get into the Ivy, either.</p>
<p>In my opinion, it's not laziness to not want to do pointless busywork; but to fail to do it when the consequences are bad grades is self-destructive and, frankly, stupid. I certainly wouldn't want to hire somebody who felt that he had the discretion to disregard my instructions if he felt that what I wanted him to do was pointless.</p>
<p>kenf1234............good comments and thank you for posting them.</p>
<p>at our district, differentiation has been helpful in the elem. school and the high school offers some accelerated core, ap and dual enrollment classes. the middle school is where there is no challenge for the gifted students as they have mixed ability core classes and the focus is on state assessments.........bringing up low achieving students to proficiency.......and no focus on the needs of the high ability students. not all gifted students are fortunate enough to be in situations where the teachers in their regular classrooms are willing to make accommodations. </p>
<p>i've linked below "leave no gifted child behind" from the washingtonpost.com site</p>
<p>jmho, but i think you'll see more and more families of gifted children opting for private schools because of concerns about state assessments. they'll also be checking out other options like homeschooling and online schools. there are increasing numbers of districts implementing online schools (and the students can work at an accelerated pace).</p>
<p>I had a 3.8 UW GPA (which in my grade-inflated high school is barely Top 10%, I'm possibly out of it now, as I took 'sending all of my college apps in' as a sign to stop doing any work at all), a 1560 SAT, took 13 AP's with mostly 5's, and currently have a GPA (which to quote Ken Jennings when asked how much money he won on Jeopardy.. "I think it starts with a 2."). It's still going to start with that number by the end of this semester.</p>
<p>Oh well, time to switch to a impractical easy major..</p>
<p>
[quote]
Fast-forward to high school. To minimize frustration, we focused my son on learning, not grades. If he could get a 100 on an exam without doing the homework, we believed his time was better spent doing another activity in which he actually learned something.<a href="emphasis%20added">/quote</a>.</p>
<p>Theirs is a wonderful philosophy. But the parents then also expected that the system would bend itself into that philosophy because their son was so extraordinary that he couldn't deal with frustration, and of course everyone could see that. The system that's based on grades would just obviously make an exception for their son, just like Moses parting the Red Sea. They didn't see that what they were doing was taking a risk.</p>
<p>His parents now have also learned a lesson: Sometimes, when you buck the system, the system bucks back.</p>
<p>I agree with Chedva and the other posters here who note that if you choose not to follow the rules, you should be prepared for the consequences, or work hard to change the system. Not only public schools, but many private schools, have very rigid expectations from the students. I think it turns out unfavorably particularly where the parents are firm supporters of the isdea that rules are for others but not my child. In such a situation, you must be prepared confer with the school and the teachers constantly regarding the child's learning etc. This is not so well received especially in schools where there are no resources for more individualized learning. Parents can try to make a school work for a child's special style, but ignoring the school's requirements is courting disaster.</p>
<p>"Going back to the OP, I am still surprised the young man did not get into JMU or VPI. I double checked, and kids with far lower stats than his, including grades have been accepted to those schools. I think, perhaps, his gpa must have some really low grades in there. I know that a steady 3.0 is acceptable at those schools with lower test scores than the OP's son has, especially if the school, curriculum, classes are at a high level."</p>
<p>The article didn't indicate whether the quoted GPA was weighted or unweighted. I am assuming it is weighted. At our school, the cut-off to get into Tech last year was about a 3.85 weighted GPA, with acceptances almost perfectly correlated to weighted GPA. SAT didn't matter; lots of high SATs rejected and low SATs but appropriate GPAs accepted. JMU is a little easier, but still a stretch for our S with a 3.62 weighted GPA and nothing lower than a B throughout high school. (This according to his GC as well as what I can clearly see in the history of who has been accepted from our school.) </p>
<p>Both Tech and JMU have one optional essay (which a lot of kids ignore) and may be a slight factor, but probably not critical. Tech takes no teacher recs and JMU allows for only one, from guidance or a teacher. So these schools are (1) very GPA driven, and (2) look at GPA within the context of the individual school, from what I can tell. Maybe those lower GPAs are being generated by kids from weaker school systems. I am not at all surprised that this student was not accepted.</p>
<p>I've noticed that Virginia's state schools, particularly, UVA and W&M are very grades driven. Our college counselors warn of that which is why many of the kids in the private schools do not apply to them even though they are highly desirable schools. I have seen some truly stellar kids turned down by UVA because it did not take into account GPA/rank in the context of the school. Those same kids were accepted to HPY at least in a couple of occaisions and to other Ivy and like selective schools, but turned down by UVA. One was a legacy whose parent questioned the rejection and it was attributed entirely to the unweighted GPA which was just to low. </p>
<p>However, I did not think Tech was as strict.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
I have seen some truly stellar kids turned down by UVA because it did not take into account GPA/rank in the context of the school.
[/QUOTE]
We spend considerable time analyzing the profile sent by each school to make sure we understand the context for GPA and rank, if they are provided.
[QUOTe]
One was a legacy whose parent questioned the rejection and it was attributed entirely to the unweighted GPA which was just to low.
[/QUOTe]
We would never hang a decision entirely on a GPA. I have to imagine that his is a case in which all the facts aren't known.</p>