@DunBoyer - I have an opinion that students who are not capable of managing their time without interventions is not ready for college. Some of them may be ready in future years. Some are not college material. I have no problem with the weed out process that happens at college. One of the reasons having a college degree is an achievement is that not everyone has one. If it were easy, everyone would have a college degree.
“We live a pretty structured life, and kids have a pretty regimented existence: school, home, sleep, start over. With only two classes a day, she has a ton of time on her hands–and no one to say, “Hey, why don’t you do . . . now?” We suggested getting a planner and making an attempt to schedule her days. Are there any other tips?”
With a rigorous curriculum, plenty of time should be spent outside of the classroom reading, studying, writing, etc. It’s not unusual for my kids to be assigned 200+ pages of reading between each class per course.
Part-time job 10-15 hours per week.
Extra-curricular activities, intramural or club sports, exercise in general.
Hey, @DunBoyer , that’s a heck of an excellent post.
If “two much time on her hands” doesn’t change after the first couple weeks, there’s something wrong. College classes take a lot of time to do okay, and a really lot of time to excel. Maybe things aren’t ramped up yet, but they will be.
At my LAC and elite/peer colleges, reading loads can go much higher than that, especially for the intermediate/advanced colloquium/seminar classes.
While they’re mostly taken by more advanced undergrads, if a first-year student demonstrated s/he fulfilled the prereqs for the advanced courses or expresses a serious interest in taking it and understands the heavy reading loads/expectations of greater independence/initiative regarding work outside of class(up to 80% - 90% of one’s grade is determined by a final research paper), many Profs won’t hesitate to admit them into the class.
@luckymama64: The “ton of time on her hands” is probably one of the biggest shocks that my kids experienced when going to college. I have a college sophomore and senior now. Like most kids, they lived a highly structured life before college, starting with elementary school, really, with scouting, sports, crafts, etc. When they got to college, it’s like everything stopped and there was a huge vacuum. It’s probably one of the least talked about aspects of college which is why I think it takes kids by surprise. Of course, they eventually learn to fill the time, hopefully productively, but yeah, It’s shocking. Also the lack of bedtime or curfew!
To bring this post on topic, I guess the kids that fill all the free time with non-productive things are the ones who struggle and fail.
We encouraged our kids to socialize, work and find summer jobs, and that really takes time, for a freshman to line up a professional summer job. They need to start that soon, or end up scooping ice cream back home, how embarrassing!
Freshman can get research experience with REUs, and we asked our kids to “look into it” but did not offer them help.
They need to learn to fend, so I took a very hands off approach and seemed to work OK. With one kid he got into London School of Economics for a summer semester, without our permission or a plan on how to pay for that, and I had warned him we would not pay for that. He did not believe me until I pulled the funding plug on his plan, with the words “Did you not understand NO when I said it three months ago?” He came home and taught sailing. It was his best summer as he learned responsibility and to like a paycheck. After that we had no issues with him finding summer work.
College kids need to socialize, as part of their learning, away from mom and dad, to find themselves. I see nothing wrong with dropping out of college to work. I do not see that as a failure, but agree there is some kids running out of money, because they had no financial plan to start.
With both of my kids and their friends, the freshman advisor’s have not been helpful with the “too much time on your hands” problem. They have restricted the number of hours that they can take to 15 and one was as low as 12. After the first semester, my kids never took less than 18 and had no problem handling the load. They came from a background that kept them very busy and they knew how to plan and schedule their time.
I’m going to add another concern: health. Students heading to college are usually going to a new environment, making choices in how they spend their day, what foods to eat (from increasingly broad menus on campuses), whether to exercise systematically, what to drink, when and how much to sleep (not to mention: with whom!?). My daughter came down with mono after her first week in college! That slowed her down enough so that she had to postpone a major class until summer.
I’ve also written before on this forum about time management. College students, unlike high school students, aren’t taking classes from 8 til 3. They typically have fewer hours in class per day than in high school. But there are 168 hours in a week (24x7). Students need a plan of some kind, in particular what to do between classes. They should indeed (as someone else mentioned) have a daily/weekly planner. They should indeed schedule their time to read and recreate during the day – not leaving all “homework” til evenings and weekends. They should get some physical exercise. And they should get a good amount of sleep.
I think @DunBoyer is right about running out of money, and also those who speculated that maybe a lot of those students were people for whom college was not the right path in the first place (or who simply weren’t ready to go away to college yet).
I seriously doubt that tons of students are dropping out in their freshman year because having a suite with their own bathroom has made them lonely.
The University of Texas at Dallas has the poshest dorms, private bedrooms within a suite shared by 3 with lounge, shower, microwave, and mini-fridge.
My twin dds, who are freshman, watched a lot of netflix in the first couple weeks. Now they have a routine of daytime napping, studying, eating, in their free time and socializing 3-4 times a week at night.
As far as parent involvement with choosing classes. I actually play an active role in that department. I have a vested interest in my children graduating in 4 years. My husband and several nieces and nephews had very bad advisors and they ended up having to go an extra semester or two for that reason. I call myself advisor number 2.
My children and I discuss the classes they will be needing. I help them narrow down their choices. They then go with the narrowed down list and meet with their advisor to finalize it. Last year my sons advisor told him he could take all gen eds the next semester. That’s just not acceptable.
Frosh year is probably the highest risk year, since the student needs to adjust to college work (versus the much more supervised and monitored high school work).
Students who face high college GPA minimums to continue merit scholarships or enter competitive admission majors may find frosh year particularly risky, since a rough transition to college may knock them out of their scholarships or majors with insufficient time to recover their GPAs, even if they are able to do well in subsequent semesters.
Placement into college courses based on previously completed high school work may also cause issues for some. Some may be placed in too high level courses and struggle. Others may be placed in too low level courses and be tempted to pay too little attention to what should be “easy A” courses, ending up with significantly worse grades. Based on forum comments, it seems that there is a lot of guesswork here, rather than having the student try old final exams from the college to help determine placement.
We are facing a challenging problem that encapsulates both time management and finances. DS started Oregon State this fall. We live in Portland, about 90 minutes away. His closest friend is at U of O, about an hour or so further south. We chose a meal plan and I gave him minimal spending money (like $150), with the agreement that we would review finances after the first month to see if this aligns with what is needed.
I gave him a credit card to use for college books and supplies plus any online class costs etc. Find out yesterday that he has been using the credit card to come to Portland with his friend from U of O, eating out (outside of school), visiting U of O etc. to the tune of $2,000 (!!!) within the last four weeks. He’s clearly not on campus a lot of the time and I feel like we are watching a failure to launch.
Any ideas or suggestions? My take is he’s not mature enough to manage himself. Maybe he should go to our local college, Portland State. His response has been completely lacking in remorse and I’m honestly worried that there is more going on than just crazy spending - mental health issues or drug addiction.
Thoughts, advice?
Well for me. It’s really depends on you on how to deal with the exam 
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@tuscangal I would first cancel the credit card. Then I would check his mid-term grades (if you can). If your son doesn’t do well this semester, don’t sent him back after Christmas break. Make him stay home, work, pay off the $2,000 he owes you. Then he can start thinking about going to your local college.
I made it crystal clear to my son that college is not a four-year deal; rather, he is there on a semester-by-semester basis. If he royally screws up his first semester, he will not return the second semester. I’m not paying thousands of dollars for him to “figure it out”. He can do that at the local community college for a fraction of the price.
@tuscangal I agree that he should not be allowed to stay at school if he does very poorly grade-wise this semester. I would also encourage him to send you his grades up to this point. If he has that much free time that he can be gone partying (or whatever) on the weekends, then he can get a part-time job to repay some of the $2000 and cover his own spending money from this point forward.It sounds like going to the local college could be a good option, along with a part-time job if he does not change his behavior soon.
@tuscangal I think that the other replies are spot on. If you want your son be accountable, you have to hold him accountable. If he says you never made it clear what he was allowed to use the card for, then make it clear it now so there will no further chance of 'misunderstanding." Better yet, get him a pre-paid visa for a certain amount and let him know exactly what it is for and that it will only be reloaded if his GPA is acceptable.
If you are really concerned about his mental health, most colleges have counselling services for free or low cost to students. You can’t make him go, but you can motivate him by making his mom-funded expense account contingent on his seeking counseling.
Regarding the too much time on your hands issue- I recommend getting on a schedule and treating it like a job. Think about it. They were in high school from 7:30 - 2:30, then sports or whatever til 5 or 6, 5 days a week. If they develop the self discipline, they could be getting hours of studying / reading done before dinner all week long. On most days, there’s probably a good 3 to 4 hours before clubs and intramural sports kick in. They could take care of studying, go to dinner with friends, go to their activities with friends, do a couple more hours of studying and still be able to hang out in the dorm with friends for a few hours before bed. That’s 5 or 6 hours of studying without missing any social activities or hanging out with friends. What’s been replaced is tv, driving back and forth, etc.
Also, come midterms and finals, they’ll have much less stress and no all nighters as they’ve been doing the work all along. That kind of schedule got me through college in the 80s. Worked my tail off but never missed a moment of fun!