<p>My son is a junior and has a 2.5 GPA (he is dyslexic but has always refused any extra help) we know this is a very low GPA, he is very strong in crew, his last 2k was 6:12. Does anyone have any experience with a low GPA but still getting in on athletic ability.</p>
<p>Mitigating the effects of the dyslexia would likely be a lot more helpful to him in college than anything else. If it is holding him back to a 2.5 GPA in high school, that does not bode well for his performance in college (any college, especially if he is also on the rowing team with its practice and race commitments).</p>
<p>Perhaps you can repost on the Parents forum. I think your son’s refusal to get help indicates an overall lack of maturity and readiness for college in general. Options for your family can vary. 1) perhaps at a post-grad school? 2) make ANY 4Y college conditional on his improving his HS work. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s absolute that you should propel your son fwd into college just b/c he has athletic skill.</p>
<p>Test scores would make a big difference in the advice given here. Once you know those, you can probably talk coaches who will tell you if they are interested. And as a parent, I would be up-front about your son’s learning disability and work with the coach on making your son’s attending college conditional on him getting academic help with his studies.</p>
<p>I once had a professor in a writing class who had a Ph.D. in English and he had dyslexia, so obviously dyslexia alone won’t prevent your son from succeeding academically. His attitude will - and if you can find a coach willing to take him on and work with him to succeed both on the boat and in the classroom, then that’s obviously the school for him.</p>
<p>Does he have a strong upward trend? If not, my advice is to talk to some coaches and find out what the interest is and what some options are. I know one young man whose grades were like your son’s, don’t know whether he had an LDs or what. THe coach in his sport at BC struck a deal of sorts where he spent a year at a local college and HAD to show he could do well in college courses. He did his sport at a private club to keep him up there and so not to use up his NCAA eligibilty and have issues that way. he was accepted the following year at BC, though his grades and test scores were no where close to BC’s mid 50% range. He did well both in the sport and academically there, and graduated. So, yes, some things can be worked out, but not necessarily the way you might wish. I agree with the others, that it isn’t so much is LD that is the issue but the fact that he has not learned to use the resources to deal with it and be successful with that particular issue. I think he needs to show a college that he is/has done so. </p>
<p>Crew is a sport that tends to have high academic achievers, so he may not get much slack for that gpa. To be a top football or basket ball recruit, that’s a whole other story.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what your question is here. Are you suggesting that his ability in crew will get him into a college that he is not academically qualified to attend? I’m not so sure it would be in his best interest to join the Harvard crew team and then get eaten alive in class because of his untreated LD.</p>
<p>He won’t qualify for NESCAC or any such colleges. The problem is that crew caters to a certain type of colleges that’s hard to get into…</p>
<p>mdm111: Ivy League recruits need to have a much higher GPA than this + a minimum 1900 SAT. At this point the son is a junior and will not meet the basic threshold even to be considered.</p>
<p>OP:
I agree that you shouldn’t agree on a 4-year college as long as his LD is left untreated. That’s a recipe for disaster in college.
Is he on an upward trend?
What are his SAT/ACT scores?
Look at St Mary’s Honors College of Maryland, Rollins, Hobart and William Smith, Florida Institute of Technology - if he gets his LD treated, gets mostly/only A’s and Bs this semester and next, AND gets 1900-2000 on his tests, he may have a shot there, but it’s very uncertain. Don’t expect much if any financial aid.
Maritime College has crew and is less selective than these, but it’s still not a walk in the park and it trains for a specific profession.
Marietta, Duquesne, Drexel, Franklin Pierce, Gonzaga, CSU Sacramento Lewis&Clark, Pacific Lutheran, Western Washington, St Joe’s (Philadelphia), UDel, UNH, UMW,may be accessible depending on test scores.
Barry (FL), LaSalle (Philadelphia), Washington College (MD), Dowling, Iona, Mercyhurst would be accessible with a 2.7 or so and 1700-1800 SAT.</p>
<p>A good possibility could be Shenectady Community College for 2 years - they have crew and he’d have time to bring his GPA up to transfer into another college. If he were interested in Agricultural/Agribusiness he could transfer into Cornell’s Ag college (I think they even have an agreement with Shenectady). Plus Union, which has crew, too.</p>
<p>One problem with men’s crew is there are no athletic scholarships, so most depend on merit scholarships to make the schools affordable, or need based financial aid. You don’t say which state you live in, but there are a lot of crew teams in the west too, some at state schools which may have admissions requirements where a 2.5 is acceptable.</p>
<p>yup, they’re listed above 
Gonzaga, CSU Sacramento, Lewis&Clark, Pacific Lutheran, Western Washington</p>
<p>OP: would you need financial aid? (I suppose you know merit aid isn’t possible and since crew isn’t a NCAA sport athletic scholarships either) What’s your budget -25k? 30? 45?
What’s in-state for you?</p>
<p>Well, Gonzaga, Lewis&Clark, and Pacific Lutheran aren’t public. I was thinking more about some of the Minn, Colorado State, Kansas and other publics. 2.5 might not be good enough, but sometimes an instate student with really good scores can overcome a low GPA with other hooks. There are many California schools like Long Beach and Humboldt that are possibilities.</p>
<p>my friends son is similar and is rowing at George Washington U. check it out.
ps- ONly one or two Ivies are taking SATs at 1900 for athletes. And thats maybe for lax and hockey… crew, xc, squash…get no slack at most. </p>
<p>I’d really work on getting him the help he needs to succeed with dyslexia (be it tutoring, extra time on exams etc.0 before worrying about crew. </p>