From other posts, I’m thinking he is a business major? A 2.7 isn’t super low for an engineering or physics kid. But I’m inclined to agree that you should be pushing for a GPA above a 3.0 if he’s not in a major that tends to have grade deflation.
I am taking to this to heart except substitute that my son is a rising junior, a business major who is now switching to Sports Industry Major and has a full tuition scholarship riding on the 3.0 GPA. Sounds so similar to this son described here in personality and also loves his school. A couple of key differences—he is a year older, much more money at stake if he loses scholarship, and he does have ADHD and is just now starting meds. It is so difficult to know what to do!
I think there is a difference between a kid who is working their tail off to keep their head above water at a college with more rigorous grading standards than anticipated; than a kid who doesn’t attend classes and heads to the beach when a paper is due. The point of the natural consequences approach is that the problem is one that the kid has created for himself.
So basically – there are times when parents will and should be willing to contribute more than anticipated to help out their kids. Those might be circumstances when the parent can see that the kid is doing the best that he can, but other circumstances have created barriers.
But the problem is that the parents don’t want to enable or foster an attitude of indifference. So in this case a decision was made and the kid has fallen short of his end of the responsibility.
I agree with others that the sports participation is not a bad thing - even though it is also a factor that makes it harder to keep up with studies. But the student should be able to show up to class and turn in assignments — and that in itself could be all it takes to pull a B in many of his classes.
I’d add that implicit in any parents’ agreement to pay for college is an expectation that the student will do their part. If the son was at Cornell and running into academic problems because of his social life and choices, the parents might very well be reconsidering, even if there wasn’t scholarship money involved.
With the classes he took, he should have been able to get a much higher GPA. We learned he didn’t turn in homework, show up where participation counted, or finish and/or turn in papers, in addition to putting off studying. Even with his last year of high school, we never expected this. He had much better scholarships at other schools, but loved this one. As for not wanting to pay full tuition for it but being willing to do so for Cornell, we decided what each was worth, to us (moot point now). He also got into the one no merit offered LAC to which he applied; if we thought he was a great fit for him and he wanted to go, we would have paid for it, but he chose this school as his # 1, with the full understanding that we expected him to maintain the scholarship.
I don’t think the GPA is the problem- I think it’s a symptom. All you folks posting various stories about the 2.X kid who graduated cum laude- terrific. But this is one kid, with one year of college under his belt, who is coasting.
And that’s ok- plenty of people coast.
But I made it clear to my kid that we were not financing Disney World or summer camp for four years. They were free to take a leave of absence, put a pin in their education, whatever you want to call it at any time. And they’d move back home and get a job until they could afford a roof over their head somewhere else. We had worked hard to save for 8 semesters per kid. Anything more then that- figure it out. Any do-overs- figure it out.
OP- big hug. this is frustrating for sure.
We were told by so many professionals that there is no test for ADHD. The neuropsych will test for attention but that’s not really a valid test for ADHD, and two different neuropsych.'s told us those conditions are too artificial anyway. And also executive function disorders, which are in the province of a neuropsych. evaluation, are different from ADHD.
Psychiatrists and neuropsych’s actually use a questionnaire to diagnose ADHD. If you want to be really sure that he doesn’t have a brain-based problem, you could take him to a psychiatrist in an ADHD clinic or individual one, or even to a PCP.
Look up the questionnaire, From what you have told us, it would seem he would fit.
When I read your post, my thought was that this is a kid who needs support, from the school or from a tutor hired by you for time management. It doesn’t sound like he isn’t doing the work: at least some of the time he isn’t handing it in. His priorities may reflect a problem he has rather than just pleasure-seeking.
He does sound happy, but maybe he has some frustrations that he is burying.
A good book to read is entitled “The Myth of Laziness.”
I would try to think about finding ways to help him meet that 3.0 line.
Personally, I don’t have $50k/year to spend on anyone coasting-That can be done for free at home. YMMV
My suggestion is to ignore all these posts and do what you want. None of these people know your son. I’ll tell you that when I was in the same position almost 40 years ago, I lacked the maturity to make good decisions - eating pizza and drinking beer while playing cards or watching MTV late into the night, instead of studying for organic chemistry when I knew I couldn’t coast like my friends studying psychology or sociology seemed able to do. I played sports and socialized, at the expense of what I was there to do. College isn’t a playground, and maybe your son isn’t capable right now of understanding the distinction.
If you want to let him sink or swim, with or without an ultimatum, that’s up to you. In my case, switching schools and majors multiple times wasn’t enough to make it all work out until I finally grew up a few years later. Not every 18 or 19 or 20 year old is ready to handle adult responsibilities. You don’t need to foot the bill if he’s not yet ready for all of this. You can if you want, and maybe he’ll turn that corner next semester and head in the right direction. But college is full of distractions, and quite frankly it’s not the real world - despite the real world consequences.
My advice is to have a serious conversation with him about your current expectations. Make sure he knows you want him to succeed and you’re there for him. It’s your money and your son - you can adapt to circumstances that are different than what you understood them to be a year ago. That’s not the same as changing the rules, but if it were you’re entitled to do that too. All I ask of my kids is that they do their best. If I didn’t think they were trying, things would have to change. There are lots of other things we could do with all that money.
Do I understand correctly that the 2.7 GPA was just for your son’s first semester in college ?
I think this summer I would sit him down and say here are your choices:
- You get a 3.5 (or whatever it takes to get his GPA to 3.0) this semester or
- You figure out where you want to transfer that cost the same as we are playing now.
You basically need to apply now to transfer so start looking this summer. After you see how you do next semester, you can see if you need to transfer or not.
If you want to stay at your school, I would suggest that you do (the things in this link.http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/1920853-college-is-a-step-up-from-hs-16-tips-on-doing-well-in-college.html)
You don’t seem to be a person who can go out during the week and still do well, so consider not doing that.
Your friends will still be there and you won’t if you don’t step it up
We want you to succeed…but we can’t afford College A without merit. You will probably have to go to East State College.
I wouldn’t talk about loans…because young people can’t really comprehend the impact of loans later in their life. $100,000 so I can still hang out with my buddies? Sure! But later when he can’t buy a house he will care.
Also he can’t take a loan without you co-signing…do you want to be responsible for his loans if he decides not to pay? He isn’t exactly showing his responsibility right now.
Do we really want to condemn an 18 year old student based on one semester of mediocre grades ?
He is happy, got involved in a new sport at which he excelled & has a great on campus job for next year. And he has lots of friends.
At least wait for his second semester grades before reacting.
If he did well initially, then he may have been subjected to parental pressure to accept the transfer offer to Cornell when he prefers to stay at his 3,000 student LAC.
Also, lots of freshmen get distracted by freedom & seemingly unlimited social opportunities. College is a significant adjustment for many. Even the LAC recognizes this by allowing one three semesters before cutting the scholarship.
P.S. Seems as though the student may be rebelling against the parents a bit. Was told no fraternity & no sports, but disobeyed the no sports command. At some point, teenagers need to experience a sense of freedom as well as responsibility for their actions, inactions & decisions. Give the kid a chance. Apparently he did quite well on his standardized test (above a 32 ACT so he scored at least a 33 on the ACT).
Kids aren’t perfect & kids aren’t machines.
Plus, I think that the parents have a lot to be thankful for. He is really intelligent with very strong social skills & he is happy. And he is just 18 years old. And he has already secured on campus employment for next year. Once the Cornell curse is lifted, you might be surprised.
CC posters almost always advocate about finding the right fit & not going to one school with the intention of transferring.
May I also suggest you read the fine print on the scholarship-if the 3.0 is a cumulative GPA requirement, and he has 2.7 from fall and 2.something from spring, what would he need to get next year to bring it to a cumulative 3.0 by December?-is that even a realistic possibility, given the courses he needs to take? If not, better to know now and consider your options and if credits transfer
"We want you to succeed…but we can’t afford College A without merit. "
In this instance, it really isn’t the case so I wouldn’t say it because it sounds disingenuous.
So maybe rephrase as “We want you to succeed, but won’t pay for the party. Show us the work and we will continue to support you”
I am very grateful that my college had pass/no record freshman year. Yes there was a significant adjustment and I definitely spent way too much time fraternizing and not nearly enough in class. Most of my classmates buckled down and figured it out after the first year - although yes some did not and moved to less competitive schools or other endeavors. I hope your son is able to figure out how to succeed and keep his scholarship.
“The issue with him is he doesn’t ever learn from his mistakes. None of the consequences have mattered to him: didn’t submit his mock trial video correctly, so they didn’t take him, oh well, same with singing group, then this with the grades this semester. He went back intending to get a 3.7 or above,” but I think when he found out he got another semester to pull the grades up, he reverted back to his fun before school ways. I almost feel like he won’t get it until he’s homeless and cold.”
To me, that’s classic ADHD. Or anxiety maybe? It’s not normal to head off to the beach without turning in a paper. I would be tempted to get a second opinion. There are a lot of proponents of tough love here, but that could backfire too. Let him flag too much and he could spiral downward.
One inexpensive, albeit controversial, way of finding out if he has ADHD is to let him try a prescribed stimulant. If he doesn’t feel a change, he doesn’t have ADHD. If he notices a change in himself, it’s ADHD.
@compmom - we did a full neuropsych evaluation for my daughter. Yes, ADHD is a somewhat subjective diagnosis - you only get the diagnosis if there is demonstrated significant impairment in 2 or more areas of daily living. For our case, we didn’t need teachers to sign off because the psychologist could objectively observe my daughter over the course of the day and take into consideration her responses, and then my survey responses with regard to home life constituted the second area where the behaviors significantly impacted her daily life. If we had had to have teacher feedback, I don’t think she would have gotten the diagnosis because she’s in a big school district and sees these teachers one period a day. They don’t know anything about her or whether her attention is wandering, she is having trouble keeping her locker clean or writing in her planner. Is there any question she has ADHD? Oh heck no! Not in my mind. Her Dad was in denial for a long time, but even her best friends were telling her she had ADHD and needed to get evaluated! Anyway, it was the psychologist who did her neuropsych who told me that executive function disorder is basically the same thing as ADHD, but if a kid doesn’t meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, they slap a EFD label on them. I’m sure it’s more nuanced than that, but that’s where my statement came from.
There is going to be some paying in the future, for the generation of kids who were slapped with labels and put on meds becuase they didn’t comply or succeed. You know, like ciggies, and anti d’s, the real effects won’t be made public for some time, but today, the ads are shiny and bright.
@brantly Stimulants help everyone, not just those with ADHD.