Have you ever known a child who did bad in high school but then turned it around?

<p>Currently I know of one person and I admire him heavily. He was a friend of mines from a magnet school which I graduated from. Right now I am in my first year of college and I have a 4.0 GPA (it may go down a bit) at a tier 3 school.</p>

<p>My friend went to the same high school I did and when I was a freshman he was a senior. I talked to him a lot during that time since he didn't have many friends and I didn't have many friends. The high school I went to was extremely tough in terms of grades, a B student at our high school would be an honor grad at a local public school. Also the state I live in is a poor state (high crime rate and has a lot of poverty, it is in the deep south).
So back to the story, my friend ends up graduating near the bottom half of a competitive class of 90 seniors. He ends up going to Augusta State for his first two years of college and now I talk to him, someway, somehow, don't know, he is at Brown University for his final two years of undergrad. My friend ended up taking the SAT for the 4th time and made a 2300 on it (he took it after he graduated from high school), he ends up going to Augusta State and maintaining a 3.8 GPA there. I talked to him recently and his grandmother was with him, she was crying saying "my baby made it into BROWN!".</p>

<p>He really deserved it... When he was a child his father left him and his mother could barely make ends meet. He had a rough time in high school as well.</p>

<p>Nice to know that he ended up going to Brown. He belongs there.</p>

<p>Congrats to your friend! That’s a great story and sounds like you & he are both doing well. </p>

<p>My D was required to leave her private HS after her junior year because she missed so much school due to health problems (& her HS grades suffered as well). Rather than entering a new public school for her senior year of HS, she took a GED night school course over the summer and passed the GED with perfect scores. She enrolled in community college & after 3 semesters there was accepted and began attending USC, where she is extremely happy and doing very well!</p>

<p>^^ Two absolutely great stories!!! This validates that its indeed a journey and by no means a destination if kids do not do well in HS.</p>

<p>^^^</p>

<p>I have a friend who barely made it out of high school, went to a very obscure college and then . . . went to a top-ranked graduate school, got a Ph.D., and is now an acknowledged expert in his field. You might know him from his tv interviews!! (no, I’m not going to identify him . . . his secret (high achool) life is safe with me!)</p>

<p>Of course these types of transfers are POSSIBLE. Do they happen with everyone who attempts to make a transfer to a tippy top school? NO.</p>

<p>OP…your story is remarkably similar to a current student at a magnet school in GA who is applying to Augusta State, Georgia Atlantic (is that the name??)…and would really like to be at a much more competitive college. He is also a magnet school student at a school with less than 100 in a graduating class.</p>

<p>I have to wonder how these magnet schools operate if this type of student is being posted about more than once just on these forums.</p>

<p>When my DD was having difficulty in HS, one of my co-workers told me the story of her DD. She barely made it through HS, didn’t want to go to college, worked in fast food for a few years. In her early 20s, she started at the local CC, transferred to a great local university, ended up going to Med School. Her path to success wasn’t direct from high school to college to med school…but in the long run, who cares? I’m sure her patients don’t care about how she got to be a doctor…just how well she takes care of them. :D</p>

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<p>The problem with the student you’re mentioning is that he can get into his in-state flagships – he just doesn’t want to go to them.</p>

<p>My doctor’s kid didn’t get a single A in HS - all Bs and Cs. The parents thought that was all he was capable of. He didn’t get into his college of choice due to grades. He went to the local CC and at that point told his parents he wanted to go to med school “Sure dear.” After CC he transferred to his school of choice, did well and is now a 2d year med student. Who knows what the problem was in HS…he didn’t let that stop him.</p>

<p>I have a friend in his early 40s, was a very bad guy in HS, in almost every way except for being a criminal. I don’t know his grades in HS but I can only imagine… somehow got into a reasonably good state university, majored EE. In his second year in college he woke up and decided to be a good person. A wonderful person ever since. now working for NASA, a manager and a great engineer.</p>

<p>Some people are just “late bloomers.”</p>

<p>We have a childhood friend - let’s call him Joe the Mechanic (not to be confused with Joe the Plumber:)) - who was a B/C student in HS. He came from a blue collar, non-educational background where he worked as a mechanic and was encouraged by his parents to get a union job in the auto factories (ironically). He bombed out of community college the first time around but managed to clean up his act and succeed the second time around. He then transferred to an obscure 4-yr LAC, discovered his passion in biology, and continued on to get his PhD in biogenetics. Apparently if you understand the basic principles of how things work, it is not a huge leap from auto mechanics to biogenetics:). He is now Professor Dr. Joe the Mechanic at a respected university. </p>

<p>I’ve often thought that an education is not so much about where you go as it is what you do with that education.</p>

<p>Yes, I know several males who were late bloomers. This included younger son, who almost didn’t graduate from high school because he was late with so many assignments. Despite having SAT scores in the 98th percentile, he graduated with a 2.7. After a gap year with Americorps, he went to a second tier LAC. Despite working 10-14 hours a week and participating in demanding ECs mainly connected with his major, he has been on the dean’s list throughout his time in college.</p>

<p>That was me.</p>

<p>I flunked out of high school and got a GED. I graduated with a 3.9 GPA at Harvard.</p>

<p>There are a lot of reasons why people may do badly in high school that have nothing to do with academic talent.</p>

<p>Wow, Hanna! That is amazing!</p>

<p>My grades in high school were very mixed, ranging from A’s to D’s, as well as an F. I resented busywork and arbitrary rules, and responded only to teachers who treated me like a thinking person, which meant that I simply refused to do the work for teachers I didn’t like. I would just take the exams and let my grades turn out however they turned out. My test scores were good, though (32 ACT, 1300 SAT V/M, NMSF).</p>

<p>When I got to college on a full-tuition scholarship based on being NMSF (since there was no other way in the world I was going to get a scholarship), I thrived on the independence and emphasis on self-motivated learning. I graduated with a 3.5 GPA and went to an excellent grad school. I think I managed to “turn it around”.</p>

<p>My father dropped out of high school in his senior year and joined the army. After a 20 year career, he retired and went to college. He started as a freshman, got a PhD and started his second career. I’m sure many in his high school class would be surprised to see what became of him.</p>

<p>I couldn’t tell you what my GPA was when I graduated high school, but I doubt it was above a 3.0. I failed 3 classes my sophomore year and my transcript was littered with As and Cs and the occasional D or F (precious few Bs, as I either tried or I checked out completely - most of the Cs and Ds were results of teachers feeling bad failing me). </p>

<p>I was lucky enough to get admitted to a Tier 1 LAC (I still don’t know how, the fact that it’s mostly white and was looking for some diversity must have helped). While my first semester felt like a replication of high school, I wised up and haven’t gotten less than an A- in the past two years. I have no good reason why this happened other than something finally clicked in my mind, I hung around with better influences, etc.</p>

<p>I’m set to graduate with honors and will attend Harvard Business School in 2 years. So I think I turned it around. Sometimes, people need a little more time to mature and it is certainly possible, at any point in your life, to “turn it around”.</p>

<p>touching stories here. </p>

<p>I wonder

How did you manage to convince Harvard to admit you?</p>

<p>We have a deacon at our church that loves to tell his story. He barely graduated from high school - many D’s, etc. </p>

<p>Then he worked for a bit, went to a CC, then transferred to a 4 year. He now has a PhD in physics. Straight A’s in college.</p>

<p>No wonder the gap year concept is taking off. Given the many late bloomer posts here, may be a gap year is good even for those kids who are doing well in high school. Perhaps kids in general just need more time to mature to take the full advantage of a college education.</p>

<p>Not sure what the goal of this thread is about the “friend”
who you “went to school with”. Might be better to wait until you/your “friend” have gotten through a year or 2 of college, protag.</p>