DS was battling health issues periodically all senior year long. Both doctors and school counselor advised him to reduce course load to only as needed to graduate. The mid term transcript probably showed his original course load, but the final transcript shows only few academic courses. He still graduated with advanced diploma.
He received letter from Rutgers yesterday, asking him to explain the drop in grades. He had addressed some of his health challenges on his essay during admissions, but at that time, he had not expected to struggle all year long and reduce course load so drastically. What is the best way to address this with Admissions office? Should we response with email and then follow up with a call? Any advice?
Based upon this, Rutgers does not care about the reduced course load; they care about the fact that his grades dropped. While hindsight is 20/20, what he should have done is notified Rutgers in advance that he planned to reduce his course load. Colleges have an expectation that an applicant will take what is listed on the application, and they make their decisions accordingly.
What he does now is answer the question posed as completely, but as succinctly, as possible. He needs to focus on the grade drop and not bring in things that were not asked. They basically want to ensure that the grade drop was not due to senioritis.
If the request was emailed, responding via email is fine. If the request came via USPS, the response should be sent the same way. There is no need to follow with a phone call; if they need additional info, they will contact you. Good luck.
They want an assurance that the drop in grades was for a valid reason— illness or something of that nature as opposed to, say, too much partying.
Describe the situation completely, including any hospitalizations or surgeries, and include the doctor’s recommendation.
Thanks for the advice.
@skieurope - you bring up a good point. They are asking about drop in grades indeed and not the reduced course load. That confused us since, his GPA did not change drastically at all. GPA remained same really with a 0.1 drop only.
I was advising him to respond to that changed course load which was AP heavy consistent with his previous profile. The course load was reduced to the minimal courses he needed to meet graduate requirements. He still graduated with advanced diploma, and is an AP scholar.
Also @bjkmom your advice about including hospitalization - We can enumerate these events (spread out over the entire year) and supported by the school by sending teachers home. But school support called homebound program, was limited to only courses he needed to graduate school.
I was suggesting DS not to share too much personal information of kind of illness- given how little control anyone has over information.
Maybe if the Univ needs more info to be corroborated, then they will ask. But additionally, since classes begin in 4 week, this all has added so much uncertainty in DS’s life plans. DO you advice he should start lining up Plan B school immediately as safety now?
A 0.1 drop in cumulative GPA or a 0.0 drop in GPA for the semester? I’d be surprised if Rutgers would question a minor drop on the semester, but a 0.1 cum drop would be a 0.8 semester drop, which might be a problem if one of the grades was a D.
I would not spend too much time on formulating a Plan B; Rutgers wants your son; that’s why they admitted him. Assuming they find his answer acceptable, I doubt they would rescind.
We have sent our response and will update this conversation with what response we receive from Rutger’s back that they said would be within 2 weeks. That’s still cutting very close to college start time … I am still concerned, if they wrote up the initial letter - would they put him on academic probation maybe?
Yes, it’s possible. Again, don’t worry about what **may/b happen. If academic probation happens, that’s still better than having an admission rescinded. And really, all academic probation means is that they need to maintain a required GPA (which one should want to do regardless) and cannot take more than 16 credits and possible have more stringent advising. So, fingers crossed. 