<p>Great insight, ClassicRockerDad; thanks. With all my hours of research, it’s still hard for me to weigh the variable benefit of undergrad comp sci programs as to future return on investment (re: challenging/interesting career, not just $). </p>
<p>I’ve been crossing my fingers he choses to rise to the ‘TX challenge,’ but we’ll see how it goes.</p>
<p>The thing–if he crashes at TX, he won’t have the ‘beautiful school on a dime’ option of AL to fall back on (I’m assuming they won’t be offering that full-tution-plus scholarship to a 2nd year transfer). Maybe that would be good motivation, though.</p>
<p>We went through something similar with our son these past four years. We thought he was bright. Took all honours courses,and struggled.He got A’s,B’s and a C in each of his high school year.We micromanaged him to the extent of making a daily hr by hr time table hoping he would be able to manage his time well.He was not able to make a distinction between home work time and recreation time on the computer with the result that he and us burned many a mid night lamps over four years.We sent him to summer school for 5 weeks at Georgetown hoping he would be more independent .His inconsistent grade continued and he did not get admission to any of the top schools that he applied to. He did get into William and Mary. We are not sure he will be able to manage the rigor of college academia at W&M. In that case would Rutgers be a better option? Are we taking away one chance that he has to redeem the situation ?</p>