I imagine your son is extremely disappointed in himself right now, and your heart is breaking for him. Very understandable, but try not to beat yourself up too much or for too long. He’s going to need your good judgment and support going forward.</p>
<p>
I agree with CountingDown. I would add that your son’s school is probably going to save you the trouble of forcing the issue. Because of the GPA and the academic probation, they’re going to force the issue.</p>
<p>Your son needs to speak to the school and find out what exactly the terms of the academic probation are. Then you all, together as a family, can explore his options. Specifically, he needs to find out if the school will allow him to stay, keep or change his major, and/or take a leave of absence. He needs to find out how the FA will be affected based on what he chooses to do.</p>
<p>One of my kids went to a very academically challenging technical college. It was not unusual for a fair number of the students to find themselves on academic probation with very low GPAs in the first two years. Based on what I’ve seen of those kids, with his current transcript your son is going to find it difficult, if not impossible, to (1) transfer to another competitive private school and (2) land a summer job or internship, which is crucial in his major. Some of the kids from my son’s school took a leave and attended local community colleges or state unis. Some transferred to state unis and graduated there. Some returned to the original school with a repaired GPA and graduated. One student I know of (a CS major–extremely talented at it but kind of lousy at everything else) was on and off academic probation a number of times, took a couple of leaves, but did eventually graduate in a later year than his classmates (though the school allowed him to “walk” the graduation ceremony with his original year). Some of the parents I know were in close contact with the school throughout the difficult times their children were having. It might be helpful for you in counseling your son, for example, to know what academic support resources are available at the school should he stay.</p>
<p>Please don’t lose heart. Your child has options. I wish him the best.</p>
<p>p.s. My other son was a CS major who now owns a successful IT consulting business. He’s worked with loads of people who managed to graduate with CS degrees who aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer by any measure but still manage to earn a good living at it. Some of them even love what they do. ;)</p>
<p>Your son is bright enough to be there, but it sounds like he is in the wrong major. If he is struggling than it is time to reconsider his major. Engineering is meant for a very specific type of person with very specific type of thinking. It is not meant for everyone and that has nothing to do with his intelligence or ability. He may do very well in another major that he could put his abilities to better use. You have not mentioned what school your son is attending but at the top schools engineering is very tough. There are many engineers who realize after their first year that they need to change their course…it is not the end of their dream…it is a fresh new beginning. Has your son taken any other courses outside of those related to this major? One of the problems with engineering is that there is no time for adding additional coursework because they are bombarded with so many hours in the major. </p>
<p>I don’t believe for a minute that a kid who was on the lower side of SATs for a particular school is going to be on the lower end of GPA in college. His highschool GPA (providing he came from a good HS) is far more of a predictor of what he is capable of. If someone believes they are less than the next person, than they are shooting their confidence and ability to succeed. My sons are currently at Cornell and their brother compared Cornell engineering to MIT. He does not feel that way about any other Ivy or top school for engineering.</p>
<p>If your son is not finding success how long could he be happy in this major? It will grind him down…and that is not the point he wants to reach. Encourage him to think long and hard about finding another major that he will be happy and successful in completing.</p>
<p>Coming in late to this thread, so apologies if this has been said. First-- sorry you and your son are going through this. That is really stressful. Has he spoken to his advisor? That might be a good place to start.
Hang in there…</p>
<p>One of the first things on his list of action items is to petition for a new advisor - one who will provide some guidance instead of just signing off. This is a conversation we actually had at the end of the first semester, but he was reluctant to do it for fear of alienating a member of the faculty in his major. Another thing that I learned is that when I asked him (per someone’s advice) to speak with his professors to get their take on whether he should stick with the major and this semester was a bump in the road or if he doesn’t quite have the aptitude for it is that all of his classes have over 100 (he even said 200, but I find that hard to believe) and that the professors wouldn’t know him if he sat on them. I gently mentioned that if he had been going to office hours regularly, this wouldn’t be the case!</p>
<p>Even a clueless professor can pull a problem set or an exam and ascertain from the work whether the student is making careless errors in calculation which result in the wrong answer, or if the student is so far off conceptually that he’s not even close.</p>
<p>And no professor wants a kid to fail. Even in weed-out classes, the professors are there to teach. And I don’t know any college with classes of 200+ kids that don’t have TA’s to run review sessions, monitor problem-sets, have open hours for Q&A.</p>
<p>So your S may be laboring under the false impression that everyone else “gets it” right away (absolutely not the case) or that it’s a weakness to need help, or even that college is for showing how smart you are. So I think he’s dealing with two parallel issues- his attitude, and his academic struggles.</p>
<p>Hugs to all of you. He is not the first and will not be the last; he just needs to suck it up and reach out to some of the folks on campus who want to help him. And my kids had classes with 300+ and believe it or not, the professors were just as available as those in seminars of 15 kids. And if a meeting is too hard for an initial discussion-surely an email???</p>
<p>I believe I saw posted that 3bysmom’s son is a CS major at Cornell. Maybe I can add something here as someone who goes to a school of similar rank and presumably similar difficulty as the one the one of 3bysmom’s son who was until a month or so ago going to be a CS major. </p>
<p>Classes can be very hard and time consuming. Out of two CS classes I took one I spent a tremendous amount of time (on projects and studying together I spent about 160 hours, all outside of class) on one and still did very poorly. I passed but it was close. And I understand that “I’m stupid” feeling from seeing other people just “get it.”</p>
<p>If every single class is giving him the same feeling, either he must be content with simply being rather poor CS major, or should change his major. If he continuously is unable to pass his classes, he WILL need to change something. My personal choice after one poor performance was to switch to something easier. Unless you’re in love with it, I don’t believe it’s a good idea to keep pushing through so you can major in something you aren’t good at. </p>
<p>I do not know how far into the CS curriculum he is, but perhaps he could get an associates degree in CS at a community college. If he just likes programming, it may content him to major in something else. Otherwise, it may help to reinforce things he may have been weak on previously, or give him a first look at things he will see in the future. </p>
<p>If he isn’t planning any sort of change, he shouldn’t expect his grades to just get better as he takes different classes. That really is important to consider. He really needs to change something. This does not have to be his major or his school, but he needs to do something new.</p>
<p>In regards to your last comment about office hours, that isn’t always necessarily the case. I am at a public school, so I am not sure if the situation would be the same at a private school, but often times professors have minimal office hours. In 3 out of 4 of my classes last semester, office hours were primarily or entirely run by IAs and GSIs rather than professors. Professors often have some minimum number of office hours (1 or 2 or whatever minimum their department requires of them), but they’re not the main source of them.</p>
<p>My daughter is a math major at Cornell, and she had to take few programming courses as part of requirements. Like many math problem sets, you could spend 100 hours on it and just spinning your wheels or get some help and get it done in few hours. She visited the computer lab often. After a while, she found a student who worked there and was very good at programming. He never wrote her programs, but would tell her if she was going down the right path. </p>
<p>I manage hundreds of programmers. One thing I tell my managers is never allow their programmers to spin their wheels. Sometimes they get stuck, and refuse to get help. I ask managers to always see what the programmers are doing, if they are not making progress, find out why. If I see programmers who do not reach out when stuck on a problem, I let him/her go if it´s a pattern. It is a waste of company time and money. </p>
<p>OP - for your son´s future career, he will need to learn to reach out to people for help when he needs it, and college is a good time to learn that skill. D1 told her younger sister the other day, “Learn to network, people want to help, it makes people feel good when they could help. It is one thing I got out of college.”</p>
This really is an important point. All people writing programs will spin their wheels from time to time but it’s important to recognize there’s just no traction for too long of a period of time and it’s time to look at things differently - i.e. take a different path. This is often helped by getting another perspective on it by doing what’s been suggested here - discussing it with a classmate, TA, lab assistant, prof, etc. Sometimes the thing that’s causing the roadblock is the stupidest most trivial thing that causes the person to slap hand to forehead once they see what it is. There’s no point in spending a hundred hours to get past it.</p>
<p>Another point - your S needs to determine if he’s doing okay on the projects but not the tests or if he’s not doing well at any of it. If he’s doing okay on the projects but not the tests he needs to figure out why he’s experiencing the disparity. Sometimes people get TOO much help on the projects and don’t really understand the material and end up doing poorly on tests as a result.</p>
<p>Sometimes it can be useful to consult the internet if the rules of the
course permit it. In some of my son’s courses, using books was fine
but using the internet wasn’t. I think that many students today aren’t
used to using the library as a major resource. We also have a large CS
library at home.</p>
<p>Many times explaining the problem to someone else will make the problem
and solution more clear in your mind or allow you to see an error in your
methodology. The other person doesn’t have to understand the area that
you are working in but the act of presenting it can reveal things that
aren’t obvious because you’re too close to the implementation.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>That’s called a facepalm. Apparently derived from Star Trek: TNG.</p>
<p>OP, I’m uncomfortable with some of the advice you’re getting. Lots of people are very sure of what you S should do based on very little information. </p>
<p>I’m a CS prof and I wouldn’t presume to tell a student whether or not they have the innate ability to do the major. How would I know? I see their performance in class and maybe have a few conversations with them, but poor performance could be caused by a host of reasons that I wouldn’t know anything about. I would talk to them about what they could expect in the future in our program and encourage them to think realistically about whether whatever caused their problems is going to continue. This is really something only the student and people who know him very well can determine, and I tell them that. (I’m not a trained therapist.) Some students turn it around and some don’t. They certainly won’t turn it around if they give up, but if they keep trying and ultimately don’t succeed, they’ll wish they had stopped earlier. There is no easy answer. Of course, if poor performance persists too long, university and/or department policies will kick in.</p>
<p>BTW, a student doesn’t need me to tell them whether they missed a problem because of a careless error or complete failure to understand what is going on–this should be obvious once they see the solution. And a careless error in an otherwise correct solution would get plenty of partial credit–we wouldn’t be talking about Ds because of a few careless errors.</p>
<p>A CS student should definitely be taking advantage of their TAs and other help offered to keep from spinning their wheels and wasting a lot of time on class assignments. They shouldn’t be too shy to talk to professors when there is a reason to do so, but I don’t think students should feel obligated to talk to professors just for the sake of talking to professors. </p>
<p>The other thing is to remember that right now, you are both all wrapped up in the “go to a top school, major in CS, and graduate with honors in the 4 years right after high school” plan. Plenty of (most) people don’t manage to do all, or any, of those things and still have successful careers and meaningful lives. Your S has many options.</p>
<p>Thought you might like an update - after all the gnashing of teeth and wailing of parents in January, S1 went back to school with a plan to pull himself out of his academic hole. We were not really sure if he was capable of doing the work ( and his confidence was sorely shaken). Just got the spring grades and I am happy to report straight B’s! Some may pooh-pooh that, but given that the average gpa in his school and department is a 2.4 I think it is great ( and most certainly a huge improvement!). Most importantly though, he now feels that he deserves to be there and can hold his own. Big happy mom sigh of relief!</p>
<p>Congratulations! I am so happy to hear this news. I know this has been a very rough experience - but now that he has come through it - this will be a life lesson that he can look back on and draw strength from in the years to follow.</p>
<p>Any pointers you care to share? In other words, what was the plan? Did he change advisors? Change his study habits? How did he turn it around in one semester?</p>
<p>Thanks for the update – so glad to hear the happy ending. It’s comforting to those of us whose children aren’t perfect and for whom we’re just a tad concerned, lol. Good to know that motivated kids can pull themselves out of self-made holes. Congrats to all of you.</p>
<p>I did not read through this whole thread, but I did see that we’re talking about Cornell?!?</p>
<p>Very reliable sources have told me that Cornell is a bit easier to get into than Harvard, but a much HARDER school than Harvard as far as studies and what is expected of them.</p>
<p>If your S is indeed at Cornell, then he should be very proud of his accomplishments. Pulling straight B’s in his first/second year of a very tough curriculm sounds fantastic. Keep up the good work!</p>