<p>Just wondering if there are parents of students in this range, or not, on CC... Can our children be accepted to colleges as well? Maybe high school is hard, and these students want to learn, but face obstacles. Surely there are options other than vocational school. I am hoping there are. Please share your ideas, insights, experiences.</p>
<p>There are parents. Check out the 3.0 thread and you will see that some are below that. Also, is your student a freshman or a junior? Is the GPA unweighted or unweighted? is there an LD or behavioral issue involved? Lots of help is out there, including starting at a CC and transferring later. Not everyone blooms in hs.</p>
<p>Some options for a student intending to study to a bachelor’s degree:</p>
<p>a. A less selective four year state university.</p>
<p>b. Go to community college, then transfer as a junior to a state university. A good record in community college may open up more choices of state universities than the student could have gotten into as a freshman.</p>
<p>Definitely there’s hope. There are schools for all ranges of GPA. Spend a little time around here, and you’ll find everything you need to know, and then some.
In the meantime, you could look to strengthen other-than-academic areas over the summer. Community service, a summer job, etc.
Plus, you can ask just about anything, and someone here will have an answer.
Good luck!</p>
<p>Plenty of hope, don’t worry. Get your child earning some community service hours and studying to pull off a decent SAT/ACT.</p>
<p>There are colleges for 2.6 to 3.0 students. Four year college or community college then transfer. Check for automatic articulation from a cc to your state’s flagship.</p>
<p>NPRMom–you may remember me from another thread but I want to share my 2012 daughter’s experience. GPA swinging between a 2.8 & 3.0 (don’t know if their small
private school does weighted vs. unweighted??) all the way up to her 1st semester
senior year. SAT superscored to 2200; I believe 2120 at one sitting. ACT composite best score 31. So she does very well on standardized testing but not motivated much especially freshman/sophomore years. </p>
<p>Applied to only 2 schools in Southeast; one VERY small private in-state, and medium university OOS. Accepted to both although many would consider these to be no-name/no-value schools. She did get nice merit money based on SAT stats at in-state private; none at OOS. So, to answer your question, YES! there are colleges that take these “underperforming” kids. I am hopeful for my 2014 son as he is also an underperformer and I don’t know that he’ll have the SAT/ACT scores she did BUT he has
a)other strengths she didn’t, and b)documented ADD/executive function disorder.</p>
<p>Check out this hopeful thread:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1307780-there-any-good-options-c-students.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1307780-there-any-good-options-c-students.html</a></p>
<p>Our D had to leave HS after JR year & had pretty low grades to to documented health issues. She took the GED & started CC. After 1 semester there with a 3.8, she applied to her dream 4-year-private U & was ACCEPTED there (only U she applied to) provided she completed 3 semesters total of CC. She did and will be graduating from her dream U this year with all her HS peers.</p>
<p>My son had a tough year in 10th grade. Things started getting better in 11th. His GPA swung all over the place. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. In his case, it was maturity and attitude, not aptitude. He decided he did want to go to a 4-year and worked for it as a hs jr. His GPA is in now in the 3.2 range, but wasn’t always. He had to retake a few hs classes on-line. </p>
<p>MizzBee is spot-on in that each situation is unique. If a student can settle on a goal and has the inner resolve and support to work toward it, then absolutely… options and opportunities are there.</p>
<p>Please keep in mind that a 2.8-3.0 student could possibly be a B/B- student in all subjects…</p>
<p>So many factors to consider: rigor of school, rigor of curriculum, etc. </p>
<p>Head on over to the 3.0-3.3 parents threads as well as the Jewish “B” students for ideas (not all posters are members of the tribe, nor are all members parents of “b” students)…</p>
<p>No idea if the OP’s child is in this 2.8-3.0 range, but there are a large # of school options, both large and small…</p>
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<p>No, no, no! A student with these grades should be focusing on school work. If the high school has a community-service requirement, of course it should be met. And if such a student wants to do community service for the sake of serving the community, that’s admirable and fine. But “community service hours” have nothing to do with college admission. At highly selective colleges, an extensive community-service career could be considered a valuable extracurricular activity–but not really any better for purposes of college admission than extensive and successful involvement in tennis or figure skating or Model UN or orchestral music. And at the colleges where a B- or below student will be applying, extracurriculars don’t matter, but grades do.</p>
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<p>This, however, I agree with.</p>
<p>Jane345 's direct to that other thread will give you names of schools that a lot of kids with not so great grades have attended. My son graduated from a college prep high school where there were many C average students, certainly below 3.0. I know because there are several honor rolls listed but the rolls stop right at the 3.0 level and there are a lot of kids in that school. The majority of them do not make the honor rolls, and yet nearly every single one of them goes straight on to college from here. The few exceptions tend to be those taking deliberate gap year with an acceptance in hand being deferred, There a lot of Catholic colleges taking those kids, I can tell you. </p>
<p>In NY, it seems to be getting more difficult to get into a SUNY or CUNY, our state system, even the non Big 4 universities, these days. WIth the economy the way it is, many more kids are considering the state school route which makes acceptance more difficult. I’ve seen kids accepted to some privates who were not accepted to any SUNY or CUNY school, and they did not restrict them selves to just the top ones. The NY state system is to me very much geared to the “middle class” in the state.</p>
<p>Bear in mind, though, that unless there is an other known reason, a C student is often someone who does not have interest in academics, the motivation to do well, and the discipline/organization skills to study, take notes, write a paper. My son’s Catholic high school goose steps recalcitrant young school boys through the drill and makes sure they are marginally prepared for college work, but I can tell you that the finish rate for these guys is not high. The parents hope that some form of interest, motivation, etc will kick in, and these are parents who have paid, nagged, and worked on their kids academically for year, for the most part, and they want to give it one last hurrah. A lot of these kids will not go back to college and find jobs or other things to do, and maybe become one of the many older students going back to school in their late 20s and 30s. not everyone wants to go to college.</p>
<p>The parents hope that some form of interest, motivation, etc will kick in, and these are parents who have paid, nagged, and worked on their kids academically for year, for the most part, and they want to give it one last hurrah.</p>
<p>This is me! Scary, but thanks. Thanks to all who have replied. I will do more research. I am on the 3.0-3.3 threads for both 2012 and 2013. They are great, but it seems as though many are parents of kids with decent grades and very high scores. My S’s scores match his grades. I realize though, that my son does work hard, he just doesn’t work that well. He has difficulty reading with comprehension and difficulty organizing his thoughts well when writing. We are, finally, getting him tested this spring to learn what’s going on for him.</p>
<p>I do believe he wants the “going away to college” experience. I fear a CC will seem to him like an extension of HS, which is hard and does not allow for very much choice. Maybe I am being naive, but I do want to give him the opportunity to leave home, live in the dorm, have a gym and a sports team, play frisbee on the quad, etc. If he drops out or flunks out, then we’ll deal with it.</p>
<p>Thanks for posting!</p>
<p>It does seem as though many parents report acceptances of children with GPAs slightly lower than 3.0. I hope this time next year, we will be reporting similar results. I agree, many SUNYs are now reaches for us, but I’m hopeful that we will have better luck at private LACs, especially those farther away from home.</p>
<p>Sikorsky, or anyone else, could you elaborate on your post (12?) regarding community service hours? I’ve never really thought about them being completely discounted in college admissions. It seems to be a given around our high school that community service IS looked at in college admissions.</p>
<p>We do have a requirement for hours for graduation, but the vast majority of kids complete those hours in middle school. NHS also looks for hours when kids apply and then again each year once they are members, so both ofmy oldest (who are more academically competitive than my youngest) were completing and documenting hours for NHS all through high school. </p>
<p>My youngest is a HS freshman, and my assumption (based on who knows what?) was that community service was another facet of what colleges look at in applications. I have no objective reason to be thinking that, so I’d be interested in knowing more about it.</p>
<p>Lots of good options including numerous colleges listed in Colleges that Change Lives taking B-C students with avg SATs. Also, a state public is probably an option too.</p>
<p>I agree with going to community college. I graduated HS with a 2.1 then went to community college for a year and half and was able to transfer into Northeastern. I earned a 3.5 at my community college. That increased my chances for which schools I could transfer into.</p>
<p>I believe that what the other poster was trying to convey is that community service is great, but will not help a lower stat kid achieve admission as much as bringing up his/her grades. A lower stat student will gain much more favor by studying more than he possibly would by spending extra time on community service.</p>
<p>I am one of the posters from the 3.0 thread, and my son is below that actually. You are correct to assume that he will have a harder time getting admitted to state schools than at the less selective private schools. (At least that is what we’ve seen.)</p>
<p>I also think that LOR’s are important in these cases. Many of these schools (including CTCLs) list character as an important factor in their admissions decisions. This would most likely be something that would be best conveyed in the teacher or counselor recommendations.</p>
<p>NPR mom: Don’t forget to check out the SUNY schools that are 2-year degree schools, like Cortland and Delhi. Your S can have the “live away” experience and complete a degree. Maybe even transfer on to a 4 year. My brother did that with Cortland, went on to Clarkson and was able to play a bit of competitive soccer. I think a few of the NYS CC’s have dorms too (CCFL for example). </p>
<p>My child has a below 3.0 and it seems like it will be statistically impossible to get above it. However the marked upward trend is working in her favor. We have documented attention issues and the extra accommodations and meds are making a huge difference. D is newly motivated and has embraced the test prep. We’re hoping to see major improvement on the test scores. Take heart that you have a boy and your odds are better than ours.</p>
<p>Colleges, especially ones that don’t receive a zillion apps, will take these things into account. Does he have interests beyond throwing the frisbee around? No matter how unrealistic it may seem, embrace the goals he does have. He will land somewhere and may just surprise you.</p>