<p>There are many, many private colleges out there that will take kids with below a 3.0. The issue is none of them give much aid, so the family needs to be ale to afford them.</p>
<p>At my son’s school, many private colleges in the area accepted students with less than 3.0 averages and matching SAT scores. I live in PA though where one can’t spit without hitting a college.</p>
<p>My son just completed the college application process. He has a 2.80 GPA and a 24 ACT score. His GPA and ACT were both hampered by poor performance in math and science.</p>
<p>He was accepted to ten LACs: Albion, Alma, Cornell (IA), Earlham, Hope, Hiram, Lake Forest, Knox, Ohio Wesleyan, and Ripon. He’s decided to attend Knox.</p>
<p>He was awarded annual institutional grants and scholarships ranging from a low of $10,900 to a high of $29,495. These grants and scholarships made all but two of these schools affordable for us.</p>
<p>Any student that has a genuine interest in learning can find a college to thrive at.</p>
<p>There are state schools that will take a less than stellar student too. Many of the Penn state satellite campuses have an auto admit to the main campus as soon as a student reaches junior status. No appllication process, it’s an automatic transfer. There are ancillary campuses to most flagship school. PA has a number of state schools that are not so selectiive such as Clarion, Slippery Rock, West Chester, Edinboro, for example. MD has Salisbury, Towson, Frostburg. I don’t know the nuances of the many NY SUNYs, perhaps Sybbie could help you there, but we know kids who were not good students who did get accepted to one of the smaller SUNYs so don’t count them out. I know Catholic schools like ST Joseph’s in PA, Seton Hall in NJ and Sienna in NY, would be delighted to have him. SOme might even offer a small merit award. </p>
<p>However, in general, if costs are an issue, it could be a problem unless the student goes to a local state college or community college because getting merit money and good financial aid packages are both heavily dependent on good grades/test scores.</p>
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<p>Eastcoascrazy, it’s not quite that community-service hours count for nothing. It’s more that they don’t have any more value than any other non-academic thing–and all non-academic things have much less value than the academic things.</p>
<p>It’s a question of putting first things first. Colleges and universities are academic institutions. Apart from the open-enrollment ones (and maybe also the for-profit ones) they want to enroll students who are capable of succeeding in the college’s mission: education. That means academic indices (grades, standardized test scores, teacher evaluations, etc.) matter most.</p>
<p>At not-very-selective colleges, that’s pretty much the only hurdle an applicant needs to clear. These colleges will admit a lot of applicants, but they have pretty low yields, so they need to admit a lot of students in order to fill their entering classes. At more selective colleges, there are more academically qualified applicants that the class can hold, so these colleges need a way to choose from among the academically qualified. One index they use to make those distinctions is extracurricular activities.</p>
<p>But this means extracurricular activities really don’t matter much except at pretty selective colleges and universities.</p>
<p>As for my assertion that community service is neither a sine qua non nor some kind of Holy Grail: for a long time, I based my position mostly on my own intuition. (I now have some back-up for that opinion; see below.) While I don’t mean to demean the value of running a soup kitchen or what have you, I never really believed that doing so carried any more weight in college admissions than being a state champion in cross country or a distinguished delegate at Harvard Model UN. All of those show some accomplishment and dedication in a worthwhile extracurricular endeavor. And while one may benefit society more than the other two, I don’t think it benefits a college applicant any more than the others do.</p>
<p>Thanks to some other posters on College Confidential, I have now come across a blog post by an admissions officer at MIT. He writes, in part:</p>
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<p>[Esse</a> quam videri | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/esse-quam-videri]Esse”>Esse quam videri | MIT Admissions)</p>
<p>Thus, I conclude: students who are competing for slots at highly selective colleges must make sure they are academically top-drawer, and then worry about their extracurricular activities, and students who are applying to less selective colleges just need to be qualified academically. Either way, put first things first. Academics, then extracurriculars.</p>
<p>Community service is a wonderful thing…and if it happens to be a student’s passion (A, B, or C student), so much the better! </p>
<p>It seems especially important to me to for the C student to discover what makes them truly excited. Passionate. That thing that they need to understand, want to know every detail about.</p>
<p>This may be academics. Some kids have a rough start in high school or have learning issues that make it difficult to hand in homework regularly and check off all the boxes predictably.</p>
<p>It may be something vocational. There are plenty of folks who do honorable and excellent work with their hands but flounder when asked to write it down.</p>
<p>It may be something else entirely - sports, music, video games. All these have potential careers linked to them. My own C student - who I honestly thought was going to drop out of school - completely turned his life around when he started volunteering at an all ages club and the owner taught him the basics of audio production.</p>
<p>There is hope and support for all here at CC -a great place to look for answers . Good luck !</p>
<p>Again (with Stradmom’s post in mind), if I seem to have pooh-poohed community service, I don’t mean to. I absolutely agree that kids who aren’t academic superstars should find something–sports or music or volunteerism or wilderness adventure or whatever–that gives them a sense of self and of real accomplishment. Not everybody is Einstein or T. S. Eliot–Heaven knows, I’m not–and we don’t need or want a world filled with only Einsteins and Eliots.</p>
<p>I mean only to take exception to the earlier suggestion that the sub-3.0 student should be racking up community service hours as a way of getting into college.</p>
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<p>Yes, that’s me. One last hurrah. There seemed to be plenty of colleges willing to take a chance on my sub-3.0 kid. However, if he continues on as he did in high school, his college career is likely to be of short duration. This has been explained to him. We’re willing to give him this chance but he’s going to have to find some motivation somewhere or the chance will be wasted.</p>
<p>Just a note about what cptofthehouse said about PA schools. West Chester used to be an easier school to get into. But I went to a college night at my d’s high school about a month ago. I asked the West Chester rep what the average gpa was for incoming freshmen and she said 3.5. I was shocked. W.C. went from being a match to a reach for my daughter …</p>
<p>Sikorsky, familyof3boys and stradmom, thank you so much for your insight! I appreciate your lengthy responses. </p>
<p>That’s valuable knowledge for us to keep in mind with our daughter, and frankly takes some pressure off.</p>
<p>I know a kid with a sub-3.0 GPA and SATs to match (either low 500s or high 400s). He didn’t get into any of his state colleges. But he was accepted to every private school to which he applied, and got merit aid at several of them (much to the surprise and shock of his mother). He applied to small regional colleges – if you aren’t from Massachusetts, you probably would never have heard of these schools. The merit aid he got reduced the cost to around the same as the Massachusetts state colleges.</p>
<p>NPRmom - I have a mini success story to tell you! S1 applied the minimum amount of effort in high school and ended with a 2.74 His reading and comp is not strong and ACT score was 21. He thought life revolved around hockey and baseball. Fortunately, his self esteem is through the roof. In order to keep him interested we needed to find a 4 year college that while lower tiered had a good enough reputation so S1 could feel proud of his school. We also wanted to work in his criteria. Hockey, lakeshore campus and a newer business major buildings. He applied to 3 small LAC’s (Carthage College (WISC), Simpson (Iowa) and Susquehanna ¶ and the U of Wyoming and was accepted to 3 of the 4. </p>
<p>He chose Carthage <a href=“http://www.carthage.edu%5B/url%5D”>www.carthage.edu</a> and has been impressing us ever since. He is just finishing up his soph year and his GPA is above 3.5, he is captain of his club hockey team, enjoying his investing club, was offered an opportunity to spend 2 weeks at the Chicago Board of Option and has 2 great offers for summer internships with F500 companies. </p>
<p>Something clicked and he really wants to succeed. it has been fun to watch him learn that similar to sports, success in academics will come with hard work. He knows getting in to a solid MBA program will be tough so he is really working on his grades to offset the fact that his school is lower tiered and his ACT score was in the tank. He forgot his Ipad at home over break and while I was playing with it, I noticed he had downloaded a program to improve reading comprehension…</p>
<p>We are proud and better yet, he is proud. </p>
<p>I asked him what he would do differently in high school. His response…“I guess it really wouldn’t have taken much effort to go up a full letter grade in most of my classes…I should’ve done that”</p>
<p>S1 had a friend spend 1 1/2 years at a local CC and transferred to DePaul and another transferring to Southern Methodist this fall.</p>
<p>Oh, yay! What a great story! Thanks so much everyone for posting. This is helpful advice and great news. I’m feeling very encouraged.</p>
<p>I’ve told S2’s success story many times on CC. </p>
<p>Short version…uw gpa was less than 3.0. Weighted just barely over it.
SAT 1440 total…refused to retake. Took a lot of honors classes,two AP’s and 2 dual enrollment classes at the CC. Very little community service. Four yr. football player (his identity) and held a p/t job for two and a half years. Generally put “hangin’ out” ahead of academics.</p>
<p>He applied to two instate directional state u’s. Accepted to both. </p>
<p>Lost his two best friends in a tragic car accident (S2 witnessed it). He went to college a month later. First semester was a disaster academically…D’s and F’s. Academic probation. </p>
<p>He bounced back (with a lot of oversight on my part) the second semester (2.5) to get off Probation. After that he took control and gpa rose with each semester. </p>
<p>He will have been on the Honor Roll (3.0 or higher) five out of eight semesters when he graduates this Saturday.</p>
<p>PackMom, Thank you for sharing your son’s story. He has been through a lot and has had come out successfully…Hooray! Congrats to him (and you) for working hard and sticking it out. I wish him continued success. :)</p>
<p>PackMom, great story. Congratulations! So many of these guys need time to grow up. The education system is so skewed, so ill-fitting, starting with little boys sitting at desks for hours being talked at. A friend of mine (with 4 grown sons) says 18 year old males should not go to college, period!</p>
<p>Sending our sub-3.0 D off to a good, selective OOS public in August, and happy to do it. She’s worked her tail off to stay above water at a very rigorous school full of gifted kids, a school with severe grade deflation. I have no doubt she will have a successful college career. </p>
<p>DS14, OTOH, is a different story. He’s bright, but a sub-3.0 at a much less rigorous school and puts academics below video games, sports, and hanging out. He’s been informed there’s a CC in his future, unless he shows that he is willing to do serious academic work. We are willing to work and sacrifice for our kids - but not in a financial position to roll the dice on an expensive residential “college experience” for a high-risk kid.</p>
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<p>Your son can attend SUNY community colleges and still have the going away to college experience. I don’t think that you or he should view going to CC as having a “watered down” experience or an extension of high school, because some CC programs are quite difficult to gain admission (hopefully Mythmom, who is a CC professor will chime in).</p>
<p>This may be a great solution for him because:</p>
<p>He will start college with a clean slate.
It will allow him to put some distance between him and high school
He will be in a smaller environment and have the opportunity to put the supports in place that he many not have necessarily picked up in high school
Every SUNY community college has articulation agreements with SUNY 4 year schools. </p>
<p>Many SUNYs have articulation agreements in different disciplines with private schools for example: see Onondaga Community college</p>
<p>[Transfer</a> - Articulation Agreements - Onondaga Community College](<a href=“http://admission.sunyocc.edu/academics.aspx?id=1441]Transfer”>http://admission.sunyocc.edu/academics.aspx?id=1441)</p>
<p>Much more affordable as SUNY CC tuition is $3700 a year for community college (16k including room board and fees)</p>
<p>[SUNY:</a> Tuition and Fees](<a href=“http://www.suny.edu/student/paying_tuition.cfm]SUNY:”>http://www.suny.edu/student/paying_tuition.cfm)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.suny.edu/student/downloads/Pdf/2012_Admissions_qf_cc.pdf[/url]”>http://www.suny.edu/student/downloads/Pdf/2012_Admissions_qf_cc.pdf</a></p>
<p>annasdad,we felt the same way about “rolling the dice” on S2 since it was obvious that h.s. academics were not his first priority. That’s why we limited him to instate publics. We had saved enough to fund four years at a public for S1 and S2. We were not willing to go in debt (or have him go in debt) for a private college that we couldn’t afford for what we viewed as a risky investment. DH just couldn’t see spending S2’s whole college fund on one year at a private that he might very well flunk out of. We were willing to give him a chance but not willing to risk all the marbles in case it didn’t work out and he needed to change directions.</p>
<p>We are lucky to live in a state (NC) with a good university system and reasonable COA.</p>