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<p>Tell me about it!</p>
<p>DS is in engineering at Case and needs a 3.0 to keep his near-half-tuition scholarship. It slipped just below 3.0 after first semester, but fortunately they only evalute at it at the end of each year. He managed to pull it up just over the threshold this semester. I’m going to be asking him to think long and hard about his schedule next semester. The thing is, he wants to take the harder courses!</p>
<p>One of the very attractive things about USC is that the GPA for merit awards is only 3.0 and you can have a year of “probation” if you have trouble maintaining it. This gives the kids a bit of “breathing space.”</p>
<p>My S took lots of APs & one college course before he started there. They rarely exempted ANYONE out with the AP scores of 5s from the engineering curriculum. He chose not to challenge the school & take courses he probably could have challenged to get out of taking but opted to have the luxury of being able to adjust to freshman life with out the stress of academic challenges for his freshman year. Most of his friends and classmates there did the same thing and got a very solid base for their future engineering coursework.</p>
<p>It is wrong for any student to try to make their instructor feel bad because the student might lose something thru the student’s actions/inactions in a course. My kids have only challenged grades when by their calculations (that they share with the instructor) they received a grade lower than the grade they deserved. The instructor is happy to review the grades & make any appropriate adjustments/changes, with any appropriate apologies. I was surprised when my S told me he has done this for a HS class & one in college as well. It turned out that in HS, the teacher forgot to add in all the make-up work S had completed & turned in over the year (S had many extended absences due to poor health).</p>
<p>Frankly, I would not let my student accept a scholarship with high GPA requirements attached, especially at a school we could not otherwise afford. Two reasons:</p>
<p>First, I want my kids to feel free to take some academic risks in college. I think it would be very difficult, and more than a little stressful, to take rigorous classes outside their comfort zone when they are thinking their scholarship hangs in the balance. For example, D struggled with calc in high school, but got all As in math at the college level. Turns out her professors were light years better than her HS school teachers. High level math is not required for her major, but now she is taking it just because she likes it, and I’m proud she was able to overcome her anxiety about it. If she had to maintain a 3.5 GPA to keep her scholarship there’s no way she would have challenged herself to enroll in those classes given the bad experiences she had in HS. </p>
<p>Secondly, it seems a bit disingenuous to offer a scholarship with such a high threshold for students to maintain them. Some schools appear to count on a certain percentage of students losing them from the beginning. Fair or not, it just makes me feel like some students are being sort of set up, and I don’t like that. </p>
<p>I think a 3.0 GPA is a reasonable expectation depending on what the requirements were for the scholarship in the first place (i.e. that they are only given to those who show sufficient promise to minimally perform at that leve in college). However, a 3.5 for many students is a total wildcard. It’s also draconian in that the consequences for one or two slip ups is so severe. I would not want to see my kids having to potentially deal with such circumstances in the event everything did not fall neatly into place for them.</p>
<p>My son too has a merit scholarship at Case, and I believe they only require a 3.0 to keep it. As a matter of fact, I believe they only require a 2.5 at the end of freshman year (but then a cumulative 3.0 by the end of sophomore year). It doesn’t seem that onerous.</p>
<p>My daughter, who will be a freshman in the fall, received a number of merit offers this year. The only one that looked tough to keep was the 3.5 required by Drew.</p>
<p>Both of my kids were so turned off by grade grubbers in high school that they won’t even justifiably question a grade that may be incorrect.</p>
<p>Families can & should find out what % of kids retain vs. lose their scholarship at schools being considered. The kids we know at USC have all kept their scholarships and USC indicated that most have no trouble keeping it, since it only requires a 3.0.</p>
<p>Some of the other schools that offer scholarships have a MUCH higher rate of kids losing their scholarships, especially when the GPA is 3.5. I read one thread where a person got a merit award at the school & of all the kids she started with who received the award, she was the only one who was able to retain it. Really gives one pause and it seems grossly unfair. That school had no “probation” period where students were allowed to take risks or challenge themselves while not jeopardizing their merit award. It really seemed the school set the kids up to fail.</p>
<p>GeezerMom, thanks for posting this, I was wondering how this worked. My daughter has two merit scholarships both contingent upon academic performance. College is hard and if she loses them that is fine. Her going to this college was never contingent upon her getting these scholarships, the college is good enough that we would be willing to pay the full sticker price for it. Need based assistance is also year to year.</p>
<p>Our local public offers a tuition free scholarship for students maintaining a 2.5 gpa after their first semester (kids pay for the first semester themselves unless they have a more prestigious scholarship). only 2/3 qualify for the scholarship. The rest either pay full freight or drop out.</p>
<p>Wow, that’s very generous that your local public will fund full tuition for 2/3s of the students – is it for the rest of their education–3.5+ years? For those who don’t get a 2.5 after 1st semester, is there any way for them to get added to tuition-free status later? 2.5 is a pretty low bar and should be quite achievable for many.</p>
<p>UMD-College Park requires a 3.2 for their big merit awards. The college where S1 attends just asks that they remain academically eligible.</p>
<p>S1 had a couple of grade changes in high school. In both cases, teachers had graded work, handed it back to S, but had never recorded it in the online gradebook. It’s a good thing the kid never cleaned out his backpack – it was easy to find the assignments in question!</p>
<p>My daughter has a scholarship that is a combination of a full tuition waiver from her school (a State U) and a cash scholarship from the State Regents. It requires a 3.00 for the tuition part and a 3.25 for the cash part. Doesn’t sound that demanding but we know a couple of really excellent students from the year prior to hers that lost the scholarship after the first year so went in very aware of the possible pitfalls. Luckily she had a 4.0 her 1st semester then a couple of Bs her 2nd semester. Starting with those grades the first year really gave her a nice protective cushion for her GPA in the 2nd year when she had a couple of not so stellar grades - amazing how quickly a couple of Cs (darned organic chemistry) can drop the GPA even with everything else mainly As and a few Bs. Right now her scholarship is safe for year 3 and hopefully will be for year 4. My recommendation is that students be very careful about picking their classes that 1st year. A lot of kids, especially students who have done well in HS without too much effort, dive into really tough upper level classes not realizing how different college might be. We didn’t pick her classes that way but luckily it worked out ok. If her bad 3rd semester grades (a combination of hard classes, a couple of which she probably should have taken her Junior year, and some emotional ‘stuff’ going on and a problem stalker ex) had been in her 1st or 2nd semester she would probably have lost the scholarship her first year. I am so glad we decided she should not take science APs and credits but take the entry level college science courses (she is a science major). Her boyfriend, who is very smart, had the same scholarship came into college with a bunch of APS and started with really tough classes and lost the cash part of the scholarship very quickly that first year before he adjusted to the college.</p>
<p>A good adviser (and seeking and listening to) their advice is helpful as well. At her school before you declare your major you have a general adviser who did not seem that helpful as far as guidance was concerned. Once she declared her major she was assigned an adviser specific to her major and she seems much more helpful. Previously my daughter would pretty much choose her schedule and the adviser was pleased she had done that and would just sign off on it. She declared her major this semster and the new adviser actually recommended changing things around a bit and not taking class x with class y etc. Would have been very useful to have someone give her that advice before she signed up for that 3rd semester!! In retrospect there were a couple of classes there she should not have taken at the same time.</p>
<p>I agree so much with the advice about going to office hours and getting tuition. Any tips on how to get a student to do it though? My daughter had a class she struggled with but found the teacher a bit intimidating and wouldn’t go to office hours, didn’t go for tuition help, then felt she was too far behind and it was too late to do it. She ended up dropping it and taking a W in the class but will have to take it again as it is required in her major. She had told me she was lost in it and I kept telling her to go for help. So frustrating that she did not. It is a subject she does not like and now she has to do it all over again!! So much better to have sucked it up and gone for help. Grr.</p>
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I think it is really sad when students are forced by the scholarship cutoff to choose the classes based on their chance to get an A, and not on their interest or relevance to their major…</p>
<p>Also, I find that there is A LOT of subjectivity in grading in some subjects. I have absolutely no problem when a proff or a TA grades an essay or a project at “B+” because that’s a “B+”-level work in their opinion. But when there is a cumulative “B+” grade given based on grade average of 89.9 in design class, when 90.0 would have been an “A-”?.. I can see that a student with a 3.5 GPA cut-off for scholarship could be very frustrated by this. And I could never understand how a a grade of 97 is given on an essay (as opposed to 96 or 98).</p>
<p>Can she take the course over the summer at a local school and have it not count toward the scholarship GPA?</p>
<p>“Any tips on how to get a student to do it though? My daughter had a class she struggled with but found the teacher a bit intimidating and wouldn’t go to office hours, didn’t go for tuition help, then felt she was too far behind and it was too late to do it. She ended up dropping it and taking a W in the class but will have to take it again as it is required in her major. She had told me she was lost in it and I kept telling her to go for help. So frustrating that she did not. It is a subject she does not like and now she has to do it all over again!! So much better to have sucked it up and gone for help. Grr.”</p>
<p>There are many things you can’t teach your kids. They need to learn via maturity or the hard way.</p>
<p>Swimcat, same experience here, too. Knew what resources were available, knew he could withdraw (and would have still had a full-time student schedule), knew he needs to be past feeling intimitdated. He tried getting through by “force of will,” which is exactly how my DH responds to life’s crises. </p>
<p>Sometimes “force of will” is just not enough. Learning to ask for help is one of the hardest skills out there, IMHO (or at least it is for everyone who lives in my house!).</p>
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I am hoping she has learned it. Not holding my breath though.:(</p>
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I think it is more a case of timing when to take them rather than not taking them at all. We have encouraged my daughter to take classes that interest her in addition to her ‘major’ classes hoping something will strike a passion in her. Funnily so far the classes my science nerd daughter has been the most excited about have been English classes - and she never liked English in HS. Amazing the difference a couple of inspiring teachers can make. She is minoring in English which I would never have expected, and I would not exactly faint from shock if she decided to change her major or even double major.</p>
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'Fraid not. It is an upper level class so not available at the local CC. At her school there are 2 different routes to go with Organic - the harder is 2 full semesters plus a separate lab, recommended for premeds etc. The other is a one semester 5 hour class that includes the lab. Either works for her major but she went the harder route to keep her options for the future open. Unfortunately the the 2nd semester killed her. Unfortunately the one semester of the harder class will not be enough organic on it’s own so she has to either retake the 2nd semester of the harder organic and seperate lab or take the slightly less difficult one semester with lab. If she takes the easier class she won’t actually get credit for it (5 hours - no credit ;() as you can’t get credit for both the 1st section of the harder courses and the stand alone class, but it will satisfy the requirement for her major. Complicated. Her current plan is to take the stand alone easier class in the Spring to satisfy her major requirement. It is taught by a different teacher she really liked that she had in a lower level Chem.</p>
<p>We sweated this out too. D needed a 3.25 for the “big” scholarship- which is the difference between in state tuition and out of state tuition. She needed a 3.5 for her smaller merit scholarship and ended up with a 3.576 for the year.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure she won’t keep that smaller scholarship all 4 years, and I don’t plan on pressuring her about it. I should have read the fine print.</p>
<p>I am going to have to pressure her about the bigger one. It’s really too bad. We punish them for challenging themselves.</p>
<p>Earlier this semester, one of my ds received a C on an exam. She discovered that the TA had made a simple math error in deducting points, which brought the grade to a C-plus. It was then announced in class that the average grade for d’s section was a 68 - but the average grade in the three other sections was an 81. A number of students questioned this, of course - it turned out that the TA applied the scoring rubric incorrectly to the exams she graded (she was apparently having a tough day). So d actually earned a B-plus! It was clearly worthwhile to question the TA about the original grade. But I think this is in order only when there’s a legitimate question about the score.</p>
<p>In the case of a serous illness or loss, I see nothing wrong with a compassionate prof allowing an extension or retake. I don’t think they should be expected to extend these accommodations, but I think it’s within their rights to choose to do so.</p>
<p>At our public the scholarship is good for 8 semesters, which gives students an additional semester after the 4 years. Other scholarships pay tuition and fees and some even give you money on top of that. If one drops below the 2.5 you go on probation and stay there until the gpa comes to or above 2.5 again, although the 8 semester limit counts against you even if you are not receiving the scholarship. Kids have to go to college immediately after high school and you have to qualify by the second semester of your freshman year. For the right kid it works well. For too many others, it doesn’t.</p>