<p>My son (still in high school) is taking a very difficult college course. His first test is not great but OK. He is afraid of not getting an A. He is afraid that it will affect his application to his TOP colleges. He has choice to count his credits as High School credits or college credits. He does not like either. What he thinks if it counts as high school credits, it will affect his high school (so far) perfect GPA, if count college credits, it will affect his college GPA even before starting a college. I am not sure how he should deal with this. Please give me some inputs.</p>
<p>My private college does not count transfer credits into our GPA. You could check the transfer credit policies of your son’s universities.</p>
<p>That aside, if your son wants to attend a top university, he will need to learn to deal with sub-A grades eventually. He won’t be #1 in everything he does and that’s okay.</p>
<p>Yes, he will have to deal with sub A grades, but the problem is he is likely worried about his HS GPA. </p>
<p>I would tell him to treat it as college. Colleges will not combine other college grades wit theirs for GPA. In applying to grad school, I can not beleive it will be given much weigth.</p>
<p>My son faced a similar dilemma. He was taking the course over summer and GC told us it would show up as credit only - no grade - on his high school transcript. Found out midway through that was not the case. He ended up withdrawing. We also found out that as an online course it would not be accepted at any of the colleges he was applying to. Since we had paid for the course no transcript was sent to the high school and the colleges he applied to said don’t bother when told about it.</p>
<p>I did contact his top choices, they all said it will not affect his college GPA. Now the question is that if he still has 4.0 high school GPA (the college course he is taking will not show on his high school transcript if he choose as college credit only), but will his college transcript (though he is still in high school) significantly affect his admission to those top choices? I am not talking about he will get a bad grade. I believe he will work hard to improve to get a better grade.</p>
<p>Is he a junior? If so - then I think just taking a college level course would be looked at as a positive.</p>
<p>Yes he is a junior. In fact, he is taking more college credits than high school’s. There is not much he can take in high school.</p>
<p>Thank I can’t see how it would hurt him.</p>
<p>Most colleges say that they like to see kids take the most challenging courses available to them - looks like this one certainly qualifies. He can always withdraw from the course.</p>
<p>That said, a bad first test score doesn’t necessarily mean a bad grade in a college course. It might mean that he doesn’t get an A but he should look at his options and resources for recovering from a bad first test. This is something that a lot of students hit in college and being able to work through it now will provide him with the mental resources to deal with it when he is matriculated.</p>
<p>There should be resources available for help: study groups, office hours, tutoring center, etc.</p>
<p>When he starts the application process next fall, go on his current college web site and request that they send an official transcript to the schools he’s applying to. That way the schools he’s interested in will see both his high school grades (from his regular transcript) and college grades he got while still in high school. Even if he doesn’t get an A in a college class you should still send the full transcript. College level classes are tough and he deserves credit for taking them as a high school junior.</p>
<p>In general, colleges require all college transcripts including dual-enrollment courses. They even require college transcripts if you’re taking dual-enrollment courses. Our son took dual-enrollment courses at five institutions and that meant getting transcripts for every internship that he applied to.</p>
<p>The dual-enrollment courses can also look funny to potential employers as they might think that the student is a few years older or wonder why they didn’t matriculate after high-school.</p>
<p>BCEagle91 thank you for your inputs. It is not he has trouble to understand the materials. For the first test, he did not study that much until two days before the test, because he had a bad week and he almost could not handle it. One of his good friends (also classmate) just got killed in a car accident. We also had some difficult issues at home. </p>
<p>yalemom15, thank you too.</p>
<p>One comment: You noted that he didn’t do well on the test because he did not study much until two days before and then there were other things that came up. Expecting to study more (at all?) just before a test is a habit that he will have to change big time at any good college. You need to keep up DAILY, even just to understand the next lecture. Learning and praticing that now will save a lot of pain later. I know, I didn’t learn that lesson until college.</p>
<p>HPuck35, I did watch him closely and always tell him review the materials. He sometimes is overly confident and thinks he could handle everything. He is a smart kid, he has not been challenged until now. I think this is not bad thing , let him learn a lesson.</p>
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<p>That depends. I know for a fact that the law school admissions counts everything into one’s GPA…including dual-enrollment courses. An issue which caused some friends’ LSAC GPAs to be lower than their undergrad GPAs and may have been one contributing factor to their being denied at schools that would not have been an issue if the GPA considered only counted courses taken in the undergrad school. </p>
<p>On the other hand, some other friends actually ended up with higher GPAs from LSAC than their undergrad GPA due to taking dual-enrollment/summer classes and doing well on them. </p>
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<p>I second this as someone who received a -B on the midterm of one course and yet, managed to get an A in the overall course. Of course, this will only work if the low grade serves as a “wake-up call” with the corresponding increase in the level of studying, asking questions as needed, and staying on top of the course.</p>
<p>Also, check to see what the class average was on the test your son doesn’t think he did well on. My son took multivariable calc for engineers his senior year in high school at a local state university. The first test he got a 63 which shocked the living daylights out of him (never having gotten less than an A on anything math related in his life). But the class average ended up being a 57. The rest of the semester had similar class averages in the 50’s and 60’s and he ended up getting an A with about a 74% much to our family’s collective shock.</p>
<p>My D also took MV Calc at our local state uni during the fall of her senior year - but in our case, the local state uni is Cal. 500 crazy-smart students in her section. She barely eked out a B-. It didn’t hurt her in college admissions at all.</p>
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<p>Definitely do this. There are professors who purposely write the test so that the median will be 60% (or LOWER :eek:).</p>
<p>Yes, definitely check how the professor grades.</p>
<p>My first exam at MIT was in an organic chemistry and the prof gave very hard tests (although I didn’t know it at the time). I got a 39 out of 200 possible points. I was immediately wondering where I was going to go to school after I had flunked out. That was until I found out that the class average was 32. Of course there were a couple of kids that were in the 150 point range, really screwing up the average for the rest of us.</p>
<p>wildwood888: Tell your son that college is not high school. Wherever he goes, there will be kids just as smart as he is, or he is in the wrong school. The classes will be taught at an appropriate level for the students on the class. I am assuming that the class he is taking is not at a top unversity and he isn’t doing “A” work. Not because he can’t, he just didn’t. What does he think he’s going to do at a really good school?</p>
<p>Learning good study habits is a must if he is to succeed. Also, things are constantly coming up. Life happens. Your prof doesn’t want excuses, he wants results. And so will your boss when you start working. </p>
<p>If he wants to be in the middle of the pack, so be it. If he wants to excel, he’ll work it hard every day.</p>
<p>His score is a few point above average but quite big difference from A, and the professor said the rest of tests will be much more difficult comparing to the first one. Most of students in that class are pre-professional students. They all study very hard.</p>