New 3.0 to 3.3 (GPA) Parents Thread

<p>Maybe we need a new website…College Confidential for the rest of us!</p>

<p>So my S had about a 3.2 (school doesn’t weight) and took his first and only AP class senior year…no honors classes. Didn’t even make it to 1000/1600 on SAT and had a 22 ACT. However, he had one really strong EC…won awards, very, very time consuming, etc. Fairly good essay and really wonderful teacher recs. He interviewed at 5 LACs and one state state school and really talked up his EC, even though it has nothing to do with his major. He was accepted to every school and every LAC gave him merit $…it ranged from a low of $8,000 to a high of $16,250. He mostly applied to colleges in the CTCL book…they were wonderful schools and truly look at the whole picture. So, if your S or D has one really strong EC…talk it up! We heard that the schools prefer one really strong EC rather than a bunch of different ECs…seemed to work for my S.</p>

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<p>Yes, our high school was named a Blue Ribbon school several years ago.</p>

<p>I was able to get in touch with my son’s GC about his D in English. She said that the school’s that we are looking at will accept it as a passing grade. Since he was sick and a 504 was set up because of this then the grade would be explained by the GC. </p>

<p>Now if she could explain all the other sub par grades…</p>

<p>Thanks for everyone’s help.</p>

<p>Regarding a 504…I always thought that it was detrimental to mention that your child had any type of disability, unless you are expecting/needing support in college. My son has a big gap (40 points) between his verbal and perceptual IQs…verbal in the superior range and perceptual in the high average range. It supposedly explains why he is so great at talking about a subject in class but doesn’t do as well when he had to get it all down on paper. Still, with a B or B plus average, the most I could get for him in a 504 was a set of extra books (he did get to keyboard his notes during class in middle school if he wanted, but refused to do that in high school because he didn’t want anyone to know about any issues he might have). Also, since both IQs are above average and his full scale is so high, I don’t think anyone took it too seriously.</p>

<p>I remember talking to one “for pay” college counselor on the phone who told me we should be playing up his IQ gap to explain his lower grades, but honestly, I thought that seemed to be a bad strategy. We haven’t had a 504 meeting for years and he doesn’t use any accommodations…and maybe we never would have found out about the IQ gap if they hadn’t been testing him for gifted.</p>

<p>Anyway, do those of you whose kids have had a 504 reveal that on your app?</p>

<p>I wonder about this. My youngest has a 504. He is a high IQ/dyslexic. The only time it shows up relative to classroom/grades is if the class has intensive writing and reading. These classes will trigger the 504 and the teachers can be lenient regarding his spelling/grammer and give him time if needed to complete the reading. The teachers also have the choice to give him verbal exams for essay type testing. We discourage that as it does not help my son gain skill to avoid the writing tests. My son who is quite competitive prefers that they “not” be lenient, but I’m sure there is some give and take going on. I could see him revealing this in an essay since he had to work really, really hard to overcome the dyslexia. I think how we parents feel about this will depend on how he scores his junior year on the standardized tests like ACT/SAT and if the dyslexia “shows” itself. HIs comprehension is very good, but he is still a slow reader so the timed tests will be his albatross as well as the writing component. In my son’s case, the dyslexia has actually made him a stronger student (than his brothers) as nothing comes easily for him so he has had to compensate with better study skills. I could see him using this type of message as he is well aware of his situation and what it has taken to achieve what he has achieved. If his ACT/SAT scores are above average and he doesn’t reveal in an essay we probably would not say anything. I suspect there are plenty of good schools that would “fit” him without accomodations and there won’t be accomodations in the real world outside academia so the “help net” has to go away sometime.</p>

<p>Most college classes are intensive reading and writing…even in the sciences many schools require papers. The reading load can be massive at the college level, very different than high school. (I’m sure you know this.) My D decided to disclose her dyslexia and dysgraphia simply because she didn’t really want to go to a school that didn’t want her exactly the way that she is. She just figured she’d find the best possible fit for herself in giving them all of the relevent information. Her philosophy was strange, I guess, but she actually believed that the Admissions people at any school would be in a good position to know if she could do well there and she didn’t want to be in a situation where she was in a non-stop legal type battle with her professors. She got into some really great schools, even though some of her grades really did reflect her LD. In the end, she chose a less well ranked school just because they seemed to have the best infrastructure in place in terms of accomodating her dysgraphia–she uses dragon naturally speaking to write. She has no intention of going into a field where she will have to edit manuscripts for a living, most likely research science, but in school kids still have to work in the deficit area. It has little bearing on real life. </p>

<p>All kids have to make their own decisions about this, though. I didn’t try to influence her in any way. I was kind of suprised by her choice, in the end, but her reasoning was very sound.</p>

<p>Poetgrl…I find your comments very interesting. I do think these kids with dyslexia/dysgraphia get to “know themselves” very well as they mature. Now that my son is older, I do tend to follow his lead/wishes. He knows better than we, his parents, where he has to work harder than some of his classmates due to the LD and just how much he is willing to push himself. We just went through my son’s annual IEP and we all sat around the table and decided to just keep “letting him go” as he seems to be steering his own ship in a positive direction these days. It was decided by the school system to keep the 504 is place as his safety net which we, as parents, appreciated. Most 504 kids in our system have compound issues with greater social/behavioral problems, so I consider the 504 a gift from the school.</p>

<p>ReadyToRoll - My son has the same issue as your son. In fact, when I read your post, it seemed that it was something I had written myself! DS has very high IQ, but significant gap between the verbal and perceptual. He was also placed in the gifted programs. He never had a 504. School didn’t think it was necessary, since he was doing fine. Looking back, fine is definitely a relative term. He certainly wasn’t failing, however, I don’t believe he was working up to his potential either. He did get some extra help, but not via the official 504 route. Like you, I too felt it would be detrimental to disclose his issues in his college apps. If there are legitimate obstacles that you have worked hard to overcome, then it may work in your favor to disclose. However, if he has a 504 and never really pursued the available accommodations, I think it would appear to the colleges that you are looking for an excuse for his grades.</p>

<p>My son has a 504 and ADHD. I have talked with admissions officers at Oregon State, Colorado State, Arizona State and the U of A SALT program. They all do a holistic admissions process (not Arizona State) and suggest talking about the struggles he has had with his ADHD and how it has affected his sub-par grades (compared to IQ and WISC scores) in his essay. If you are looking at a school that has specific support for LDs, they will probably want to know how it has affected your student. In the Fiske Guide to Colleges there is a list of schools with strong support for LD’s, and a few of them are:</p>

<p>University of Arizona (excellent SALT program)
UC Boulder
UConn
Hofstra
Northeastern
Curry College
Marist
New England College</p>

<p>Go to your nearest bookstore and check out the complete list. It’s got a lot of options.</p>

<p>D refused a 504 in high school. She refused to even let me try to get her extra time on the SATs (even though with her diagnoses, she would probably have gotten it). She also refuses to discuss her issues in a college essay. Bottom line in our case, it is and has always been D’s decision.</p>

<p>We will see if it works in her favor in admissions next year.</p>

<p>Yeah-- I agree. It really is about what they are comfortable with. For my D, it wasn’t really like she could hide that she couldn’t read til she was 12, or that she can’t write without technology. For others, the situation is really different. Some kids are not in the mood to have people know and others are pretty comfortable with it and see it as basically the same thing as not being good at basketball. It just depends on the way they see what they see. By the time it’s time to apply to college, they know what they need and want to deal with. I wouldn’t even try to tell an 18 year old what to do about this kind of thing. Some kids aren’t worn out on it, too, and they can go on to really top, top schools. For my D, she just ended up choosing a top 100 because of her dysgraphia, even though she was accepted to some top 20s. The key is just to let them lead, I think, and figure it out for themselves.</p>

<p>I think for kids whose LD’s are pretty mild (my son too) dropping 504 plans in high school may make sense. He’s unlikely to want to go through life asking for accommodations (which I realize are not always nearly as onerous as future employers may fear), he’d rather temper his expectations. He’s figured out ways to work around his deficits. I mentioned it in my letter to the GC, so it’s possible she’ll address it, but he no longer has a 504 plan, so I’m not sure what she’d say. </p>

<p>Queen’s Mom - SAT requires a lot more than a diagnosis to give accommodations, you might not have gotten them even if she was still on a 504 plan.</p>

<p>My son’s 504 plan is only health related and the hope is that by college he won’t need it at all.</p>

<p>Someone mentioned in an earlier post that if you are a geographic minority when applying to a school that it might help. If we live in New England, would this work for any of the states on the East Coast such as MD, VA, SC or NC?? What about Tenn, KY, Alabama?</p>

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<p>You may be right. I do not know because I never tried, but given the nature of D’s problems (which for obvious reasons I don’t want to discuss here), I think accommodations may have been given.</p>

<p>I should think that being from New England is a plus for schools in Tenn, KY, Alabama and the midwest for sure (because those are hard sell states for a Yankee, IMO).</p>

<p>I’d say it would be less so for MD, VA, SC and NC.</p>

<p>Probably also depends on what state you are from – if a school wants to be able to claim students from all 50 states, it’s better to be from a state like NH, VT and Maine than from Massachusetts (which is filled with students from the suburbs who may be put in the same pile as all the students from suburbs in NYC and DC).</p>

<p>fendrock - Thanks</p>

<p>Now another question… I was just on one the websites thst gives a selectivity # for each school. One of the schools has a selectivity rating of an 84 and yet it says that the average GPA is a 3.9. That doesn’t seem to match up!!!</p>

<p>I’m not sure what info is the most valuable to choose match schools.</p>

<p>My suggestion is that you check some of the schools listed here against the selectivity index – that should give you some idea if it is helpful or not.</p>

<p>Be wary of those GPA claims. Elon University, for example, claims a mean HS GPA of 3.95. When you look at the fine print it becomes evident that the 3.95 is derived after the college recalculates a weighted GPA.</p>

<p>hudsonvalley, I’ve been trying to find the fine print on a lot of schools and having no luck figuring anything out. I just can’t imagine Elon has a 3.9 average (as obviously it doesn’t) so how do you know you’re comparing apple to apples when looking at schools? Obviously Naviance is one answer, but D is interested in several schools to which no one from her HS has apparently ever applied.</p>