<p>Treetopleaf, what is your opinion on AP’S? Do you think it best to use these credits in college (Calc I, II, AP Chem and Physics) 4,5’s or learn the way the school teaches it to be more successful in engineering? If you think it relative to the school, what schools do you suggest not taking the credit?</p>
<p>Shrinkrap, this link might help you understand the field more and find schools that offer a program your son might be interested in. </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.acce-hq.org/baccalaureateprograms.htm#MA]ACCE[/url”>http://www.acce-hq.org/baccalaureateprograms.htm#MA]ACCE[/url</a>] Ameriican Council for Construction Education</p>
<p>This has been great; thank you all so much;</p>
<p>“ITT Tech is a for-profit entity like the University of Pheonix with questionable accreditation… Please do not send your son to one of these for-profit schools”. My SAT scores were lower than sons, but I’m not stupid! ( that was supposed to be funny…)</p>
<p>Treetopleaf; I guess I needed to see that in writing. Again, I wish there was more time, and he could do a few things even if it extended his education. So far he is adamant about not wanting to wait on the physics class. I hope that means he will drop the ECs. At least until the drop period. Oh, and he got a B- in pre calc. Not sure why, but much earlier in the year had an important MISSING ASSIGNMENT that he did, but didn’t turn in. Can you believe that is still happening? Fortunately he had actuallly gone over it with the teacher during office hours, and she knew this, and the lowest assignment got dropped. Sigh. </p>
<p>Well, I dont think missing assignments are worthmuchfor most classes. </p>
<p>I would love to be able to show him that a lot of kids take 5 or more years to graduate in engineering. I once saw a link here on cc where you could generate tables of graduation rates from different schools with different demographics. Something about “education trust” maybe. Anybody know about this, or where I can find grad rates in different schools of engineering?</p>
<p>For UCs, you can find a lot with [url=<a href=“http://statfinder.ucop.edu%5DUniversity”>http://statfinder.ucop.edu]University</a> of California: StatFinder<a href=“custom%20tables”>/url</a>. Included are four, five, and six year graduation rates, stratified by campus, year of entry, and major category.</p>
<p>For example, Berkeley Engineering+CS 4/5/6 year graduation rates for the entering freshmen of 2003 were 76.4%/92.4%/93.1%. For UCLA engineering, they were 48.7%/84.4%/89.4%. For UC Riverside engineering, they were 18.8%/47.1%/52.9%.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap, how did he do in the precalc tests? If he aced all the tests but didn’t hand in some of the homeworks, that’s one thing, but if he was getting B- or worse on the tests, that doesn’t bode well for his success in calculus-based physics. Or, as Treetopleaf says, in calculus.</p>
<p>I know that you know this, but your son is basing his plans on unjustified hope and optimism. He wants to take calculus and calculus-based physics right now. <em>If</em> he does well in those classes, he’ll be on track to finish in 4 years. But what we’re saying is, probably he won’t do well in those classes right now. He needs more time to prepare.</p>
<p>It’s your money-- do you want to fund this gamble?</p>
<p>I don’t know how he did on the tests, but I know he thinks he was doing among the best in the class…and goes on to add this is not a class of engineers…</p>
<p>With regard to funding the gamble, no, but I sure don’t want to pull the plug on his …whatever this is ( delusion?). I can’t tell you how far he has come in the last 24 months.</p>
<p>All this puts me in a better position to give informed advice, but I think you are saying I need to tell him what to do. Hope I can do the right thing before he heads back this weekend.</p>
<p>Don’t look at it as telling what to do, view it as a learning experience for him. Some mature later than others. You need to put realistic expectations on him. This is not chump change and he needs to make wise decisions. He is going to college so he will be able to get a good job, there is a purpose here, not an extension of high school. He will be in conrol of his life thereafter and needs to be responsible.</p>
<p>I went back to the first page to refresh my memory. Quick summary: Shrinkson has ADHD. He had great SATs, and got top grades as a senior at his private school (though, not so top in earlier years). Last semester he took English (A), chemistry for engineers (barely passed), precalculus (B-), and something else. He felt he did a ton of work.</p>
<p>This semester he is signed up for calculus, physics with calculus, a programming class, biology for engineers, and a gen ed class. </p>
<p>I’m revising my opinion, speaking as a person with ADHD who knows all too well about college failure. Sounds to me like Shrinkson is not doing (or not handing in) all of his classwork. With a high SAT-M, he should be skating through precalc; I suspect the low grade is due to homework assignments not handed in.</p>
<p>The spring schedule is madness. A programming class AND physics AND calculus AND bio AND another class? No. Recipe for disaster. If he thinks last semester was a ton of work, this semester will be fifty tons.</p>
<p>I suggest a coach who sees him every day, and a reduced schedule. Either that, or a gap year at community college, with someone (not Mom) helping him with organization. I now think he’s smart enough, but he needs someone to help him with executive function.</p>
<p>One major correction: The math SAT was only high by our local standard, and near the top of the 25-50th percentile for the school. </p>
<p>Thats what I meant by "A reach by GPA standards, but near the top overall ( not for engineering) with regards to SAT. "It was NOT high by CC standards, and not high, but good enough, according to that other thread about SAT’s for kids studying math and physics. </p>
<p>Also, he is in a program for underepresented kids in engineering. He takes one “engineering” class, and one other class through that program each semester. He says that is the “algorithms” class. He is not aware of a “programing” class, but I told him that is what it might be. </p>
<p>I don’t know that the missing assignments are an ongoing problem, but there are certainly details he is not on top of, like looking at the class sylabus. We looked briefly at getting him enrolled in disabilities services, but we did not have the documentation they needed, and he was not that interested. Maybe we will reconsider.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But apparently a private high school weak in math and science, as the student got A grades there but could only place into precalculus in college. I don’t think the OP is too happy about the high school in retrospect…</p>
<p>It’s a “Christian” school. He attended the same school from age 3 to 18, and it was a great atmosphere for son, but not because of the academics.</p>
<p>OK, so, mid-600s for the SATM. Perfectly fine for an engineer, but in that case, and given his poor math preparation in high school (they gave him As and he still placed into precalc, prima facie evidence of poor math classes), he’s going to have to work hard on his classes. </p>
<p>I looked up the algorithms class. It uses Matlab. That is a programming language. He will be programming. Has he ever programmed before? Programming classes suck up an enormous amount of time, even more enormous for students who have never programmed before.</p>
<p>I strongly suggest you heed Cardinal Fangs last 2 posts, especially with regard to the spring semester class load.
DS is in a PhD program at CalTech , and is now learning to program with Matlab, and for those with no programming experience, it is time consuming AND hard.</p>
<p>In the first programming course, often one of the hardest things to do is to get the first program to work. You have to learn to use the editor, understand a little about files and learn to use a compiler and linker. These tools often provide cryptic messages when something goes wrong that aren’t a lot of help to the beginner.</p>
<p>It takes a while to get a programming paradigm. Most people start off doing it without really understanding what they are doing and what the compiler/linker/interpreter does. In a sense, it’s magic but you have to be very careful in the commands that you give. If you’re taking a tough math class and have to learn programming at the same time, it can be somewhat overwhelming. If he’s going to take such a course, I’d suggest getting it on his PC now to get used to it before class starts.</p>
<p>This program he is in included a summer session, and I believe they did programming there, but he has no other experience. I told him you guys said I needed to have a “come to Jesus” talk about his spring schedule, and he is quite puzzled. I tried to explain, but he still doesn’t know what that has to do with Jesus. He has already COME to Jesus, thank you very much!</p>
<p>Anyway, this all helps, thanks! Anybody think I would be overstepping to talk to someone in this program about all of this? The program is for underepresented kids in Science, not neccesarily engineering. I believe he is the only black freshman student in engineering…not that there’s anything wrong with that! (Seinfeld reference).</p>
<p>BTW, one eyeopener with the high school was when the SAT report said he was in the 85th or so percentile for state or something, but maybe better than 90th for the school. That is the only time I recall seeing a percentile at that school higher than in the state.</p>
<p>When I was in College many years ago I studied programming in BASIC (I realize this programming language is no longer used) and am not sure how it compares to MATLAB in difficulty. I also have ADHD and found it a very frustrating and time consuming course. First, it is very difficult to write and type in a program that will run when you first try it. Even the most minute error will result in an error message. Computers have no intuition so even if one comma is out of place the program will not run. Then it seems every time you fix a problem in one line of the program you inadvertently create two more in some other part of the program. The only person in the class that seemed to get it was my Japanese girlfriend (now my wife of thirty years) and she is the most detail oriented person I have ever met.</p>
<p>Well, I’ll share that we just now concluded that same talk with our DS. He just completed his first quarter, and ended up with all Cs and a C-, so was put on academic probation. </p>
<p>His school is 7 hours from home and he has a girlfriend here. He is torn between being at his school and being away from all of his friends and girlfriend. (He went to a school where he knew absolutely nobody from his HS.)</p>
<p>He admitted that he is torn, but he likes where he is as far as the school. We talked to him that if he wants to transfer he needs to look into it now. We also said if he wants to stay he needs to let us know his plan for academic improvement. We said that we aren’t going to monitor his grades, but that we are going to ask how it’s going. We said that we don’t want to be surprised at the end of next quarter. </p>
<p>I think that he feels the pressure and I absolutely know he can succeed. He is a smart kid that has always tried to just get by, and now I think that he understands that isn’t a recipe for success.</p>
<p>We have made the decision to not get involved with the school ourselves, but have let him know that he needs to sit down with his adviser, etc. I admit to wanting to know directly from the school, but realize that this is an area we need to stay out of.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I have ADHD and I love to program and used to do it for a living. I’m not as accurate as some others, but I end up finding the bugs eventually. So I don’t think that ADHD necessarily means someone will struggle to program, more than others. But a programming course means a lot of work. Programming takes time.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s overstepping. I would definitely be all over the people in the program. Without his consent, they probably can’t talk details about him, but they can surely tell you in general what would be going on with students who have his profile. That is, they can say, “Students who get B- in precalc tend to need to work very hard in calculus. We don’t recommend taking three other time-consuming courses at the same time,” or something of that nature.</p>
<p>Or, at least, you can ask them how students like your son tend to do in follow-on courses.</p>
<p>He started taking medicine a little before his 5th birthday, when i learned the school had pretty much put him in the time out chair permanently. I went in for back to school, and he says “here’s MY seat!”, and it’s this chair separated from all the others. I’d been getting calls for a VERY long time, and we had used behavioral things, but that really broke my heart. He had only scribbled when asked to color in the past, but the day after we started meds, I peaked in his classroom window, and he was coloring a pitcure of a turkey, wich every feather carefully colored with different colors. Scared the hell out of me, even though it’s hwat I do for a living.</p>
<p>Anyway, strangly enough, even without meds, I don’t know if he’d do too badly with detail stuff. He was editor of his yearbook twice, and started using photoshop, and he spends HOURS on that crazy program. I’m guessing it’s not anything like programming, but maybe it will be okay.</p>
<p>Oh, and he didn’t start taking his meds until towards the very end of the semester. I’m sure it helps, but not in a way I like to rely on for the rest of his life. But that’s for another thread.</p>