Parents of the HS Class of 2016 - 3.0 to 3.3 GPA

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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Sorry you are still waiting, @labegg.

All of my S’s last four decisions are the kind that are announced on the portal all at once, and I think it is pretty well known which days. So we aren’t checking the mailbox (or portals!) obsessively these days.

We almost made it through midterms but school is already cancelled tomorrow. Will have to make up the last two next time they are back to school. Might be Monday, but with two feet of snow expected who knows how long it will take to dig out. It is actually very good timing! No assignments to hang over him this weekend. I think.

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Delayed testing is so stressful.

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@labegg it would be stressful if he actually studied for tests. I wish I could LOL about that!

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@crowlady, our sons both finished their exams yesterday. They weren’t going to be in school today or Monday anyway. A new semester starts whenever the county digs us our, and for the first and only time S16 and S18 will have a class together. It’s a film class, and they are both major movie fanatics (S16 is going to major in screen studies next year); they’re both pumped.

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@mstomper My two (S14 and S16) have done some ECs together but haven’t taken a class together and very likely won’t ever. But they are very close and share a lot of interests. During S14’s winter break I had a hard time getting the two of them on task because would gladly spend all their awake time hanging out together. It was exhausting for me to try to make sure they took care of at least SOME of their responsibilities. Like looking for a job (S14) or finishing up his semester and studying for midterms (S16).

If I remember correctly, we are just north of you. S14 is going to be glad he returned to college and won’t have to help us dig out from the huge storm!

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I hope everyone on the east coast is surviving the major snowfall - we got 32" as of last night and are eagerly awaiting a plow to come and dig out our neighborhood :).

My S16 is realizing he’d like to go into a slightly different major than the one he noted on his applications. He applied as a computer science major, but now wants to go into information systems. Two schools have already accepted him as a CS major, and I’m wondering if it’s a problem for him to ask to change his major before he arrives? Seems like that would be most helpful for scheduling classes, but at one of the schools IS majors are in the business school while CS is in the STEM school, so I am worried if he asks if it will impact their acceptance.

Have any of your kids changed their major after applying? If so, how have the colleges handled it? I’m wondering if he should just wait and change when he gets there so he doesn’t cause any problems. Any advice?

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@lifegarding The good news is that in most places Information Systems is likely an easier major to get into than Computer Science. That means he probably won’t run into problems with qualifications. Different schools will have different procedures but if he already knows I think he should try to do it before scheduling classes. At my S14’s school, I heard of many students who changed majors just before starting Fall semester. It wasn’t automatic (the major had to be accepting students) but it wasn’t a difficult process. For S16 we just changed a major for a school he’s still waiting to hear from.

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Have thrown in the towel regarding Ithaca. Still have not received a decision. Am chalking it up as a denial although they have until Feb 1 to release EA decisions. D16 said “Chill out Mom, I am pretty sure I have decided I don’t want to go there…I put Seton Hall back in it’s place.”

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Thanks, @crowlady. To change a major at this point (after acceptance) I guess we just reach out to the college admissions office? Unfortunately, they are still shut down due to the snow on the east coast (we are still not plowed out at our house from the Friday/Saturday storm), so I guess we’ll wait until their spring semesters have a few days to get started back up. Hopefully he can make the switch so that he can start with the IS program of study right away, rather than CS.

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I’m asking this here, because anywhere else on CC… well, to be brutally honest, I don’t need answers form people whose kids are going to Stanford, or even UIUC.

My D is going to one of three “directional” state schools.

D wants to drop AP Statistics. Her schools require only three years of math - although one “recommends” four.

She has already taken Advanced Algebra (as a freshman), Honors Trig, Pre-Calc, and AP Calculus AB. She’s taken the AP exam for Calc and received a 4, so she can get a credit for math already…

She just received her grades for last semester and she did fine in everything, except for Stats - she got a C-, and a D on the final.

I was hoping she would stick with Stats, and encouraging her to, but now I’m wondering if she’ll be able to catch up - because obviously there is material she still does not understand, putting it mildly…

Has anyone else’s kid dropped a class mid-year, this last year? What is the general wisdom about doing this, re: how the colleges she applied to will view it?

Obviously, if she had applied to more competitive, selective schools, I’d have her stick with it.

But I’d like her to be able to reduce some stress this last semester, if possible. And not fail a class, or even get a D.

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Well, I’ve looked at her transcript - and I’d forgotten she took an extra semester of Calculus A one summer, because she’d received a C for Pre-Calc. ** (Math is just apparently NOT her forté). So, she technically has 4 units, total, of math in high school.

I think, as of now, it should be fine if she goes ahead and drops the Stats class - especially after 1 and 1/2 units of Calculus.

** D had received a C in Pre-Calc, but still been placed in AP Calculus BC for some reason. She was understandably nervous about going into Calc BC without having a good grasp on even Pre-Calc. so she took Calculus A over the summer and got a B. That teacher told her to go ahead with the BC. Well, she did - and was drowning very early in the fall semester; after the first quarter of fall ended, she REQUESTED to be moved back down to AP Calc AB. She stayed afloat in there for the rest of the year with Cs both semesters.

Thanks for listening to me think out loud about this, btw.

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@BeeDAre - hhhmmmm that is a dilemma. I am all for trying to reduce stress at this stage of the game. (I am trying to convince D16 to drop band at the moment due to new requirements for sectionals instituted by a fresh out of college teacher)

First, I would start with calling the university where she is likely to attend and ask them if a C/D or even dropping the class is going to put her admissions in peril and which they would prefer a low grade or a dropped class.

Second (if the university says not to worry), is she likely to need Statistics in her future education? If the answer is yes I might say stay in the class regardless of the grade because then she would at least have some familiarity with the subject matter latter and she will be less likely to stumble when she has it in college. Tell her to not stress about the grade, accept that it is going to be low and at this point she is just exposing herself to the material. If she doesn’t have to take the AP test, skip it (at our school you are not required to take the test when you take the class).

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I would have no problem having her drop stats, assuming that it wouldn’t put her admissions in jeopardy. She can always do it at the university if needed, and she may be better prepared to do it at that point anyway.

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@beedare my S14 was on track to fail Calc BC and so he dropped it for second semester senior year. He had already gotten a 5 on Calc AB and didn’t need calc for the school and major he ended up choosing. We didn’t know when he dropped that this would be okay, but we really had to do something. It was affecting his other classes and generally making him miserable. He replaced it with being an aide for a computer science class which we figured would count for something. It all turned out fine. He even did well in the additional two or three math classes he had to take in college.

I agree with @labegg that stats could turn out to be important for her major (more important than calculus almost certainly). However, I don’t think it is critical she finish out the course in high school as it certainly sounds like she’d want to take it again, and could get off to a better start.

I’m afraid to look at my S16’s grades for last quarter. He might have failed something and we’d have to decide what to do. The snow cancellations have helped me avoid the decision making.

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Well, she came home from school half an hour ago, and told me - she thought about it, and wants to stay in Stats.

I had a feeling she’d talk herself into staying put…

Imo, nothing bad will happen if she drops it, but - she wants to major in History or Anthropology and it will come in useful for both…
We also had a candid talk about whether she really does not understand the material, or - is it because she doesn’t do all of the homework? She confessed she understands the material for the units she did the homework for. Well, what do you know!! smh.

She has vowed to do ALL of the hw this semester, so we’ll see.

And I don’t mind so much her getting the C, if she’s trying her best, but the fact that she could get a better grade and understand the material, if she just did the work - well that is the thing that makes me crazy.

As for my own opinion on this, I think I have no problem with her dropping, so it’s up to her - but it looks like she’s staying.

I do commend her for wanting to stick with it, when she doesn’t need it for college admissions - and she does want to take the AP exam to get college credit for it. I also commend her for being honest with me about her lackadaisical work ethic - something I already knew about, but it’s a grown-up thing for her to tell me, herself, out loud.

This was also the only C she got this semester. So that’s an improvement.

She is also dropping Jazz Band, maybe - doesn’t start up again until late March, so we’ll see; so she can have more free time on weeknights to complete homework.

Thanks for everyone’s insights, it does help!

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@lifegarding For changing majors you could start with the admissions office but if he has already committed he might even have an academic advising office he could communicate with.

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I still, after 35 years have passed, think my high school administration dropped the ball by not letting me drop Algebra 2 when I was failing it after a semester. It took tutoring every day after school to get me up to a D-. A football player who was being recruited by division 1 schools was allowed to drop the same class. I don’t have any resentment toward him; he was nice guy and made it a point to tell me he was sorry I wasn’t allowed to drop the class. That was a stressful year for a kid who never liked school to begin with. S18 just dropped out of a very work intensive program that causing a lot of anxiety. Hopefully he have a good semester now. A program with a lot of extra work isn’t a good match for a kid who’s never cared for school, but he wanted to give it a shot. S16 was asked at the same point two years ago if he wanted to drop out of his magnet program and chose not to. I suspect he decided that he decided he wasn’t going to play the game anymore and take the consequences. When the program director told him he wouldn’t get into a top college if he didn’t start working harder I could see a “do you really think I care about top colleges” look on his face.

At the same time, I admire @BeeDAre’s daughter for sticking it out.

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Well, I think this is my daughter’s issue, as well.

She could care less about getting into a “top college” and never did… Last year, some of her friends were talking about trying to get into Northwestern, and D is all “What’s Northwestern? Is that a good school?” lol Before junior year, she knew about U of Chicago and Harvard and the Big Ten state schools. She knew, after last year she had no chance, or even wanted to, attend the former… and she absolutely did not want the latter either.

So I have wondered if her doing just enough to get by is because she really knows that’s all she needs to do, in order to go to the (non-top college) schools she applied to.

She also tends to be a perfectionist at whatever she does, and I know it stresses her out to not be able to give everything her FULL time and attention. I think she’s getting used to it, but I remember last semester when she first learned that the other kids in an AP class - a few with better grades than her - did not actually read the entire chapter in a textbook they were assigned to outline… They skimmed it, and one of them took her aside and explained to her how it was done - and that it was his belief that the teachers actually expected them to just skim the chapters - How else would they able to outline all that in such a short time, and with other classes to study for?

D was appalled - at first. Now she skims too (thank goodness for AP Literature where you can’'t get by with skimming…) She got more sleep after that, too, and got more chapters outlined.

Then again, what kind of system is this where the brighter kids in school are unofficially encouraged to skim chapters…? But that’s another thread…

I do too! :slight_smile: I am NOT a math-y person - I also struggled in Algebra 2, barely pulled Cs my junior year - and I would have gladly accepted the opportunity to drop a math class with huge amounts of tedious busywork - which is the one thing D hates, I know.

But we all have to do tedious things we hate, sometimes, so I hope this is a good life lesson - and that she actually does the homework this time around!

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Baby girl got into her reach school!
This is the kid who, just this morning, I was assuming was headed to the local CC-- and I had gotten to the place where I was mostly okay with that, though she’s bright enough she should have other options. But she’s very young for her age, and not the most organized person in the world, and it shows. Throw in lackluster test scores, and…well, there we have my D.

So it was very, very nice to find the proverbial big envelope from Eckerd this afternoon. Sushi tonight to celebrate!

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Yay, @petrichor11 , for your D! That is awesome news!

So is Eckerd her first choice?