Parents of the HS Class of 2019 - 3.0 to 3.4 GPA

Parents Forum
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@mamalion - there is absolutely space on CC for such students. This thread, and the one @bjkmom referenced are great starting points. I don’t think anyone on here brags any more than in any other thread - I would say a lot less!

But all of us are trying to be positive, so if something great happens that lifts our kids up, we do want to celebrate it. My kid is hoping to end up with a 3.5 GPA but right now it’s a 3.1. She has not broken 1200 on the SAT.
Does that make you feel like you have some better company?

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@bjkmom Thank you for the reference to the B/C thread. I find the tone on that much more appropriate for support. . . Too much jockeying for position here and not much strategizing.

I do find the lists of appropriate schools helpful, but I can find those elsewhere. I had wanted some concrete discussion of how to go about test prep with an under-motivated kids, realistic improvements, and essay strategies as well as experiences and suggestions on how to support a kid who stresses about perfectionism, when being perfect is always hard. I really think it would be helpful to discuss retention, too. It’s one thing to get a kid into a reach college, but how will s/he do with the rigor of college courses and no parental oversight? Wouldn’t a well thought-out A.A. make sense?

My daughter is in B-land, I guess about a 3.2-3.4 counting her orchestra and arts, but without weighting (she will have an AP foreign language next year and non-AP calculus, but isn’t this more jockeying for position?). Her school does not obsess over GPA and weighting. I am more worried about ACT/SAT scores (hoping for a 1100 next time).

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My son is a little above this range (well, apparently not for this quarter!), but I am also not particularly interested in the top LACs and Ivy leagues being discussed more often than not on the main thread. He has ADHD, he hates school and I don’t want to throw him into a competitive environment. The B students are his people even if he does sometimes get an A- in classes other than orchestra and jazz band.

I just found out that S19 might get a C in “STEM Engineering” which is glorified woodshop. He’s been filing the same piece of wood for most of the quarter and the teacher won’t let him move on to the sanding part of the project. His grade just drops every week while he files away!! This class was an easy A in the first half of the year so it’s pretty disappointing. He has stayed after school to file multiple times!

@me29034 Congrats to your son on the 1220! 120 point improvement is really great. I hear you on the college visits - we’ve managed two during all of junior year but he’s not exactly clamoring for more.

@mamalion I was worried about retention with my older kid (D16). She had about a 3.1/3.2 (unweighted) and 3.455 weighted at graduation. Also, some discipline issues and treatment for anxiety. She scored in the 1100s on the SAT (did worse on her second try), but did end up with a good ACT score. She wanted to go away and for various reasons, I was ready to let her go. Her GPA after 3 semesters of college - 3.455! She’s working hard 1500 miles away. Her parental oversight consists of me reminding her to sign up for the next semester’s classes on time.

She did end up switching majors first semester of sophomore year (not quite up to doing organic chem and higher math classes in her bio major), but is happy with the new course and is keeping a bio minor. We never did consider an A.A. for her. It would probably make sense for my S19, actually, but he swears he wants to go to a 4 year.

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@mamalion

I am truly sorry you feel that way as that is certainly not the intent of this thread nor a tone intended, in fact quite the opposite. We do celebrate achievements here and for many, they are hard hard won and it is something that is celebrated at all levels. I don’t find that bragging. We also console each other when kids are struggling, something I’ve needed quite a bit this year. My highly capable newly ASD diagnosed kid brought in a 2.8 last semester and while it might not be a fun item to share, I knew I could come here and find empathy and ideas. And, on the flip side if he turns that grade around, feel able to share without it being considered bragging.

That said. For many this is early in the search process and CC is a self selecting forum. Parents that come here in general may well be predisposed to a 4 year plan and looking for options that fit that plan. The mix of parents here today, and who will be here by the end of summer may well be quite different. I would suggest you ask the questions you want answers or input on, versus assuming they would be automatically addressed by the nature of the forum or thread titles. Topics here twist and turn depending on needs and concerns and it’s a helpful, encouraging bunch. Each students needs on this thread are very different but people can’t help if you don’t ask the question you want input on.

Specially you want to have a discussion of how to go about test prep with an under-motivated kids, realistic improvements, and essay strategies as well as experiences and suggestions on how to support a kid who stresses about perfectionism, when being perfect is always hard. I really think it would be helpful to discuss retention, too. It’s one thing to get a kid into a reach college, but how will s/he do with the rigor of college courses and no parental oversight? Wouldn’t a well thought-out A.A. make sense?

I think these answers will vary tremendously by kid and having a lot of data points is helpful. As a parent of 4 some of our kids hit some of those issues, others hit different ones and there is no one right answer or path, just a lot of input that can be provided about personal experiences, take what suits you and toss away the rest but you are covering a lot of different items in that list.

  1. Test prep.

Folks here have a lot of ideas and strategies on that. My personal experience is that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. We had 1 who truly cared about her scores, worked hard and took tests over and over and over to get what she wanted/needed. 2 who hate tests, are poor test takers, and did prep kicking and screaming, including one with 1:1 help. But, it did help. Did it help at the level of the one who cared? No. And then we have our current S19 who tests well, basically showed up at test prep to humor me but did end up with significant improvement simply by me “forcing” practice tests through the prep process. I could suggest the free online tools (Khan, Magoosh) or buy them the big red books but 3 out of 4 surveyed said no thanks. Which is frustrating as all get out but it is what it is (was). It also meant we’ve got kids with ACT scores that ranged from 21 to 33. And 3 out of 4 have successfully gone off to college except the 33 kid with the 2.8 1st semester junior year gpa lol.

YMMV.

  1. Under-motivated kids, realistic improvements, and essay strategies.

This really depends on why they are under-motivated. If it is due to perfectionism, that could be one thing, LD’s another, fear of the future (super real and paralyzing to a lot of kids) it’s another. Understanding the why will help formulate a strategy and and understanding of realistic improvement. We’ve had 3 under-motivated kids but all for really different reasons. What improvement are you looking for? Grades? Test scores? Overall engagement?

I don’t know that essay strategies vary due to the gpa though, or exactly what you mean. Strategies for getting them done on time in a quality fashion (a struggle for most), strategies about content or ideas that set them apart?

  1. Experiences and suggestions on how to support a kid who stresses about perfectionism, when being perfect is always hard.

I have a perfectionist who doesn’t stress, he just won’t do it if it can’t be perfect so I’m not much help here but I know we have several who deal with this issue and hope they can chime in.

  1. It's one thing to get a kid into a reach college, but how will s/he do with the rigor of college courses and no parental oversight? Wouldn't a well thought-out A.A. make sense?

That is a topic many of us here discuss quite a bit, or have on past years threads. It is a reason many do not go after reach colleges. Getting in is irrelevant if the student can’t be successful. I think we are all trying our best to get our kids to a place where they can be successful in college without parental oversight. Some will be more ready than others. We may be looking at a gap year or CC, we may not. There is so much change in the next 6 months it is a bit mind boggling. For us personally we are focusing on schools that seem to have key elements that increase our son’s chances for success in a 4 year environment and if those are not the schools he gets into, or we don’t feel he is ready, we are prepared for gap year, CC or a local branch of our flagship and living at home. All of which are great options for him.

We have heavily focused on fit at our house, not prestige, and have found schools for 3 out of 4 that enabled them to be successful. We also have found that the 2 that were of greater concern for managing on their own, did better on their own but also were not afraid to ask us for help when they needed it (and they ask a lot!). I think we did a decent job of letting them know we were here for that and that has empowered them. However, my S19 is not wired that way at all. He’s incapable of asking for help. So for him, we are doing therapy, potentially some educational therapy as well to help in these areas.

I also think back up plans are amazingly empowering. For our oldest, CC was always an option, as was an in state regional if his private college didn’t work out. It wasn’t a prestigious private college but it was one that had a smaller more tailored program that we felt would support and engage him much more than the CC or in state option would. For our current college freshman, who was a solid B+ student with a 25 superscored ACT he is at his “reach” school. Which would be a safety for many on CC. He has a scholarship to maintain and that is stressful. But, for him, it’s also motivational. He has an instate safety as a fall back. He’s motivated not to exercise that option. For that one, he does better when pushed…within reason. He’s stepping up to the plate very well. But it’s also the right school for him, one that gives him much more individualized attention than he’d have gotten at that in state option. In his case I firmly believe he’d not be doing nearly as well at the school that didn’t “require” a certain gpa to stay. But he knows he has an option that he’d be ok at if it doesn’t work out and I think that takes some of the pressure off. Or at least I hope so.

I believe there is also a CC forum here that might be helpful, I have no direct experience with it. At the end of the day we are all just trying to survive this process intact and advocate for our kids.

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@mamalion With due respect, this thread has been here since September, and you just found it. Most of the things you wish we would discuss on this thread have been discussed, quite a bit, if you would search. And I’m sure they’ll come up again!

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Similarly here, which is why I’ve decided not to post anything about my daughter’s stats unless asked about them. However, my daughter isn’t just uncaring about prestigiosity, she’s if anything anti-prestige, and so this is a much more comfortable place to discuss college choices than threads where participants look down their noses at still rather high-end schools like, say, WPI, let alone the Kansas States and UNC-Charlottes of the higher-ed world.

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@mamalion you mention that you have an older daughter who went to HYPS. I also have an older daughter who was high stats and is at a top LAC. She got plenty of outside recognition of her accomplishments, including awards and trophies and ultimately admission to her first choice school. My D19 by contrast is struggling with many of the same issues you mention: perfectionism, lack of motivation, plus anxiety, dyslexia, ADHD, a complete lack of organizational or time management skills, etc. She basically gets no outside recognition, no awards, no peer recognition. But if anything that makes me all the more determined to recognize and acknowledge her when she takes a step forward because I know what a big accomplishment that is for her.

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@eandesmom thank you for your detailed response - I was initially following the 2018 thread of similar stats because I knew my S19 would be in that category. I was grateful when a new thread for 2019 started. I only found CC toward the end of D17 college search/application process. As she is the oldest, I knew very little about the process and did not know how to search for schools with merit aid that fit her stats. In the end, while she got into her top choice, it did not come with enough merit to make it affordable - my mistake for not doing the necessary research ahead. Thankfully she had some great options that did come with merit. Now that I’m a little more knowledgeable, I have a better idea what to look for with S19, although unfortunately, his stats are not as good so he won’t have as many options. This thread has been very helpful to me, not just with good information about the search process, but also a place where I feel more comfortable and welcomed rather than the regular thread with the high stats kids. Like you, I have four kids and they all have different academic backgrounds, While S19 has A/B grades in mostly CP courses, S21 is going to be a completely different ball of wax as he has a learning disability.

My current struggle is getting S19 motivated about the college search process. He absolutely wants to go to a 4 year school but has been very indifferent about doing much to find the right school. He has a list that is mostly not acceptable (several SEC-type schools where OOS will not be affordable and his stats won’t get him merit, a couple of private schools that he won’t get into with his SAT score, nor will they be affordable without merit, he may or may not getting recruited for his sport but his position does not come with scholarship money, he thinks he wants to do ROTC but not completely sure, etc). His 3 varsity sport practice schedule makes it very difficult to take time for college visits (he was not allowed to travel for spring break - had practice every day except Good Friday and Easter Sunday). On the upside, he has been doing online ACT prep every day but even then, I’m not sure how much it will help. he is genuinely a good kid so I have to remind myself of that when I get frustrated!

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D19 has added Clemson to her list of schools so I started doing some research and came across test scores and rankings by each college. http://www.clemson.edu/oirweb1/FB/factbook/minifactbook.cgi
Interesting information and somewhat hopeful since her SAT scores are a match.
Question about the HS Rank though since her HS does not rank. How does Clemson handle kids who don’t have a rank?

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I can speak to perfectionist kids and essays since I gave birth to three of them all of whom manifest it in different ways.

My oldest is a classic and the most immediately obvious perfectionist. She is in her third year of an extremely writing heavy major in college. The strategy that she evolved into in college is to not start her papers too far ahead of time. She does the readings, the research, thinks about it but pushes up a bit close to the deadline before sitting down and writing. That keeps her from over obsessing about it. She has been very successful.

My middle child is in her second year of college. She starts well ahead of the deadline, trying to have the entire paper done a week early if possible. This way when she is at work on it and starts stressing about it she can set it aside and come back later because she knows there is still time.

Interestingly enough these two basically flipped their high school patterns when they got to college. When it came to college application essays, D15 spent months agonizing and crafting the perfect essays for each ap while D16 dashed them off last minute.The key point though is that both found a way that worked for them even though their approaches are pretty much opposites.

My youngest is more of an @eandesmom 's kid type of perfectionist. If it can’t be perfect why even start in the first place. I’ve been worried about application essays for this one for a while now. But I’m thinking now of proposing the following plan. We’ll figure out all the essays that need to be written and schedule times for the writing thereof. At that point in time D19 will sit her butt down in the chair and write an essay as if it was an in class timed assignment. She then gets to save it and walk away. We will schedule these sessions far enough out that there is time to redo, revise, or rewrite if necessary later.

I’ll let you know how well that works out for us.

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My S19 surprised me yesterday by saying “Apparently, the Common App essays are out now.” I think it’s been out for three months, but OK. At least he’s aware that he has to write at least one essay. I think he is gong to have issues with the prompts because he tends to be so literal when given a writing assignment - like he’ll implode if he accidentally puts extra thought into it. I think I need to show him lots of examples of essays that worked, and maybe steer him toward the open-ended one.

@mom23travelers I love the ides of assigning the essays as timed writings - I think that might help. (I will need to offer some type of monetary reward, no doubt). He’s actually mentioned that he generally does his best on those and given a long period of time, he just ends up writing something half-based at the last minute anyway.

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Wonderful responses, I go to work and come back to all these kind and helpful comments. I have been on this thread before, but maybe I wasn’t reading the right posts.

I know a lot about higher education, too much for my own good, but let me focus a bit more here about one of my worries. Retention rates and graduation rates correlate highly to academic background. Hence the competitive and elite schools have 4 year graduation rates in the 90s. Aside from driven students, they often have the endowment that lets them pay for all sorts of academic support and advising. The picture is not so grand elsewhere. For example NYS has 62 undergraduate colleges. The strongest ones, such as Binghamton, might hit 80% 4 year graduation rates on a good day. When one looks at NYS schools that give AA and BA in sequence, sometimes the spread is grim. For example Canton has a 4 year graduation rate of 25%, Morrisville is 27%. On the other hand, Fashion Institute of Technology has a rate of 62%. Obviously this isn’t the only way to go, but it is indicative of the problem with not reaching (though reaching has another set of issues)

Now lots of students stop out, rather than drop out, but even the 6 year graduation rates are low in colleges that accept B students. Is anyone else considering this as they look at colleges?

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@mamalion I think about it but at a micro level and not a macro level. What I mean is this: I think about it in terms of will this school be one where my S19 will be successful? So there are schools that have wonderful rates but my son would just blow up due to the anxiety. If schools have really low retention rates, then yes I’d want to know why. Is it finances? Is it can’t adapt to the rigor? CC is a good place to find some of that type of stuff out.

The big thing for me is fit: city/suburban/rural, big/medium/small, desired major plus fall back majors. My S19 has the advantage that he tagged along on his older brother’s (S17) trips. So he has a feel for what he wants. But like so many kids, I think things are changing over his junior year. So we will see at the end.

Finally, I have found this thread to be helpful. My oldest son was fairly easy to figure out for this college stuff. He knew what he wanted and he was very realistic. He in no way prepared me for taking my youngest through this process. People on this thread have been incredibly helpful, often times even when they don’t realize it.

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@Mamalion “Colleges that accept B students” is a very broad category that includes, well, most colleges!

I did steer my B student to flagships and land grant type schools, as well as a CTCL school. 4- and 6- year graduation rates are worth looking at but they don’t tell you much about your individual kid’s chances of graduating. My D16 qualified for a small scholarship with her B grades and finds her school to be a comfortable fit academically. She knows a couple of people who aren’t attending anymore, but there are a variety of reasons - they didn’t fail out.

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I’m faculty at an open-admissions university that, by some methods of counting, a couple years back had the worst 6-year graduation rate of any nonprofit 4-year college in the country. It’s ticked up a bit since, due both to better tracking of students—making sure that associates students were classified as such and not baccalaureate ones, f’rex—as well as concerted efforts to get students to actually progress to graduation, but it remains quite low.

Completion rates tell you very little that isn’t already predicted by inputs—that is, given the demographics of the incoming student population, you pretty much know what the 4- and 6-year graduation rates are going to be.

Honestly, it’s a pointless statistic, unless there’s a wide gap between what the demographics would predict and the actual rate—and even then it’s iffy, since graduation rates have weirdnesses like (to take the IMO most egregious example) students transferring out counting as non-completions for the initial college, and not counting as completions for the school transferred into.

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[CC glitched and my message got posted twice]

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Most colleges–that is, colleges that accept B students–do have poor graduation rates. Leaving out the for profits, public schools average 61% and private 71.5% 6 year graduation rates (6 years of private school tuition?). I do worry about this. I do think fit helps tremendously, but once colleges become less competitive, their need to accept a full freshman class begins to erode the match between ability and expectation. http://time.com/4116856/college-graduation-rate/

I am not trying to be argumentative, but I am trying to think through what approach would help a student (middle B, pushing into B+ (3-3.4)) succeed in 4-6 years. There are so many ways to move from HS to college.

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@dfbdfb I have been tenured faculty at flagships in three states. I don’t find it a pointless statistic. True it correlates predictably to a number of things, going lower with STEM emphases, more boys on campus, lower socio-economic status, etc. That said, I worry about my kid living on a campus where 1/2 her class or more might be gone by graduation. This might be the only option, but I am worried about how to support her in the process of application and attendance.

I don’t think ignoring attrition is the answer. I am hoping that someone has thought about this, too.

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Like I wrote above, the college I work at is open admissions. This is its mission. Yeah, we could immediately get our graduation rate up much, much higher by only allowing students with [insert GPA and test scores here] in, rather than any student with a high school diploma or the equivalent. But you know what? That’s not who we are. We’re a place where someone who needs a handful college courses to gain knowledge for their job can do so easily over the course of a few years, or somebody who wants to learn to be a welder can acquire that knowledge and get a job.

But then again, the students accepted into our honors college do graduate at a pretty high rate. (And most of the ones that count as non-graduates for our official stats are because they’ve transferred out, and then they graduate from somewhere else.)

Graduation rates are a stat worth looking at, sure. But worth looking at for very long? Not so much.

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There are many things that go into graduation rates that have nothing to do with being a B student. Many health professions require internships that may push graduation past 4 years, engineering may require internships or coops that may also push graduation rates back , having an undeclared major or changing majors may also effect graduation rates . All of these and many other factors may play a role in later graduation dates. I refuse to believe that someone being a B student or even a C student dooms them to a longer time to graduate . I also refuse that being a B or C student is an indication that a student is not appropriate for a 4 year institution if they choose to attend one. That simply is not a reality. I find that train of thought very sad frankly.