Hi- So thrilled to find this group. My daughter has been a little discouraged and bogging down in the college search because her GPA is low. She had a really rough start in high school and her GPA just hasn’t recovered. She’s sitting at 3.0 unweighted but 31 ACT, good ECs, and writing awards that lead me to believe her essays will be good.
She’s looking at small liberal arts colleges including Kenyon, College of Wooster, Haverford, Denison, DePauw, Milsaps and Macalester. Any other ideas of schools that aren’t on our radar that are more flexible on GPA?
Welcome @sarapheena. I would definitely start with the CTCL’s. Run the NPCs, because I should think that ACT score would help with merit if need be. Also, those schools are more holistic with admissions and they are all LAC’s!
@dfbdfb The teacher was lazy. I would not say the professor was holding up their end of their employment agreement if new exams were not being generated, especially since the kids were directed to use Quizlet, why wasn’t it checked? Why weren’t exams being rotated?
@DCNatFan For Clemson to be safe she would probably need to get the SAT’s up a bit into the 1300 range. Clemson is very stats oriented. Test scores, GPA, class rank and rigor are what they really look at. They don’t really care about EC unless you are applying to the honors college.
UDel is a great place I really like it. My daughter chose Clemson over UDel mainly based on wanting the sports vibe at Clemson. In almost every other way they are similar as they are both large public universities with abuut 17-18K students. OOS price were similar as well. However at UDel you are only 40 minutes from Philly and at Clemson you are 2 hours from either Atlanta or Charlotte.
@sarapheena Lots of great small liberal arts schools here in Pennsylvania. My wife and I both went to Lafayette College, my brother and his son both went to Allegheny College. Washington & Jefferson, Gettysburg, Franklin & Marshall, and Dickinson are some others.
Welcome @sarapheena ! I’d suggest you also look at Beloit, Kalamazoo, Earlham, and Knox. FYI, my daughter is a recent DePauw grad, so I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have about it, should it stay on your D’s list.
Humble brag warning . So proud of DS19 for being inducted into the Spanish National Honor Society. In our district, only 2 years if a FL is required to graduate. He has completed 4 years and earned a place in the Spanish Honor Society.
One of my kids took AP Psych a few years ago. For the midterm, the teacher gave them some topics to study. My child went on line and looked at old AP exams. One of the questions on the test was identical to one my child read on line, right down to the names of the subjects. I considered that the teacher’s issue, not my child’s and I didn’t encourage my child to tell the teacher. The teacher should have known which old exams had been released.and not used them.
As for the TCU issue, the teacher is lazy and unless he had specifically told them not to use Quizlet, they weren’t cheating. He was lazing out and should be disciplined. I mean if he wanted to use Quizlet to design his tests, he should have at least changed the names or numbers or fact patterns a bit.
I agree with everything you say, @techmom99, except for the idea that “[the instructor] should be disciplined”.
Seriously, if you’re at an R1 or even an R2 (yeah, yeah, I know, not the terms technically in use anymore, but that’s what everyone still uses) you know that teaching isn’t going to really be a part of what you’re evaluated on, so putting in minimal effort is simply what you’re incentivized to do. Don’t blame the faculty member, blame the nothing but lip service given to teaching at such institutions.
Congrats to your son @carolinamom2boys. I was just looking at all the academic honor society pictures in my S19’s new yearbook wondering what the criteria are - I just know that my kids never meet them!
In this particular instance, it appeared that the teacher was pushing for the students to be punished. My point, inartfully made, was that if anyone in this particular situation should be held to account, it should be the teacher as he did not tell the students not to use Quizlet and he used it without even changing the questions. Couldn’t it be argued that the teacher is guilty of plagiarism of Quizlet’s work product?
As for your other contentions, I am not and never have been in academia or education, so I don’t know anything about incentivizing professors or how they are evaluated, other than that I have heard publish or perish and that my kids have been approached every semester to fill out teacher evals, something I don’t recall ever doing in either college or law school.
Shifting gears a smidge, I wonder if anyone has any personal experience with UNH? I have two D19s and am wondering about the school for one of them. Her stats are technically higher than what’s normally discussed on this thread but her rigor is pretty average and her ECs uninspiring (on paper at least). She’s interested in being an occupational therapist eventually and we are exploring combined BS/MSOT programs as a potential path. Once you consider cost, geography, religious affiliation, reputation of overall institution (in case she changes her mind), and the fact that a bunch of programs have recently been suspended and will retooled and eventually retooled as BS/DOT programs, there are not so many programs to consider. On paper at least, UNH looks like a school where she would like the vibe regardless of major, cost is a little high but can maybe be brought down within reach with merit, and I’m not against taking a loan if she’ll get her masters at the same time. I know a lot of you have explored UVM and wondering if you might be able to compare the two. She loves the idea of UVM and it will be a contender if she decides not to go the BS/MSOT path and we can make the $ work.
@Bubblewrap666 I am an Occupational Therapist. As long as a program is already accredited, she will be fine. They all have the same requirements for graduation in terms of internships , etc. She will have to take a national certification in order to practice. You may want to look at the AOTA website to compare programs. Also investigate the pass rate for the certification exam for the schools that you are interested in as this can be a good judge of strength of program . If she is not convinced that she wants to be an OT, I would not go the direct entry route , but look at an undergrad degree that would be appropriate for acceptance to grad school , but does not lock her into OT. Feel free to PM if you have Andy questions about OT. Good luck to your daughter.
I assumed a former student created the quizlet at some point after seeing (or being given by another student) the test questions that he reuses each year. I again assumed the professor didn’t know they were there.
I only think he could be disciplined for trying to get the students into trouble when they did nothing wrong. But it’s possible that this publicity means fewer and fewer students will take his classes unless they have no choice. Maybe that’s enough of a punishment?
If by UNH, you mean University of New Haven, my friend’s son is there and they are very pleased. He started out pre-med but is now planning to do a second BS to get a nursing degree and then go for an NP. He feels prepared in his science classes from what my friend has said.
