<p>Lets say you have a son who is incredibly bright, but is just lazy. He wants to always get the easy pass in life, and is incredibly spoiled. He gets good grades, good scores when he studies, but he has a bad attitude about life and you can't ever see him being responsible when he grows up.</p>
<p>If this is your son, don't send him to a school that has a lot of grade inflation. That will just make his problem worse. Send him to a school where there is a LOT of competition so he studies harder and gets his act together. Being around lazy people makes you lazier. Being around people who are used to competing will prepare him for the real world, and in the end he will thank you for it. </p>
<p>Schools with low grade deflation:</p>
<p>UNC
Berkeley
UCLA
MIT
Cal Tech
UCSD</p>
<p>etc... Do whats best for your child, if he doesn't learn to grow up now, he won't be as prepared when he is out in the real world...</p>
<p>Or, he goes to a school with lots of competition, doesn't rise to the occaision and drops out. I do agree with you that parents have the responsibility of making sure their "lazy" child is going to be in the right environment for HIM/HER but there is no "one size fits all" solution when it comes to picking colleges.</p>
<p>or have him take a year off either working at a low level job or volutneering so that by the time he enters college- he is mature enough to benefit from it
I wouldn't spend money on someone who wasn't ready for college- no matter how smart they thought they were</p>
<p>Especially when even with his lazy self, he earned most of the money himself with a big scholarship. This describes my son, except that he also knows he should have worked harder. But I can relate, having been a "smart, lazy kid" myself back in the day. Trouble is, it's just too easy to get good grades sometimes! </p>
<p>The great thing is that he's now going to be in an honors program with a scholarship that will require a higher GPA or he doesn't get to stay! That's one answer. HE wants to push himself harder, and this is one way he'll help himself make it happen.</p>
<p>For starters, you don't SEND your kid to schools like MIT and Caltech, they need to earn their acceptance. At those schools there is more cooperation then there is competition. If they make it into either of those schools you are worrying about nothing. Not every child will grow up to be precisely what we want them to be. Just love them for who and what they are. It's not a race, it's a life. Highly competitive, goal oriented types are not always the ones living the happiest lives, or the most fun to be around.</p>
<p>^ Yes sir. Its just that I used to be the lazy type that slept in calculus, or AP English in hs and got A's still. I always valued friendships above all, and I still do to this day... there is so much more to life than just goals goals goals, I agree completely... thats why I traveled around the world for a year after I graduated... hehe. I really really appreciate my parents for understanding and letting me do that... </p>
<p>If your child is smart, and lazy and you want him to work a little bit harder, sending him to schools like Berkeley, MIT, UCLA, Cal Tech will make him not depend so much on last second studying like he does now in high school. They will actually learn that they have to study a little bit every day. Thats just something I eventually learned in my own experience... I realized eventually that I can't get A's at Berkeley with only late night cramming. Its helped with my overall work ethic tremendously... hehe.</p>
<p>Just to add to what 56forceout said above, smart-but-lazy students are highly unlikely to be admitted to MIT and Caltech these days. The adcoms are pretty good at telling whether a student is internally driven and liable to be ready to handle the workload. </p>
<p>At the point at which I send a child off to college, I'll expect that he's well past my ability to affect his drive to develop a work ethic and work harder, except in one way. Bad grades? No more paying for college. That simple.</p>
<p>--mootmom (now learning to love the [second] kid she has...)</p>
<p>Also to clarify, I chose Berkeley over UPenn Wharton and Cornell. </p>
<p>And by no means, were my peers at Berkeley lazy ( I hope you guys don't get the wrong idea), they were very very hard working students. I was talking about just myself... hehe.</p>
<p>Yay Kathie P! This isn't all about grades....it's about love of learning. Grade inflation or hyper-competition.......a kid who isn't interested in learning for the sake of learning is on the slippery slope.....no matter where he lands. </p>
<p>If your kid loves to learn, this issue is moot. If not, you have a problem, regardless.</p>
<p>I second KathieP's choice- I'm not a parent, but I'm a 'lazy' kid but thats onyl because i do not like my school..but hey, i so far love st johns (the 4 classes i prospied, anyway) and the idea of it.. maybe a school like hampshire too</p>
<p>Sometimes it's better to slow down and smell the roses. Working yourself to death is way overrated. Most "stuff" is overrated. This is where I agree with the Euros--keep life in balance and six weeks of vacation is a good thing.</p>
<p>barrons, I agree with you completely. Once you're working, it's hard to take a vacation(even if you have the time accumulated). Bosses aren't always agreeable/understandable.</p>
<p>I'd find a school that didn't have a heavy core or prerequisites, so that this child could structure his own undergraduate education and experience. By taking things that are interesting, should help him get out of the lazy mold. Many students are like this in HS, but are different in college. What we call laziness is difficulty in adjusting to the structure of HS education, the requirements and the rules. Colelge frees them to do more of what they like, and they blossom!</p>
<p>Laziness, in my observation, usually has one of three root causes: the student hasn't been sufficiently challenged relative to his/her natal candlepower, causing frustration and a lack of motivation; the student has a greater-than-usual sense of entitlement, aka "the world owes me a living" syndrome; or a failed perfectionist complex, aka the "sour grapes" attitude that results from a capable individual not meeting his/her own standards or the standards set de facto by an older, accomplished sibling. </p>
<p>The root cause, in the case of a specific individual, determines how the problem should be addressed. The justification or explanation offered by the 'afflicted' individual is likely to be something other than the above ( which I would maintain is because either they do not want to tell you, or they do not know). </p>
<p>Careful with the college choice. If the lazy individual has always been smarter than the average bear in HS, it can be quite a shock to encounter others more brilliant in college - up to and including precipitating a full-fledged 'identity crisis' especially if it's an instance of 'sour grapes' (the groove of that short-circuited response mechanism has already been dug, the student can too easily respond with more of the same). Ideally, the outcome of such an experience will spur the lazy one to engage the gears and ramp up the output, but depending upon the 'laziness vector' it may have the opposite effect.</p>
<p>We have always told our children that if they didn't have the grades, maturity or motivation to succeed in college, by our judgement, they would attend the local CC and work until they had a better idea what they wanted to do. It was no a punitive position but a financial decision. We can afford 4 years for each of them. A student off to college without readiness in all these areas is likely to spend more than 4 years completing their degree if they don't flunk out due to excessive partying. With a year or two of cc and work we can afford some extra time and they are less likely to totally screw up when they are where we can still keep an eye on them. So far, 2 down one to go, they've been ready to leave. I asked my s, our oldest, if he thought we would follow through on the threat. He said, "I wasn't sure but I wasn't going to risk it."</p>