<p>Hi all, I haven't got much time so I will cut to the chase. I am in my last year at a very good engineering school in New York. My grades have been less than stellar. I am a transfer student from a community college. This last quart my personal life was running buck shot over my school life. Basically I has a bipolar girlfriend she had a handicapped child who I dearly love. But non the less these things contributed to a very poor showing and I have just received a letter that I am to be withdrawn from my engineering program. What should I do to stay in school? Two weeks before finals I broke up with my girl. I tried to get it all done but it was a lot of work but not enough and way to late. I'm hoping someone will have suggestions. Thanks ~ me</p>
<p>The letter ought to include information about any possible appeals. Read it carefully, and make sure you understand it. You’ll also want to look at your student handbook and see what that says.</p>
<p>Was this a surprise to you? If it was a surprise and you can’t show that the school made an error in sending you that letter, that’s a very bad sign. You are responsible for knowing the school’s policies that apply to you, including the rules about what kind of semester and cumulative GPAs you need in order to stay off academic probation, avoid academic dismissal, and graduate. You are also responsible for keeping track of your grades in your current classes and knowing whether you are going to pass each class if your grades remain the same for the rest of the semester. And I would be surprised if the school moved to dismiss you halfway through your first semester with unacceptable grades. Has it really never come up before? In every school I’m familiar with (and my very first college roommate flunked out at Christmas, so I’ve been aware of this sort of thing since about an hour after I arrived at the dorm as a freshman), students get multiple chances to change their performance and stay in school <em>before</em> they are dismissed for poor performance, and therefore there’s not much they can do about it <em>after</em> they’re told they’re being kicked out.</p>
<p>The only real suggestion I have, other than to follow whatever procedures are in place to appeal this sort of thing, is that you drop the “these things contributed to a very poor showing” phrasing. Adults have all sorts of time-consuming and difficult things happening in our lives. Some adults even have pretty catastrophic things happening in their lives. And we are expected to meet our obligations anyway. That’s what it means to be an adult. You need to take responsibility for whatever choices you made that resulted in your not knowing the material and/or not demonstrating your knowledge. Anything less than that just sends the message that anybody who gives you another chance now is going to be having the same conversation with you at this point in the next quarter.</p>
<p>While you are attempting to appeal this, you should also consider whether you can apply for readmission after a period of time out of school and whether you can apply to transfer to a different school and graduate, and you should also consider what else you can do with yourself if you’re not in school somewhere by January. You may find, after some time job-hunting or working at the kind of job you can get right now, that you are a lot more motivated to work hard in school – and you may be better off finding that motivation before you enroll for another quarter.</p>