<p>I am a concerned parent whose child had a difficult year in a heavy science major. The advisor has not returned child's emails and not sure who else would be helpful to plan for reviewing what happened (probably around planning, organizing time, knowing how to study). I know parents do not usually get involved at this level but child is not being more proactive (just waiting for advisor's response is not enough) and I want to at least give some direction.
Suggestions?</p>
<p>It will probably be a lot easier once you child is on campus. There are often people associated specifically with the major who are supposed to deal with undergraduate advising, definitely for biology or chemistry. Check the undergraduate program information online for the appropriate department to find out about those services.</p>
<p>Also, if your child is not sure which classes to take in the fall, it is better to sign up for too many classes and drop some then decide you want take a class later on and find it’s full. If possible, as soon as add/drop starts your child should register for as many classes and he or she might want to take depending on possible advising suggestions.</p>
<p>It would be worthwhile to repeatedly email the adviser throughout the summer, since professors get so many emails. Also, the professor could be on vacation or doing fieldwork. Make sure the subject line is clear so the professor is more likely to deal with it.</p>
<p>I hope some of that helps.</p>
<p>How difficult was your child’s year and what classes were they taking? A lot of the freshman classes a pre-med student would take, for example, are “weed out” courses curved to a B- which means yes many students have to do poorly. There are lots of opportunities for tutoring and other help at Cornell but they vary based on college, major and class.</p>
<p>The major was animal science on the prevet track which was a switch from a different science area and career path that was originally planned. </p>
<p>Therefore my child had no background in classes like AP Bio having taken AP Physics and AP Chemistry in high school and doing research in a totally different field. </p>
<p>Also this is someone who never needed any help in difficult high level math/science classes throughout school and seems to have overestimated the ability to catch on or catch up. There seems to have been no real advisor/mentoring about the realities of the course load and hence two heavy lab courses were taken in one semester to “catch up”. Not sure how much of poor result (failed one class) was also due to being distracted by social activities (also mild ADHD). </p>
<p>I was thinking it might be better to take pre reqs for vet school and major in something besides animal science to get the GPA back up. But my child loves the major and seems determined to stick it out which is making this harder as I don’t see how it can get easier and there appears to be no real guidance there.</p>
<p>Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.</p>
<p>I am assuming your child is in CALS, since he/she is an Animal Science major. I suggest getting help on campus. He/she will be taking organic chemistry/physics as a pre-vet, so I highly suggest the CALS Tutoring Program and Learning Strategies Center. With the CALS Tutoring Program, your child can have a personal tutor for free. Learning Strategies Center also has help sessions and tutors, which are not one-on-one but they are helpful. Getting help with the material never hurts.</p>
<p>[Tutoring</a> Services](<a href=“http://cals.cornell.edu/cals/current/advising/acadsupport/tutoring.cfm]Tutoring”>http://cals.cornell.edu/cals/current/advising/acadsupport/tutoring.cfm)</p>
<p>In terms of getting help with time management/studying tips/counseling, your child can make an appointment once he/she is on campus with someone in the career services. I work for CALS career services, so if you have any specific questions, feel free to private message me and I can guide you in the right direction. Which advisor have you contacted? Assigned advisors are not always the most helpful. Often they are quite useless. I have a wonderful and very responsive advisor, but my first advisor at Cornell never responded to emails and was supposedly very busy.</p>
<p>I totally commiserate with you! My S had a similar experience - he is in engineering. He went to an all-male, very structured, very difficult boarding year for high school. He worked VERY hard to be admitted to Cornell. Once he was there, he pretty much let loose…He had more free time than he was used to (no sports, no structure) and did fine fall semester, but fell off spring semester. That was largely due to pledging a fraternity. Although we’ve never had to do this before with him, my husband and I laid down the law when he got home in May. Tuition is steep and we let him know that if he wanted to stay, he needed to do his best in his classes. Right now, he’s in summer school and doing amazingly well. I think he’s got the picture at this point. Because of a lot of AP credit, he wasn’t behind, but we wanted him to feel success on campus before the fall semester begins. We still think fraternity is a good idea for him because he is somewhat introverted and there’s more to college than academics. </p>
<p>By the way, his advisor NEVER returned any emails from him when he was struggling in the spring. He finally just went to the engineering office and developed a relationship with someone there, who advised him on how to approach the situation. He did drop to 11 hours, so we got a nasty letter in the mail in June. I feel the office has done a lot better supporting him than his advisor. He still hasn’t heard from him and sent numerous emails.</p>
<p>The most alarming thing I’m reading is that your child is not being proactive. Before worrying about the specifics of getting back on track, I think your primary focus should be on re-motivating your child and making them WANT to be more proactive. You/someone close to them is probably going to be better equipped than an advisor who won’t return their e-mails. </p>
<p>Second, my guess is your child needs to have their confidence built back up and not feel like they’ve dug themselves into a hole they can’t get out of. This is where an advisor can be helpful in determining a specific course of action/goals to bring your child’s goals back within reach. If the advisor is not responding, it’s okay for them to e-mail another professor they had or even a trusted TA.</p>
<p>Third, your child has to “learn the basics” of college which means learning how to balance everything that’s going on. Anecdotally, I had one friend in chemical engineering (a notoriously difficult/time consuming major) who refused to do work on weekends. He planned out his work for the week so that it could all get done on the weekdays, that way he’d have his weekends to himself. I had a few friends who liked to party 3-5 nights a week and they managed that AND good grades by optimizing their non-leisure time (keep in mind, MOST of the people I knew who partied that much were bad students). </p>
<p>I’m sure right now it feels like Cornell isn’t doing much to support your child (esp. with an inactive advisor), but there are TONS of resources available to learn how to study and manage time. If the advisor isn’t working out, switching is pretty painless and like I said above, there’s no rule that you can only talk to your advisor. You should be able to talk about your concerns with any trusted professor and/or advising dean within the college. </p>
<p>In terms of specific advice for time management, for me it’s all about detailed lists and actually spending a fair amount of time organizing those lists. A (bad) example of something I might do for an Econ exam before I started studying is something like:
- Read/review notes (1 hour) [I find trying to estimate how long something takes important and as you get in the habit, your estimates become more and more accurate).
- Make a review sheet of concepts that I’m having trouble with (1 hour)
- Review problem sets and take note of difficult problems (2 hours)
- Go over review sheet (1 hour)
- Review problem sets again, focusing more on difficult problems (2 hours)
- Review notes again (1 hour)</p>
<p>If your child has a smartphone, using any number of personal organizer/calendar apps should be sufficient to have good time management. General principles are also a balance of 1) Focus on the most important tasks first and 2) Finish smaller tasks quickly so they don’t pile up.</p>
<p>For me, I learned how to be more “active” in my studying. In high school, it’s easy to get away with simply reading your notes for an exam. That is extraordinarily inefficient and at Cornell, classes expect a higher level of studying. However, I didn’t know that was a bad way to study because it worked and worked well for me in high school. What I eventually learned was how to actively engage with my notes. Maybe read them once, but spend more time THINKING about them. Make up your own question sheets (then answer those questions) and try to summarize your notes and re-write them (don’t just re-copy them). If you’re reviewing problem sets, make sure you aren’t studying how that specific problem was completed, but focus on the process that got you to the correct answer.</p>