He wants to get into competitive colleges, and perhaps a BS/MD program? But he didn’t seem to think Turing in homework was important this year?
I would strongly suggest a study skills course rather than academic courses this summer. He needs to clearly understand what he MUST do in his courses.
Your assumption is that he would be doing just fine at his old school. You know…if he didn’t turn his assignments in THERE, his GPA would have been just as low.
It sounds like he learned his lesson about this…but reinforcing study skills, and course requirements, and how to read a syllabus for requirements might be a better reinforcement than repeating courses, or taking courses to raise his GPA.
As noted, you are posting as though retaking the courses or repeating ninth grade someplace, or homeschooling, will erase the lackluster grades from the first semester.
Does your high school even REPORT semester grades on the transcript? Our school only reports final grades on the transcript, not semester grades. The only time semester grades are used is senior year. You might want to check this. You might be all tied up in knots over nothing…if your school reports only end of year final grades on the transcript.
Has the school year ended? If so, request a copy of the transcript once this years grades are recorded…and see.
I would give your son a lot of support for his turn around and assure him that if he continues his upward trend, he will do fine in his college acceptances. Does that mean he will get into the tippy top schools? Maybe not, but OTOH the few bad grades can be explained by the issues with moving and all As for 10th and 11th grade will more than make up for that. If he doesn’t get all As or falters again, he will still find a college that will serve him well. He can still be a doctor if he goes to a college that is not Duke. He may well decide he wants to do something else.
As others have said, there is no way of knowing whether having him live with his aunt would have been any better. Yes, his friends would have been around but not his family.
@NJWrestlingmom we agree on the sentiment, we have asked him to be realistic with his college choices. Getting a full ride to decent college is not out of reach for him. Action have consequences and sooner he learns the better. We had thoughts of prep school/private school as well. We heard few parents were pursuing that option for restarting over 9th grade but it was to far to drive there and bit over budget. Good idea about asking school about the reporting grade protocol. I will check on it. The courses to bump his GPA was recommended by his guidance counselor. He is finished with 1st course first week of summer (got an A) and started the second course. He is alllowed to take up to 4 for the summer. Do weighted GPA matter for competitive schools? He is taking 3 AP classes in 10th grade. we are still waiting for AP exam results he took for human geography.
I also can’t imagine that going back to the old school, but being a year behind his friends would be a good solution either. It sounds like he’s settled in and doing well. If he continues to get mostly A’s he’ll have lots of good choices. You don’t need a perfect transcript.
I also can’t imagine that going back to the old school, but being a year behind his friends would be a good solution either. It sounds like he’s settled in and doing well. If he continues to get mostly A’s he’ll have lots of good choices. You don’t need a perfect transcript.
I live near Duke, I was chatting with a father of my D’s classmate one day. He teaches law at Duke. He always asks his first year kids where they went for undergrad- most are not from tippy top schools. His son was one of 2 kids I know who applied to Duke, the other has a better GPA and test scores and loads of ECs- guess which one got in.
A friend’s son had a perfect score on the SAT, one B, tons of AP- took tests for AP without the classes. Passed all with 5s. He got rejected from several schools. One he did get into was Duke- they offered him nothing, not a dime. He turned them down and took a full ride at another “lesser” school. Never regretted it.
I really think the best thing we all can do as parents when it comes to college is remind our kids that getting accepted into college is difficult. It takes hard work and sometimes- a lot of times you might not get in or can afford your 1st choice. When money is an issue, always be willing to look at safety schools and try not to talk them down! Top schools give very little merit, if you will need money for college, you need to rethink how you rate college. Much of what I have read on CC points out that where you go for undergrad doesn’t matter as much for BSMD and that you should save your money for med school. For that, his high school grades won’t matter!
Our school does not report any grade other than the final grade, as a PP said check with the school about what they report.
@dert29 - From your writing, I think that you probably are an immigrant who moved to the US and learned English as an adult. Am I correct about that? If I am, there is the likelihood that your child’s notions about which colleges and universities are acceptable have been formed inside an immigrant community that is not entirely familiar with the breadth of opportunities available to students here. Please reasure him that one semester of bad grades in 9th grade will not keep him out of every single decent college and university, and that he can get into med school from any accredited college or university in the US provided he has met the med school’s admissions requirements. Let him know that med school is fiendishly expensive, and that one good way to have a decent chance at having money available to pay for med school is to continue to get the kinds of grades and test scores in high school that will guarantee him a full ride at one of the colleges and universities that offer those scholarships based on merit alone. That place may be one he’s never heard of before, but his pre-med classes will be filled with students who followed the money just like him, and certainly will not lack for rigor. There is no reason whatsoever to repeat 9th grade.
@dert29 First, I want to sympathize with you as we went through a similar experience with D20 this year (as a 10th grader). As much as it frustrated me, and as much as I want to wring her neck, I keep thinking that at least she crashed and burned as a high-school sophomore rather than a college freshman or sophomore. There was at least one missed assignment in every single class. I discussed whether or not to have her repeat one class (a math class) because I wasn’t sure if she had the groundwork to continue to the next level. The teacher discouraged the idea, saying that the problem isn’t with what she knows. I guess mine at least somewhat learned her lesson because she took her AP Language summer reading book with her to the pool today.
Second, I know someone who tried this - and it DID NOT end well. It was actually one of D’s friends who is now a year behind her original friends who secretly wonder if the child really did flunk out. It has been an awkward situation.
I would chalk it up as a learning experience. Sometimes we just shouldn’t try to fix their problems. Your son did well on the tests, so he obviously knows the material. Forcing him to repeat the process probably won’t help him in the long run. Yes, maybe it did cost him a chance at his dream school, but if it forces him to reexamine his priorities, it will be a good thing down the road.
Finally, I would encourage your son - and you - to stop using external motivation. He needs to learn to put forth his best effort and grow up a bit. Otherwise, he might reach a point where his “best” isn’t “perfect,” and then he could end up in a far worse situation mentally.
Thanks everyone for valuable input. Has anyone hired a mentor or somone well versed with college application process?What was the cost and was it worth it? I think if he had proper guidance, he would do much better. I was medicore student in high school with below average ACT score. However academics has never been an issue for him. He placed at 99 percentile at Duke tip and in John hopkins CTY competition iduring 7th grade. I think john hopkins even published his profile in their magazine since he qualified for SET based on his SAT score.
@tutumom2001 Thanks for your kind words. Sorry you went through similar experience. We are going to watch him closely rest of high school. We realized asking for help is not in his nature. He definitely has lot of growing up to do before college.
We also moved when my child finished 8th grade. She too had to leave behind family and friends she’d had all her life. We were too far from home for her to see them and I know it was painful for her to hear their excitement at starting high school together while she was alone and completely unmoored. Like your son, she had a difficult transition. For her it was not an academic adjustment but a social and emotional one that took a different form. She’s a very quiet kid and she’s young for her class. In fact, I think she would have entered school a year later in her current state based on the cut off dates. She was quiet to the point of mute in class and I’m not sure any of the adults actually registered her existence that year. It took her a long time to build friendships and to engage in a single EC. I spent that year worried sick over her. And yes, I get the urge to fix everything, because I kept trying to push her into clubs and activities.
I also thought about moving her to a different area school and wondered whether she should restart rather than transfer into 10th grade. Grades were not the issue, I was concerned with her having to break into a new group. She set me straight. She said that she’d already had to make an enormous adjustment and she wasn’t going to do it a second time. It’s not so bad, she said. It will be ok. And she was right. She adjusted. She found her friends and her interests and the experience strengthened her for the move to college. Others were leaving the familiar for the first time at that point but she’d already done it.
My point with all of this is that I understand the stress of a transition. I understand the urge to intervene. For you and for your son it is a mistake. If you’d posted that your son was still unhappy or struggling, I’d have a different answer. But for him, ** it is a mistake. **
To be very blunt, you’re focused on the wrong things. The ultimate GPA and where he goes to college is going to sort itself out without you trying to engineer it. He’s going to be fine. He’s already fine! Let him pursue his interests and classwork, convey to him that you are there to support him without pressure, and believe that he will realize his potential.
Your son is fine. He has made his adjustment. There Ar tons of colleges where he will be accepted and be successful.
More and more, this sounds like YOU wanting to push him to more competitive colleges.
It’s fine to want him to do his best, but your posts are sounding like that won’t meet your standard.
In addition, you mention needing financial aid for college, but you want to spend money on some kind of mentor? Where is that money going to come from? Yes, some families do hire private college consultants. These folks can help a student tease out college choices BUT these college consultants can NOT guarantee your kid will get accepted to colleges at all. They will help your kid maximize their acceptance potential with what your kid brings to the table. In other words, if your kid isn’t Ivy League admissions competitive, they won’t be able to get him accepted there.
What really is your concern here? Are you worried that your son won’t do well the rest of high school? Are you worried that he won’t get accepted to colleges? Are you worried about financing colleges? Are you worried about medical school potential?
What are your concerns? You have a kid who moved and wasn’t turning in homework. He seems to have rounded that corner, right? He knows the expectations.
What exactly are you looking for? A guarantee your kid will get accepted to two elite schools with sufficient aid to attend?
BTW never once I mentioned “needing financial aid” I am not worried about anything but college consultant can guide him better. “They will help your kid maximize their acceptance potential with what your kid brings to the table”. Precisely why i am looking for one.
Nothing in life is guaranteed except death and taxes.
A college counselor might be a good idea. The cost can range from a couple hundred dollars to thousands and thousands (don’t spend thousands and thousands). You have lots of time so research carefully. You might do better finding a local person, even a college student, to help you.
A private college counselor is premature at this age, unless you can find someone who will help your son broaden his perspective and consider more options beyond the BSMD path. The danger with a singular focus on BSMD is that it can backfire if he encounters other setbacks. You wouldn’t want the mindset of him deciding “why bother” and giving up if he gets a couple of B’s.
Homeschooling is definitely not a good plan if the goal is to get into a competitive college. Yes, some homeschooled students do get into great colleges – but it creates a more difficult path to the elite colleges, not an easier one. There are many good reasons to homeschool, but unless there is something very wrong with the local high school, improving chances for admission to highly competitive college programs is not one of them. Think about it: if you are making an admissions decision for BSMD… what conclusion might you draw from the 9th grade transcript followed by homeschooling? I think those programs are looking for mature students who can thrive in a demanding environment — not only could an adverse inference be drawn by the homeschooling choice in that context, but you’d be losing the potential benefit of school teachers or counselors who could write LOR’s to counter that wrong impression.
I’m with the other parents on this thread: your son should move forward. As a parent you need to focus on the needs of the 15 year old, not future college goals. Those will shake out one way or another, and that depends a lot on your son’s personal growth during his teenage years. If the outcome is that he ends up with more modest college goals, that’s fine. (And age 15 is really too young for any kid to mentally lock themselves into the career choice that a BSMD program would entail.)