Today, in one of the college parent FB pages I follow, a parent posted this (I am paraphrasing):
Of course all the parents kindly told this parent there’s zero chance the acceptance would be rescinded based on two Bs.
But: What a tremendous amount of pressure this student puts on himself to be perfect! And the parent was all in, with just as much worry as the student. It struck me as such a distortion of normality and acceptability. And the pressure this student must have felt from the parent all throughout HS! Just sad all around.
Lots of colleges contribute to student stress by making admissions conditional on vague conditions like maintaining previous academic performance, rather than giving specific GPA or grade requirements for course work that was in-progress at the time of application. Hence the flurry of “will my admission be rescinded because of a B grade?” posts around these forums.
It’s becoming increasingly common to hear stories about students dealing with immense pressure to achieve perfection in their academic and personal lives. Unfortunately, this trend is often fueled by parents who enable such tendencies. While it’s natural for parents to want their children to succeed, it’s important to recognize the dangers of pushing them too hard. By constantly demanding perfection, parents can create a sense of anxiety and self-doubt in their children that can be difficult to shake. It’s essential for parents to find a balance between supporting their children’s ambitions and allowing them to make mistakes and learn from them. Ultimately, we need to prioritize the mental health and well-being of our students and encourage them to pursue their passions without the fear of failure or disappointing others.
At the parent orientation for both of our kids…at least one speaker mentioned that any student who had gotten all A grades in HS should expect to receive their first B or even (gasp) C grade in college.
I put together a small spreadsheet for my straight A senior using a gpa calculator. It allowed for As in ‘easier’ college classes such as speech and C’s for harder classes like physics or Calc, and some Bs in mid classes. It was to show how a 3.0 gpa could still be maintained even with several Cs along the way. Just schedule properly and distribute the workload. My goal was to reassure and preemptively calm him with a visual that Cs weren’t the end of his scholarship/world. We’ll see.
Our S never received a grade other than “A” in grade school or high school. He received his first “B” during his first quarter at Stanford and he earned a few more “ B’s” over his years there. His response? “Honey badger don’t care!”
As an aside, his gf graduated from Stanford with higher than a 4.0 average. Possible due to A+ weighting.
Unfortunately that pressure stays on for the premed kids. I’ve had quite a few tearful calls with my D this year. Organic chemistry, need I say more? Unless there is curve, she will get her first B this semester in Ochem2 and she’s afraid that will keep her out of med school! We were not the type parents to encourage this level of perfectionism from our kid… some of it is just her nature, but a lot is a result of her friend group and high school environment. It is distressing to me as a parent.
We always sent a “do your best” and “ask for help if you need it” message to our D. And yes, parents that enable perfectionism are a problem.
That said, there is still very real external pressure in college and not just for pre-meds. Some students have GPA thresholds to meet to keep scholarships, for their majors, for honors college, for co-ops, for PhD intentions, etc… Those things need to be weighed when choosing a school.
I have always felt that the American grading approach of the A range being 90+ explicitly encourages perfectionism over learning. I would much rather have an approach where the median test score is a 50. A passing score might be a 30, whereas 75 might be an exceptional score.
Also a related anecdote. The first time my daughter got a C on a quiz in high school, my wife made her chocolate chip cookies to make her feel better. She was the envy of all her friends. She also joked that she should get Cs more often.
I think there are some real benefits of hard exams. For one thing, you don’t have the best students finishing the 30 minutes exam early, which can be pretty deflating to those that are struggling with the material.
I am not kidding when I say that nearly all of my D’s exams at Purdue have had medians like that. It’s a very, very easy test if it is in the 70s. The average medians are typically been between 40-60.
We had a conversation with her before she started freshmen year about never panicking until the mean/median/standard deviation is announced and that the raw score means nothing. Her first exam I think she got a 78 and was freaking out (because she didn’t listen to us) and then 2 hours later she found out that it was an A because the median was something like a 38.
A = 90%, B = 80%, etc. is common high school grading. Most high school teachers load up tests with easy questions so that C/D students can pass the class, leaving only a small part of the test for harder questions for A/B students.
But tests with a median of 50% and a passing score lower than that have been common in college.
But the problem is that there is very little room for error to get an A, and even less for an A+. A student has to do consistently well, which encourages perfectionism over learning.
Same with our daughter! Freshmen year every time she’d call freaking out about a test grade, we’d say, “OK, what was the median?” She had classes where the median was 50% or below.
… it is part of my morning coffee ritual, along with Wordle.