<p>What do you mean when you say " My feelings at the time and still are that she is healthy."</p>
<p>If she was in the hospital for a week (as opposed to the college infirmary), she was pretty seriously ill.</p>
<p>I cannot imagine assuming that the college knew that my child was in the hospital. But I have a child with chronic health problems and am used to negotiating the system. Never, ever, deal only with professors when health is involved. A backup administrator and documentation are always required.</p>
<p>There is a wide range of responses from different colleges to situations like this, including anything from a requirement to withdraw and reapply after two weeks absence from class, for instance, to extensions and incompletes that allow a student who was ill, to fully catch up at the level he or she is entitled to.</p>
<p>Your daughter should have gotten documentation of the health crisis and hospitalization, to an administrator responsible for accommodating such situations, asap. It is still possible to get that documentation, or, perhaps, you have it (even the bill would be a help). An MD would have to be involved in advocacy.</p>
<p>Did your daughter take finals? Or miss them? Or make some of them up? (Often finals have make-ups: did she look into this?) Did she have papers due that she could not do? Did she miss actual classes? Did she do work in the hospital and e-mail professors while there, expressing a desire to keep up or make up? Was she still too ill to work when she got out?</p>
<p>At the very least, the low grades could be expunged from her record if you and your daughter meet with an administrator about what happened. This is NOT the college’s fault. Your daughter - and you- did not follow simple steps that might have rescued things.</p>
<p>Overall, colleges are not legally required to accommodate at the level of public high schools. The accommodations need to be “reasonable”, and cannot affect academic standards or cause undue financial or administrative burdens for the school.</p>
<p>However, schools often are concerned that students succeed. If you meet with someone in administration (a dean, most likely), you and your daughter could discuss with him or her the best way to approach this. It might be possible to drop the low grades and even get a refund (I am assuming though that you did not pay for tuition refund insurance).</p>
<p>Also, when she was in the hospital, after the admission, did you check into the insurance situation? Is there any way that can be dealt with? I am afraid that you are dealing with that in the same kind of passive way: fight! (Along with my kid’s issues, I also just spent two years fighting for my husband’s disability after a stroke: the key was to not get worn down and keep going when they denied or said no. We won.)</p>
<p>I have to spend my life being on top of this stuff so it is hard to read your post and understand. But putting myself in your shoes I guess I can see how you would have made some assumptions. Just know, going forward, that the world is not that competent and noone looks after you and yours except for you. It is always better to do too much, rather than too little. Don’t just suck it up and move on. At least try. Good luck.</p>