When the idea of skipping ahead a grade was first being considered by my parents and teachers it seemed like a great idea, just the prospect of graduating early was enough to have me on board. Unfortunately, I now find myself in a difficult position. I skipped two grades and am now going into my junior year of highschool having failed all my sophomore classes and the majority of my freshman ones. As someone who has aspired to attend an ivy league college, I am devastated. My question is; would it be possible to start highschool over, starting this year as a freshman which is the grade I would be in if I had not skipped those grades. I know it is a long shot but I figured someone on here would be able to give me a straight answer. Please save any rude/negative comments to to yourself. I failed my classes due to a traumatic experience at home that had nothing to due with the stresses of school, an age gap between classmates, etc.
If you failed most of your classes, I don’t know why you’d have been promoted. Ask your parents to register you as a freshman.
I am fairly sure the administrators at my school were against it but my mom pushed for me to “pass”. She can’t handle the fact that her “little genius” would have to re-do anything.
It may be possible to do at least one year, perhaps 2, by switching schools. Many prep school kids re-do the year they just finished. The challenge here will be finding a new school that would take you with your recent record (although I suspect you could if you are willing to board.)
I am worried for you, though. Do you honestly believe it’s just a matter of doing the work differently or might you need remedial help and/or testing for learning differences? There is a disconnect between the kid who was so exceptional that he got bumped ahead and one who, even with innate talent, failed 2 years of high school.
Your other option is to simply knock it out of the park for your next 2 years. Many schools discount /ignore freshman grades, and if you effectively had 2 completely different transcripts, many - not all - schools would focus on the last 2 years.
Will your parents let you enroll as a freshman? Tell her your college choices will be limited with a low gpa.
In our state, you wouldn’t have the credits needed to graduate, so you’d have to redo those grades. Are you in private school?
Here’s my question: WHY did you fail? What is it that should have happened to ensure success, that didn’t happen? What can you do to prevent it from happening again? These are the questions I ask of any of my students who have academic struggles, and I think they’re the first questions you have to answer-- not to me, but to yourself.
Beyond that, I think the only people who can answer your question is your guidance counselor.
First: take care of your mental health.
Colleges won’t discount two years of failing grades AND a young age in that context will be seen as hubris = two negatives strokes against you.
(Does your mother realize that by forcing you to pass, she pretty much guaranteed you’re stuck with 2/3 academic profile that precludes any 4-year college since most use 9-11/10-11? A record of Ds and Fs for 7-8th grade wouldn’t count toward college, but absolutely do for 9-10th. With such grades your best bet is community college.)
Yes try to start in 9th grade at a boarding school if you can. Or see if you can go to another school
for 9th grade. But if your mother won’t let you, you’re stuck.
If you have to stay at your current high school, and your parents are on board with recalibrating your grade placement with your age, there may be a placement committee process where you and your parents present your request with reasons/justification, some school based members work with you to discuss potential pros and cons of the choice, and a decision is made regarding whether or not your grade placement should be changed. You parents may have worked with similar school based committees when the decision was made to double promote you in the past.
Yes, when circumstances made it difficult to pass classes in freshman year, you should have retaken that year. Your mom should have understood that, if that didn’t happen because of academic reasons.
But she pushed you on and things got worse in sophomore year. So now you are even further behind.
I definitely would try to retake at least sophomore year and/or attend a different school.
I honestly feel like I learned nothing in those two years. The school I attended was already poor to begin with, with my added mental health issues it was hard to absorb anything useful.
Can you switch schools and start in 9th grade?
If you failed as in Fs for grades how did the high school promote you from 9 to 10th then 10th to 11th grade? Did you have to go to summer school? In our school system you could only fail 1 maybe 2 courses and would need summer school if they are required classes for graduation. If you don’t do summer school then you would not get promoted to the next grade. If you really got an F in every class sophomore year aren’t you automatically repeating no matter where you attend?
Have you tried calling a potential college admissions to see what they would think. Would your guidance counselor be willing to tell the colleges why you did so bad 9th and 10th grade and how things changed to tell them you will do better? If you really failed that many classes will you graduate on time if you don’t repeat a grade? Will you/your parents accept community college to start which would also save some money?