I want NO access to grades once he’s away. We haven’t monitored his grades since middle school, and don’t plan to resume! In fact, upon suggestion of a family member who’s done this before, we’ve discussed even moving tuition payments into his financial accounts so that he can feel the process of making those payments v. us logging into do that piece!
I had access to all of the admissions portals during the application process to assure everything was submitted on time.
I haven’t had access to any of her student portals, grades, etc., since she started college, other than the dedicated parent portal which most is to pay the bills.
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I did for S17. He was a hot mess. Don’t have them for D21; she is more on top of her stuff than I could ever hope to be! If I didn’t birth them, I would swear they weren’t related!
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I didn’t have access either but D did ask me to check her portals a few times when release days coincided with an activity where she couldn’t monitor it herself.
We did the tuition…And it was contingent on getting decent grades. GPA could not drop below a 3.0…and we said we would pay for no D or F grades or course retakes
We have a master google doc and a universal college email account for college stuff only. Every time an application was completed my son updated the spreadsheet and sometimes asked me to set up the login whatever since he’s so busy with school and activities. It’s no brainer stuff so I didn’t mind doing it. He’s fairly independent so it wasn’t a big deal.
Sometimes I will see an email notification that there’s a change in his portal but I tell him and he then checks it. I may log in and check his portals to read something or see if something is available or just to show the school there’s activity or check for other documents. In one case I happened to notice something obscure about uploading second semester grades that neither he nor a few of his friends applying to the same school had noticed. If I hadn’t, the grades would never have shown received. It just is what it is and not a big deal.
Once they get to college, I don’t as for their password nor do I check up on them or their emails, etc. That’s on them. They made if through 4 years of high school with no one reading their school emails they’ll manage through college. One school gives us access to the bursar account and emails us when there is a new bill but that’s it, the other school we can set up a parent account to check accounts receivable and some other info but they don’t email bills as that onus is on the kid to forward to the parent. I’m sure many kids don’t forward to the parents.
Every family handles these things differently and do what’s best for them. If their agreement is that they can check grades and emails because they’re paying for college, that’s their right. If they have a kid who’s an absentminded professor type and they want to make sure nothing slips through the cracks, that’s their business. Eventually the kid will learn or not, because they will have a job and have to figure it out. Some parents handle it ok some don’t. It just is what it is.
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We did the same thing with our older child and now our S21. Created unique email for college admissions. My kids begged me to monitor all that but S21 said “but I want to open any decision letters”. So that’s what we’ve been doing. I check but only for maintenance and missing items. It’s worked out great.
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I have no access to the common app or any portal for any schools to which either D19 or D21 applied. I did ask them to print out their common app so i could double check for spelling, etc. before they hit ‘send’. D19 is super organized; D21 does not have same level of exec functioning skills. I did have each of them share a google sheet with me I created that listed all the schools to which they applied with key dates/info (i.e. app due, LOR sent, transcripts sent, etc.) where I could look to see the status of each app at any time. I am sure they would not have minded giving me access to their emails but I never asked. That said, I’m already thinking I won’t trust my son to do it alone when he applies to college in 4 years:). My D21 said that being in charge of the process was good for her and helped her ‘grow up’.
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I guess this is what it might come down to. I decided that “Well, you didn’t get into any college, I guess that will teach you a lesson” wasn’t a wise choice as a parent. Others may differ.
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I think the key here and in what you’re saying is accurate. Every kid is different and we all know our kids.
When my oldest started high school every teacher had a website and every assignment was online. I could always see what was going on and remind him. Then when grades would post it was very easy to see if something was missing. I knew I needed to hover with this kid. By the time he graduated, the school was switching to google docs and more class info was on that and the only way to access it was through your school email. This kid was NOT about to give me his email. My twins, one of them gave it to me and on occasion I would look at the school stuff but knew they were always on top of things and by their senior year our school switched to schoology, so not only could we not see anything at all on a teacher website, you couldn’t even compare what different teachers were doing and neither could kids since it was all through your specific teacher’s schoology pages. They also don’t update grades as well as the prior system but they managed and I stopped even having to ask anything of them or my youngest because they’re totally different than my oldest.
For college though, they definitely wanted me to proofread their common apps, they needed my credit card to pay also. Everything was printed out before submitted, etc. It’s a long process but you want everything to be perfect. For college I check nothing other than when I have to pay. I’m divorced and my ex husband pays a fixed amount. For our twins we just decided that he pay double towards to make it easier to he pays his share to the one twin, I pay the rest and it’s as smooth as can be.
The other place we have access is Health Portal for one of my kids. That’s recent due to covid. The other one there’s a paper on file but their system isn’t as good and she is afraid to give us online access because the school scared them about sharing that. lol So it’s fine.
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YES!!
This is not the time to teach a kid a lesson. There are other ways to do it.
Remote learning is hard. One of mine forgot to take a quiz last semester. My response was something like “don’t you write that down?”. The reply was something like I don’t understand how hard it is with remote and keeping track of everything electronically etc. I told her put it up on a hard calendar what she is doing every day and she won’t forget! She was lucky because that class let you drop 3 quizzes (they were weekly) but she was annoyed because she had to drop a 0 instead of using one of her lowest. Ultimately it didn’t affect her in the long term but it was a good lesson learned and she didn’t do it again.
Same with her twin. A few weeks later she too forgot a quiz. I couldn’t believe it. It was like groundhog day. She was very freaked out because in her case you can’t drop them. But then she went back and looked at what her grade would be made up of and she fortunately was high enough that it would have no impact.
But again, lesson learned that they have to do something different to make sure these things don’t happen again. These don’t have long term lifetime consequences. Letting a kid flop and not submit a college app, absolutely does. That’s not the time to teach that lesson when a kid has worked 18 years for that.
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College portals got a lot easier once my daughter started using the Google spreadsheet emailed to her (and me through the school announcement email system) from her public school College Advisor.
Before that her disorganization with all the college ID’s, portal user names, passwords, etc. was causing stress for the whole family. I remembered seeing the email touting a handy College Tracker and set it up for my D through a shared file. She usually checks it on the weekends or if I read about admittances through cc; I “encourage” (translate, “bug” in teen-talk) her to check that portal.
Gotta love those College Advisors!