<p>Watching some kids, who got in elite colleges by the skin of their teeth, suffer and still fall short of making average grades make me think that the craze to get our kids to the highest reach possible is detrimental to their development and robbing them of the joy of college. The best move for parents may be to encourage their students to apply and enroll in colleges where the students fall somewhere in the middle.</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>At the elite schools there is no such thing as getting in by the skin of your teeth. All unhooked admitted students have incredible credentials that would predict success at any school. Now, if you’re talking about hooked students, say a development admit, they are likely not relying on good grades to get them ahead in life so it probably doesn’t matter how well they do.</p>
<p>As a general rule, however, all students should seek out a college where they will fit in well academically and socially. Parents who push their kid to a college based solely on its prestige factor will often end up regretting it.</p>
<p>I have to agree there, but it really depends on the individual. </p>
<p>Because he was an athlete in a “helmet sport,” S was heavily recruited by a number of schools that were, frankly, out of his league academically. He would have been miserable. He wasn’t much happier at the considerably less demanding school he wound up at. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there are students who thrive on pressure and will be challenged and energized by a more competitive environment. </p>
<p>It probably comes down to making sure that the needs of the student do not get lost in the race for the golden ring. And it’s up to us as parents to keep that at the forefront of our minds. </p>
<p>HPY are not the most difficult school to make through. Look at the graduation rates. Some schools have some pretty low ones. Look at CMU, for instance, and CW is another that used to be bad. Tech, STEM heavy schools tend to be more difficult. There are also a lot of hooked kids proportionally at some of the smaller high stat schools like the little Ivies, just because they have a lot sports teams and some wants that hit the percentage hard when the total school population is so small. </p>
<p>Where I have more concerns is when a kid goes to a big state school, or any school with large freshman classes for traditional weed out courses, with TA, especially the notorious foreign grad student TAs, and that kid is on the low end of preparedness in terms of advanced courses taken, rigor of courses, test scores. </p>
<p>I got in very much by the skin of my teeth, and am about to graduate with entirely acceptable grades, without having made myself miserable in order to achieve them. </p>
<p>It can and does happen - though of course you need to consider the reasons for HS performance (if they’re not bothering to work, or are just a bit thick in HS, nothing will change at college; if they’ve got problems at home then going away to college will solve that very effectively - I fell into the latter category). </p>
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<p>By definition, 49.999% of the matriculating Frosh will end up with below average grades by graduation.</p>
<p>But yes, I do believe in the academic mis-match theory. It impacts not only grades, but even perhaps choice of major. (Do students gravitate towards ‘studies’ majors because they are excited about the material or they just found a major where A’s are easier to come by for them?)</p>
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<p>I know many unhooked kids who got in to elite schools with <3.7 GPA. They either had incredible test scores or award winning ECs, or both. I believe elite colleges accepted them because they were interesting and exciting students to have on campus. The adcoms may have convinced themselves that these students should at least be able to graduate, but that’s a far cry from being successful, unless we equate success with graduation. MIT tells the incoming class that half of them will be below average. I also know kids who got in with perfect GPA but much lower than average test scores. Many of them also struggle in college. Again, it is not a question of whether they can graduate, but whether doing your best and still staying below average is detrimental to their personal growth, college experience and/or future career.</p>
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<p>Congrats to you. Yes, there are many students like you who can swim with the sharks, but I believe they are in the minority. Back to the students who fit this thread. Every such kid who takes this plunge in some sense believes s/he has a chance to keep up or do better in college, even though the environment will be a lot more competitive than her/his high school.</p>
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<p>Absolutely, but I’m not talking about students whose HS GPAs AND test scores came in at par or higher. This thread is about below par students who chose to attend reach schools over match schools.</p>
<p>At the Parent Orientation session when we took our D to college her freshman year, the University President elicited a collective gasp by saying “Virtually all of your children were in the top ten percent of their high school class. Four years from now at graduation, 90% of them will not be”!</p>
<p>I don’t think people like to admit that their kid attended a $%^& HS or got sub-par preparation in academic subjects. I think that’s a bigger problem than a kid attending a reach. When you’ve got an entire class of AP Calc students who get A’s and A minuses but nobody scores higher than a 3 on the test- I pretty much can predict that your kid from that class will struggle in a Freshman engineering program at ANY ABET accredited engineering school in the country. Why? Because the kid thinks he’s an A math student and when compared to his classmates, he’s not. When you’ve got an entire “honors” European History class, most of whom get A’s, but none who have ever written a paper using a primary source, or a secondary/tertiary source that is not Wikipedia, and none of whom have ever done an appendix or properly footnoted a paper, I think you’re looking at a bunch of kids who will struggle Freshman year in any demanding humanities program.</p>
<p>I have a kid who got into Tufts more or less by the skin of his teeth. He was a B+ student in high school and he’s about a B student at Tufts. His GPA actually would be quite a bit higher if he hadn’t picked Arabic as his language and a department that required him to take 8 semesters of it! He’s a kid with a lot of potential, and was lucky that colleges could see that. He has learned to work a lot harder than he did in high school, though he still knows how to relax. Luckily his high school preparation was pretty good. It’s more a question of quantity required now, not quality.</p>
<p>Interesting question, but really depends on so many factors. In a highly competitive high school, a kid could have a less than stellar GPA and yet be very bright. That kids may get in by the skin of their teeth, but has excellent preparation, and does fine. Many kids from our high school report that college is not any harder than high school, at least in the early years. Some kids, boys especially, don’t do well early in high school and so they do better in college. </p>
<p>OTOH, I have a kid that is just not that motivated by grades. He will do the work and study, but is not driven (the way I was in some ways) to make sure he has every detail down pat. He is not driven by being better than the other kids. He also wants to study a challenging and popular major. I have begun to think that he would be better served by going to a less competitive college where can shine, rather than one where he might struggle and end up changing majors to an easier path. </p>
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<p>That was the experience of myself and nearly every classmate I talked to about our college experiences.</p>
<p>In fact, some of us felt we were lied to by some jerky HS teachers on this very issue. The one I had relished repeating the daily mantra “College is the BIG-TIME! If you can’t even make it in my class, there’s no way any of you will last a semester in college.” Yeah, sure. I’d like to have whatever it is you’ve been smoking… :D</p>
<p>I could see this happening to students who take SAT prep courses and drill endlessly just to get their scores high enough to be considered for a top school. While these students do have the study habits necessary to do well in college, they may lack the natural ability that some of their peers at elite schools have.</p>
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That’s possible. I would note, though, that these are not the students people have in mind when they moan and groan about “mismatch.”</p>
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That. With time, many can be trained to master the material; however, in elite college setting, you don’t have a lot of time, unless you get it pretty much right away, you will fall behind. All the advertised research and internship opportunities at your dream schools may only be open to those at the top of the heap.</p>
<p>However, there are also students who have the intellectual ability, but not the study habits, and fail to make the high-school-to-college transition in self-motivation and time-management, since college courses do much less hand-holding than high school courses, even if the material in very advanced or AP high school courses may be similar to that of some college frosh level courses. In many cases, the college frosh level courses cover the material at a much faster pace as well.</p>
<p>This phenomenon is not restricted to students who attend their reach schools; some students attend their admission-safety schools on big scholarships, only to lose them after not meeting the renewal GPA requirement.</p>
<p>Massmomm, I can also imagine seeing it with kids who have had a ton of external pressure from parents and others in their lives. If the motivation doesn’t come from within, it doesn’t always last.</p>
<p>^^^ Sometimes, but others the material is taught more slowly. Calc now seems to be spread over three semesters. My BC calc class was much harder than Calc 101 and 102 in college.</p>
<p>That being said, totally agree that time management skills are critical. There is not as much required homework and a lot more studying required than in high school. OTOH, less time is spent sitting in classes, since only 4 or at most 5 classes are taken at a time. And no parent to take care of them (and bug them to get back to work).</p>
<p>I think it is fair for the skin of the teeth kid to go to college knowing where he stands, and be ready to surprise. Kids mature and change, some later than others. The kid with poor study habits can become more organized. The kid with below average test scores than outwork his classmates. Someone who attended a crappy high school can rally, fill in the gaps, and be successful. </p>
<p>I do think it is worthwhile for the kid to know what he is getting into. Some kids would see it as a challenge. They would put their heads down and go. Others would say “nah, I don’t think I want to work that hard.”</p>
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<p>I don’t know of any such kids, actually. </p>