<p>I feel that maturity can be a bigger factor in how a student does in college. Student is on his own for first time. How will he handle that?
Will he test the waters by doing as little work as possible? By letting his social life take priority over his academics? By overcommitting to EC’s? How will he respond to academic difficulties? To social difficulties?
College is an adventure. Lots of stuff can happen. Turn-arounds are definitely possible.
Kids do not all grow up at the same pace, either.</p>
<p>You can either assume that you are doomed to be over-stretched, or you can assume that the admissions officers didn’t screw up, and you will do okay. Being top of a class of 26 was not great preparation for the ultra challenging college I attended, but I knew I had the aptitude and tried to be patient with myself while I closed the knowledge/skills gap. </p>
<p>I think that the key factor is whether or not you like a challenge, and whether or not you have tolerance for feeling overwhelmed sometimes.</p>
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That might be fine once they are accepted to medical school but unless you have at least a 3.3 GPA as an undergrad you will not even get in a medical school. That is not even mentioning the MCAT.</p>
<p>Every study I’ve seen shows more (often much more) grade inflation at the prestige schools than at the state schools. This is especially true among science, engineering, and pre-med students. </p>
<p>I’ve told the story about my younger one (homeschooled for most of her career) before. Her test scores put her in the bottom 15% of attenders at her school. She ended up graduating in three years, magna cum, senior honors award as top student in her department. Took her graduate exams and did even worse than she did on her SAT/ACTs. Applied to a single graduate school. The day after she sent in the application, she received a phonecall from the Dean of Admissions. Had she been sick the day of the exams? No, she replied, she told him she’d always done poorly on those exams, and it obviously didn’t affect her performance. No, it clearly didn’t, he said. Would she allow them to waive her scores? (usually only given to applicants with two years full-time professional experience.) Be my guest, she said. Got her admission two days later. </p>
<p>The Reach, Match, Safety business has lots to do with schools needing a way to winnow applicants, and for students to have a way to figure out where they might get in. Other than that, it is often meaningless. In terms of the work, we didn’t consider where my d. went (even though statistically in the bottom 15% of the class) to be a reach school at all. And it obviously wasn’t.</p>
<p>My son was a top student in high school. 4.0 GPA Went to a private college. His grades included information on the median grade in each class. His goal was to be at or above the median. Graduated with around a 3.6 GPA and just missed cum laude.</p>
<p>The point is that college is hard and a 2.9 freshman year is nothing to be ashamed of.</p>
<p>I don’t know how much this is correlated to prestige, but there are some schools that are just plain hard. MIT, Caltech, UChicago are all known for being plain hard. Yeah, a lot of people struggle for maybe a year at most schools, but these ones people are more likely to struggle to the point of having trouble staying a student. </p>
<p>I ignored the warnings of “this college is so hard that you cannot really comprehend how hard it is” and am now struggling not to fail out. Yes, they admitted me. Yes, it is possible for me to graduate. Is it possible for me to graduate on time or with my sanity intact? This is unclear. I’m considering transferring, but that presents its own problems (I hardly want an easy college. What would I do with all of that free time?). </p>
<p>In general, the people I know who failed to graduate from Caltech, which is where I go, love a lot of things about it, and admit that if they pushed themselves they could graduate, but you can only push yourself so far before you collapse. You need to sleep eventually! Furthermore, if you aren’t sufficiently committed to the sciences here, you’ll be sad. </p>
<p>I assumed as a high school senior that I could work hard and thus handle anything thrown at me. I have learned that I need more me time than some schools workloads allow.</p>
<p>Freshman year can be very hard indeed. Not only is the material usually harder , but the way college courses work is very different from high school. For someone who has been largely homeschooled, it’s also very different. And, the distractions of college life are considerable.
Keep in mind that you can and should get help - your professors are there for just that purpose and LIKE working with students.</p>
<p>celesul, all the best to you! Caltech <em>is</em> hard, and from what I’ve seen, it is actually a notch or two harder than MIT or Chicago (or anywhere else). I am hoping to see your Caltech '14 label still in 2014.</p>
<p>mini’s daughter’s experience is not representative, in my opinion. Nor does it illustrate that a student who attended a conventional school could have done just as well with similar SAT/ACT scores. In many public schools, the students accumulate a lot of practice taking standardized tests over the years. This affects their performance on the SAT/ACT. In part, scoring well on these tests involves thinking like the people who set the questions. Is anyone who has been around here for a while surprised to find that mini’s children do not follow well-worn grooves, in their thinking?</p>
<p>On the issue of grade inflation: In our area at least, grade inflation is considerably more rampant at the high school level than in universities. A plot of the average GPA of entering students at the large public universities, over time, would show this quite clearly.</p>
<p>Grade inflation at the universities ought to be put into context of the average UW GPA of the entering students. If you take a look at John F. Kennedy’s academic record at Choate (recently available online), you will find it unsurprising that grades tend to be higher now.</p>
<p>In the sciences and engineering, large public universities sometimes have tough grading, but I think there are also more students who are really not ready to do the type and quantity of work that they would need to do, to perform well in the courses.</p>
<p>I want to pipe in here. I am 51 years old and the graduate of a public high school in Washington, DC in 1978. I was in the Math/Science magnet part of the school. I was considered the “smart” kid. I graduated and went to Yale. My first semester, I got the worse grades I had ever seen, including an F in a class I probably should never have taken. However, 4 years later, I graduated with a 2.9 (which is a B- by the way), and got a full fellowship to grad school at SUNY Albany in Criminal Justice. By then I was well prepared for the level of work and I finished a semester early with a MA.
Now the reality is - when people see my Yale diploma they are impressed. I could have graduated last in the class - it is thirty years later - who cares!!
Since you like the school otherwise, that will help tremendously. Would you rather be doing fantastic at a place you hate? Good luck and I am positive you will do fine in the end.</p>
<p>Is mini’s daughter unusual? Yes. But I’ve known other students who were not homeschooled who had similar difficulties with standardized tests despite stellar grades.</p>
<p>celsul, I think Caltech does get easier after freshman year, you may need to choose your courses in order to allow you a little more me time. My youngest son has a similar complaint about Tufts - but I’m pretty sure if he hadn’t taken Arabic, he’d have been fine.</p>
<p>remember, you got into the school for a reason. Don’t go thinking that you can’t do the work. Im sure that as time progresses you will be more than able to handle the workload. The best thing that you can do right now is stay positive and do your best to maintain the best grades you can, while still trying to keep some balance between your school work and having a life.</p>
<p>HYPSM also has tail ending students.</p>
<p>As someone has already mentioned, motivation is a key factor. Someone could be really motivated in high school, only to lose the motivation in college and fail. When put in a new environment people act differently and could easily lose their will and values they used to have.</p>
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<p>You wouldn’t have got in if the ad com did not think you would be able to cope with the classwork and graduate. That’s the first (and most important) criterion they use in admissions. I suggest you have more confidence in yourself and rise up to the challenge. Try to focus and see what is holding you back. A low GPA in freshman year is not the end of the world.</p>
<p>Grad10, your post shows a great level of maturity and self-reflection. </p>
<ol>
<li>I don’t think that you should beat yourself up about a reach vs match school. It may be the transition to college, any college, that can cause difficulty, even for extremely bright high school students, homeschooled, public, or private.</li>
<li>Consider buying “How to become a straight A student” by Cal Newport. It may help.</li>
<li>2.9 GPA is not terrible. Coming from a top 5% CA public HS, I had 1.9 GPA my first quarter, 3.2 GPA after 4 years, and now am a MD in an extremely competitive specialty.</li>
<li>What is STEM?</li>
</ol>
<p>STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics</p>
<p>I also think that you should pick up Cal Newport’s “How to Become a Straight A Student” as well as his other book, “How to Win at College”. Although I am in high school, I read both and have benefited from both. :)</p>