What are my options now?

Parent Cafe
21

<p>I think the thing to do here is to take a deep breath.</p>

<p>I think in the big picture what you need to figure out is does your transcript reflect the knowledge you have NOW. Not necessarily the grades.</p>

<p>If you took French 2 and 3 and got good grades, does it matter that you got this grade or that grade in French 1? Clearly you have mastered French 1 and it doesn’t matter what is written down. </p>

<p>Have you finished Biology? Do you understand it?</p>

<p>Also, a college will want to know if you can do college level work.
How were your junior year grades? If they are good, then leave it be. You can do college level work. </p>

22

<p>I realize I’m still being extremely vague so I’ll clarify a bit more.</p>

<p>Freshman year I attended 4 schools total. A, B, and C first semester. C and D second semester.
Sophomore year I attended 3 more schools. E and F first semester, F and G second semester.
G is the school I am currently at.</p>

<p>My school does require bio to graduate, and I would not have 3 years of lab science, just 2.
French and Bio are not the only examples.
My transcript shows I took geometry freshman year, but I actually took Algebra 2.
Since I ‘‘hadn’t taken Algebra 2’’ according to my transcript, I doubled up on that and Pre-Calculus. So when I correct this it will show I took Algebra 2 twice.</p>

<p>Here is a breakdown of my real grades:
9th 1st sem: A’s, B’s, one C (3.4)
9th 2nd sem: I was doing very well at school C, when I transferred to D I had all Fs since I didn’t actually attend.
10th 1st sem: All NM (NO MARK) which is basically saying I didn’t attend school long enough to get grades.
10th 2nd sem: 4.0 in academic classes
11th/12th: 4.0, and repeated those NM classes</p>

<p>Explanation: At schools A and B, I was taking Honors Bio, Alg II, English, French I.
School C didn’t offer those classes for freshman, so they put me in a bunch of electives and in Earth Science instead of Bio. This was in December. It was finals time, I was not familiar at all with Earth Science and I was super behind in all of those elective classes since I had no previous exposure and was expected to complete everything from the semester, resulting in such low grades.</p>

<p>Second semester started. I moved and transferred schools.(D) Family circumstances prevented me from attending.</p>

<p>I do feel that I am prepared for college. Although I did not complete a full Biology class, I’ve spent a lot of time watching MIT videos and reading through textbooks. I’ve worked hard to gain the knowledge I didn’t get those first two years and to ‘‘fill in the gaps.’’</p>

<p>Say my counselor leaves my transcript as is. Wouldn’t it still be wrong to apply to college?</p>

<p>I know you all say to not focus on others, but really, would you like it if your child didn’t get a spot at their dream school but I did when I clearly don’t deserve to?</p>

23

<p>Do not stress over these records at all. Do not apologize to anyone. As above, you have done nothing wrong. Consider those years ancient history, as your entire HS career will be once you graduate and are successful in college.</p>

<p>Some colleges (eg Stanford) do not even look at HS freshman year graders. Other schools look at the trend- improving grades for the same gpa are more impressive than getting the same gpa all years. Your junior year of HS is the last full year colleges will see grades for. You are extremely competitive for top colleges based on your junior/senior grades. The first two years don’t matter.</p>

<p>You obviously have learned a lot to be able to overcome your earlier HS years in order to do so well the last two. You are college material. Your ACT or SAT scores will hopefully correlate with your current grades. </p>

<p>What matters is where you are NOW. You have good study habits to finish the work required and do well in learning material presented. Plus native ability to be able to do so well. What you have told us shows a student who is capable at being successful at most, even top, colleges. You may even be scholarship/merit aid as well as need aid eligible. Set your sights high- your state flagship university as one to apply to along with others.</p>

<p>Your father’s history is not yours. Remember to get help in choosing subject material for college essays. You definitely have overcome adversity but shouldn’t dwell on any particulars that are unnecessary to YOUR, not your father’s, story. It is not your job at all to explain anything about how you believe your transcript is in error early on. Let the schools figure that out.</p>

<p>Good luck. ps- it is never wrong to apply to college. Any school that accepts you believes you will be successful.</p>

24

<p>what I think about my kid is irrelevant. I’m not an adcom.</p>

<p>Your GC may want to write a brief explanation (hopefully easier to understand than your posts) explaining that you have some gaps in your college prep due to having attended several schools, but that your teachers believe that you are ready to handle college level work and will do your utmost to catch up in areas where you are deficient.</p>

<p>And then don’t look back.</p>

25

<p>Every so often, we do get these “but I’d be taking someone else’s place” threads. Trust us, adcoms have a job to do and they know how to do it. You have some ethical posters telling you to look at your strengths.</p>

<p>We don’t know where you are or what colleges- someone recommending HYP isn’t enough- there are test scores to consider and fierce competition- if you’re a senior, there;s little time to plan. And, sounds like you need mega financial aid.</p>

<p>You need your GC to go to bat for you-- is he the sort with that attitude, ability and knowledge? Agree with blossom on the approach. </p>

26

<p>So what you’re all saying is to confess to my counselor and apply to college whether or not he changes my grades? If I don’t get accepted anywhere, spend another year in high school to get my diploma and figure it all out from there?</p>

<p>Unfortunately, I don’t think my GC will be very helpful. When I asked him to explain the NMs, he said to just write about it in my personal statement.</p>

<p>My ACT scores are above 30. My SAT subject tests are above 700. I don’t want to be too specific on here for privacy reasons.</p>

<p>Should I still withdraw those apps I already sent in? Could I re-submit them once my transcript is changed?</p>

<p>And I apologize for such obscure posts, it’s difficult to explain a situation I don’t fully understand myself.</p>

27

<p>

[QUOTE]
At the end of the year, I went to my GCs office to discuss transferring over to the remedial school to repeat my courses. He had no idea what I was talking about. He showed me my transcript, and my previous school’s grades had been changed to grades superior to those I had earned. I was in shock, but I told him the truth. "Those aren’t my grades. I had various classes I had to retake.’’ He responded, ‘‘Well this is what it shows on your transcript.’’ I replied ‘‘But those aren’t my grades.’’ He said ‘‘Isn’t that your name right there? Isn’t that you?’’

[QUOTE]
</p>

<p>Is this your CURRENT guidance counselor? If you’ve already alerted your school that your transcript doesn’t include all your schools or courses and they haven’t changed it, I wouldn’t pursue it any further. It sounds to me like you were classified as something other than a full-time student. When you were in school your grades were very good; it sounds like someone did you a favor and sent the record of your actual work to your current school without figuring in zereos for time you weren’t attending. You have good grades in more advanced classes and a good ACT score, right? If you feel like you missed a necessary course, you could always self study for a CLEP exam and get credit that way. Since you transferred in to this school, the graduation requirements might be different then if you started high school there, so you may not actually need biology. I wouldn’t create trouble where there is none. Apply to colleges and let your GC worry about your transcript. Make sure you run the Net Price Calculators on the websites of the colleges you’re interested in to make sure they’re affordable. Good luck.</p>

28

<p>4 schools freshmen year and 3 sophomore year? I would leave it alone and move on. First that would be way too much for most kids to handle. It’s no wonder why your grades went down. I wouldn’t be surprised if schools in general do some kind of conversion for cases like yours so that you could be on track with your peers. </p>

29

<p>withdraw nothing.</p>

<p>Move forward.</p>

<p>I don’t know what your list looks like but you need a range of schools- not just the uber selective ones- and you need to make sure you’ve got some affordable options in there.</p>

<p>Trust all of us- it gets better. going backwards to obsess about what was obviously a tough year isn’t going to move you forward.</p>

30

<p>When you enrolled in your current school and your past schools they needed your educational records. From there they look at the curriculum of your previous school and try to correlate classes because different systems have different graduation requirements. You can’t have a kid move from point A to point B during high school and not graduate because credits do not line up. The school has to correlate the credits somehow and that is how your school did it. Otherwise kids all around the country would not be graduating in four years because their parents moved. Also, if you were at four schools during one semester the school you were at when the semester ended makes the final grade determination. Also, consider the kid who gets in a major auto wreck or something similar during high school, they don’t repeat the grade. They are given a break and generally exemptions from exams so they can move on and do so without looking back. Are you on track to get your diploma? </p>

31

<p>@austinmshauri‌ Your theory seems to make sense except that even the classes were changed. Even if someone did do me a favor and did not factor in zeros on assignments, why would they change the courses? I did inform my counselor and the school adviser that the transcript does not reveal all four schools, and they just put it off like it was irrelevant. I have been running net price calculators and have a list of colleges that would fill in financial gaps.</p>

<p>I’m definitely not applying to super selective colleges. Most have above a 40% acceptance rate, and my test scores are at or above the 50th percentile at all colleges I’m applying to.</p>

<p>I am on track to get my diploma, but only because of the whole grade switch. </p>

<p>Would it be better if I applied to colleges but sent in ALL transcripts, including those from my previous schools, and explained the entire situation? Or should I really just try to move on from here and leave the past in the past? I really appreciate all of you taking your time to help me through this messy situation.</p>

32

<p>LSW- one last time. Move on. You are under no obligation to send in random Freshman year transcripts from schools you attended for three months. Your current HS will send your current transcript with either a notation explaining that you didn’t attend Freshman and sophomore years at the school or not. But it’s not on you to normalize your HS records.</p>

<p>Move on. It will not be better. Do not start looking for reasons why you can’t apply to college right now. You may not realize it but you are engaging in a very human and very common phenomenon by looking for reasons why you can’t/shouldn’t/won’t be able to move on with your life. Don’t get stuck. Just look forward not backwards. You’ve done nothing wrong and your adviser told you that your earlier transcripts are irrelevant because they are.</p>

33

<p>Well, I think it is truly remarkable that you were subjected to this extraordinary string of schools freshman year and first semester of sophomore year and performed as well as you did. If anything, telling colleges that you were forced to go to so many schools in such a short period of time, and that you were actually being unable to attend one school where you were enrolled AT ALL because of what was an obviously chaotic family situation would make you a more desirable candidate in my eyes, if I were an adcom, since you emerged from that period unscathed academically and went on to such success. You obviously have the strength and ability to deal with virtually anything that is thrown at you. <em>Many</em> students would be writing essays mining this history for a sob story, not worrying whether it would disqualify them from applying!</p>

<p>Stop worrying about this and move forward.</p>

<p>To illustrate how this sort of thing can work, when I was in 8th and 9th grade I was at a British boarding school. 9th grade there was the first of two years of study for O levels. I took 8 or 9 courses, amongst other things, French, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and “Maths,” which was a combination of algebra, geometry, and trig. But only one year of a 2-year course of study, which was in the sciences far less than what one would learn in one year in the US. When I returned to the US, they gave me credit for one year of Biology, although I certainly hadn’t learned as much as would have in my US HS, one year of HS math (and placed me in Algebra II, which means they were assuming I had “completed” algebra and geometry). They “solved” the French issue by taking back my year of acceleration but putting me in the Honors class. They subsequently had to move me around to add honors classes that they had claimed were “full,” and I later took real Chem and Physics classes. Did it make sense to give me credit for bio, but not for chem and physics, and for me to repeat them, but not bio? Not really. In actual fact, in terms of having a really good science background, I should have repeated all three. But whatever…I wasn’t into STEM. I wanted to take extra English courses, not repeat bio. To make matters worse, my grades made no sense in the US context. There were courses in which I had the highest score on the final exam with a 60-something. I have no idea how they ended up handling that.</p>

<p>This sort of thing happens all the time. You are obviously well-prepared for college, and you have no need to linger in HS. Apply to a range of schools, and don’t sell yourself short.</p>

34

<p>Thanks everyone, I’m going to go ahead and move forward with this and apply to colleges. Consolation, thank you for that example, you definitely helped me see the way courses can sometimes can be transferred differently from one school to the next.</p>

<p>I suppose now my only question would be what to include on applications where it asks to list all schools attended. Would I actually list every single school or just those listed on my transcript?</p>

35

<p>I’m glad you made the decision to let the past go. Blossom gives good advice. Don’t look for reasons to delay moving forward or give up trying for something in the mistaken belief that others deserve it more.</p>

<p>Your guidance counselor will send the transcripts. Ask him/her for the names and addresses of the schools you need to list (so your list matches your transcripts).</p>

36

<p>@austinmshauri‌ Actually CPS was involved-twice. First time, I was convinced to lie about everything so the case was closed almost immediately. The second time, I was taken away for a few months.</p>

<p>This worries me: Enter all high schools you have attended, regardless of how long you attended, whether courses were completed or whether you believe your record will affect your chances for admission. Providing incomplete or incorrect information may jeopardize your admission or enrollment.</p>

<p>So that means I still have to list every school I attended, or every school I attended according to my transcript? This is very confusing.</p>

37

<p>Applying to colleges is definitely confusing as are the instructions. I would list the schools you attended according to your transcript. </p>

<p>On another note the poster who spoke about living in England had a good point which I can relate to. As a child I lived overseas for a year attended school here and there when we were not travelling around Europe and for all intensive purposes learned nothing that year. I returned to the US and did not repeat the grade. I doubt I even had a transcript from the school I did attend overseas. The school system obviously did something with my educational records so I could move forward. </p>

<p>Go forward because there is probably no way at this point to even reconstruct your records and furthermore you did absolutely nothing wrong. Ever take a class where the teacher curved the grade either downward or upwards? Ever test out of a class based on a placement test? Its kind of the same principle getting credit at the discretion of a teacher or a system neither of which fall under the dishonesty heading. </p>

38

<p>lsw907, I would go ahead and list ALL of the schools, whether or not you have transcripts from them. This can only work in your favor at private colleges and universities where everything isn’t strictly by the numbers. The adcoms will be impressed by your resilience. And you definitely need to be very straightforward. They will know that the school where you did the majority of your work had to figure out how to deal with that mess, and your subsequent record proves that they did the right thing. The last thing you want to do is introduce any possibility of being viewed as concealing the oddities of your record.</p>

39

<p>@lsw907 don’t let this haunt you throughout your life. List all the schools you went to. What they are trying to avoid is people trying to cover their tracks by conveniently omitting part of their history. Your history will make sense with your transcript, or you could put in a footnote to help them map your transcript to the listed schools. Something like 9th grade sept-oct, school A, oct-nov school B, nov-dec school C (only school C listed on transcript); etc.</p>

<p>One reason for grades is to be sure you can handle the work. If you can handle the work, I think you deserve to go to any school in the country. Acceptance is not based on some magic carefully measured weighted average of quantitative metrics, where you can be ahead or behind by some measurable amount. In fact, since you have confronted and surmounted difficulties you are a more desirable candidate. Many kids have not, and that is a risk. If something happens to you in college, you have tools to deal with it. Other students do not. You have proven your ability to be resilient and that you have developed the psychological tools to bounce back.</p>

<p>You are underselling yourself.</p>

<p>You should apply to every school you think you MAY want to go to. Apply to HYP if you would like to go there. In the spring, they will make a decision. Just because of your temperament, you may want to discuss this entire sordid tale in detail to be crystal-clear on the ethics with the admissions office of the school before you accept an offer of admission. The time to do this is after being offered admission and before accepting. You want to be very clear in your conscience, but do that at the correct time. You do not understand their process, and it is unfair of you to pre-make decisions on whether or not you will get in, and use that to influence whether or not to apply. It is frankly quite presumptuous of you.</p>

<p>Don’t withdraw applications, don’t handicap yourself, don’t make judgments that are not for you to make. Take your absolute best shot. Clear your conscience only after the other side has made their decision. There is time for that. And if you and the school decide you have been unethical, some other person who “deserves” it more than you will still be there as number 1 on the waiting list if the school feels they should not have offered you admission. You are not getting in anyone’s way or taking anyone’s spot.</p>

<p>Be true to yourself. But also allow others to do their jobs- it is not for you to second guess others and per-empt their decision-making process.</p>

40

<p>I think Consolation is right about listing all the schools. I’m sure the colleges will contact the GC if they have a question. Your grades and test acores are good, though, so I don’t know why they would. </p>