@EconPop may be a great resource for you. Last year his son searched for a similar school. He is now at the University of Dayton in Ohio.Dayton is a very social school, but the opportunity to learn in a supportive environment is there if the student is disciplined & focused.
No school will magically transform a student. The student must want to do well & must learn to deal with and to overcome frustration.
Xavier? Could get decent merit with his current GPA to bring down the price. Many have raved recently about their support there.
I was coming to post about Xavier too.
I donāt know-- teaching at both small pricey LAC and big state, I see college is pretty darn transformative for a lot of people. It looks pretty magical to me. Especially the first year.
I guess it depends where someone is starting from. Perhaps some super achievers in high school move right through college like water on a ducks back.
My first impression regarding your sonās situation is that a PG (post graduate) year at a solid prep boarding school might be an option to consider.
I can suggest looking at Lawrenceville in New Jersey, Wyoming Seminary in Pennsylvania, The Hill School may be another. Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. The Kent School in Connecticut. Many more. Boarding School review lists about 140 prep boarding schools which offer a PG year option.
Prep boarding schools address your concerns regarding Greek life, alcohol, not affecting oneās college record, small classes, concerned faculty, etc.
I get it. I feel as if sometimes people think that if your child has less than a 3.75 in high school that they are somehow set up for failure in college. Does research say that high school GPA is a predictor if they will finish college? Yes. But it isnt the only thing.
Very interesting idea. Cost and intensity/hard grading would be the issues. Huge culture shock possibility, too.
But as a way to get time to build up maturity and focus on stem - and teaching in an LAC kind of way (and potential for a transformative experience), it does tick a lot of boxes.
If OP is a tried and true Californian, a PG year is thinking way outside the box/premise, much as I am a fan of the bs experience. I would guess his kid would not be crazy about a bonus year of high school, based on his current situation and experiences.
yeah that would be awesome but no money for that.
i did spend half the day today looking at summer residential pre college programs, but will save that for a different thread. I could see borrowing money for that once the decision is already made (again Iām not saying it will be an LAC, but that is what this particular thread is about)
Right. Iād rather find the right college fit than spend a year at boarding school. Suggesting a PG year makes no sense for this kid.
Maybe Wofford?
I think it would be great too. Also not sure what he would think!
Many prep boarding schools offer a few PG only coursesāespecially common is PG English. While the coursework is demanding, the grading is often lenient as many of the PGs are athletes in need of close guidance & improved grades.
The US Naval Academy has a list of 16 partner schools which are all prep boarding schools which offer a PG year.
P.S. Prep boarding schools award need based financial aid. Not sure, but probably available for PG students.
Will your son enjoy an LAC? From your description, I didnāt think he would since he shows no interest in reading for pleasure or curiosity about current events, things that are common among LAC students.
What is HE looking for?
If a school is known to be easy, itās not going to have a below 50% acceptance rate or a lot of prestige. Hendrix is not considered easy.
Consider the public lacs:
http://coplac.org/members/
I think you want an lac with some remedial courses like a cc would have, because even ccās arenāt easy. There are some majors that are easier than others, but for the most part hard work will be involved.
I wonder if as a guy, he might have a shot at Vassar. Seems like a good fit personality wise and their Science Bridge is impressive. I just visited and the place and tour guides seemed very welcoming and supportive. They mentioned they only have three or so classes a year of 40 students max and all other classes are in 10-20 range. No frats, lots of culture and potential fulfilling personal relationships for a guy, regardless of preferences. Donāt think itās Swarthmore grading eitherā¦ but no merit aid. Connecticut College seemed very similar to me and does have merit aid.
Sonoma State University seems to market itself as being more LACish (it is in COPLAC ā see Member Institutions ), although its undergraduate enrollment of about 8,000 students is large compared to the well known private LACs. Two other CSUs (Monterey Bay and Channel Islands) have between 6,000 and 7,000 undergraduates each. UC Merced has about 8,000 undergraduates.
Within the WUE tuition discount states, Fort Lewis College and Evergreen State College are in the COPLAC lists.
Regarding ātech schoolsā, if that means engineering-focused schools, there are the āmineā schools in South Dakota, New Mexico, and Colorado (the first two are relatively inexpensive). However, engineering is not the same as science. Also, some engineering-focused schools have substantial humanities and social science general education requirements, while some LACs have minimal general education requirements. Any concern about general education requirements should be checked at the particular colleges of interest.
I havenāt read this entire thread yet, so apologies if I retread some ideas/comments.
Hi @UCDProf I think you sound like a lot of parents. Life is a handful and not everyone can always lead/prod/encourage our children to read more; not all parents can get their kids into more rigorous public school settings.
A lifetime ago, I attended what might be called an underperforming HS. In my graduating class are Circuit Court Judges, Doctors, Dentists, Engineers, entrepreneurs running business grossing 7 and 8-figures, college professors, school principals, etc etc etc. A more rigorous HS can ease later achievement, but by no means is it the only path for students. Letās not forget that College is the stage where students are to become prepared for professional careers, not High School.
My son loved his gaming system in HS. I get where youāre coming from on that. Donāt worry too much. My son cut back his Senior year in HS when he realized he had to focus his time on improving his grades to get into certain colleges. And once in college, he reduced his gaming time even further. Second semester of freshman year, spring 2021, he said he might find time to game only 1 or 2 days a week. Have faith in the good sense youāve raised your son with. Also, though I think heās got it now I donāt miss an opportunity to continue to remind him to focus on whatās important. I canāt help myself.
Our situations with our sons have some similarities and notable differences. I forced my son to read books from my home library every summer. He didnāt read dozens of books and he hasnāt become someone who reads for joy, but he read. He didnāt like some, but he loved some like ā47ā and āThe Old Man And The Sea.ā My sonās GPA was lower than your sonās, but my sonās test scores were higher. The good news for you is with test optional being so widespread currently, he wonāt have to worry about test scores.
My advice is to apply widely. With the financial restraints and your sonās TO status, itās going to be a bit unpredictable to guess which schools will both accept him and offer enough FinAid. Itās going to be important that you either choose a couple of absolute safeties (Hendrix? and a couple others?) and stop there, or apply to 20 (or more) and wait and see what happens.
I want to stress that I donāt think you should limit your son to āeasyā or āless rigorousā universities. What I do recommend is FORCING him to read more for the rest of the summer. He has to get comfortable reading (and writing) more than what his current school forced him to do. Doing this will make his transition to college easier.
You can choose CC if you decide itās best. I think CC is a great path for many students. However, I donāt think you should choose CC simply because you donāt think he can handle college material.
Itās never too early to consider majors. One book that may help is the nonfiction tale āA Hope In The Unseen.ā Itās about an inner city boy with great grades at his HS who assumes heās going to be a tech major but once heās in college (basically the end of the book) wonders if heās too far behind. He enters Brown as an Applied Math major. Iāll end this post with a quote about Cedric at Brown University from page 364.
I included that to remind you that itās not the classes your son took in HS that will determine his fate. It is the lessons he learned from you, and the way he applies himself in college. If you built him strong enough, heāll do well in college. Cedric, in the book, had a rough time educationally (and personally) growing up, yet he found college āeasyā and ācushioned.ā My son, who attended a good HS but didnāt graduate with a glowing 3.8 GPA is doing well in college despite every class being more rigorous than AP classes he avoided in HS and the reading/homework load being much heavier. Though my son communicates with me often, he relishes being responsible for doing so much on his own and he is anxious to return ā not just for the social aspects and not living under Dadās roof, but for the opportunities to mature and learn.
College is where the real education takes place. College is where the real maturity will take place. Donāt shortchange your son by limiting his options before we even know what they are. 
Hope to return later after I read more of the thread,
Me
EDIT: I wanted to add for those who wondered. Cedric Jennings, the young man who is the focus of āA Hope In The Unseenā changed his major and graduated from Brown with a degree in Education. He then earned a Masterās from Harvard and another from Michigan. @UCDProf , the future is wide open for your son. Help him find that place that is great for him and affordable for you.
Thanks for the mention to draw me here @Publisher .
One clarification ā I wasnāt searching for a less rigorous university for my S20. Quite the opposite, I felt my son could handle the rigors of practically any school for his intended majors. What limited our opportunity was a limitation of finances, not my estimation of my sonās ability to handle college. While he hadnāt evenly applied himself across all classes all years, I knew he could hunker down and do the work when he decided it was important. He did his senior year in HS and he did so in college.
While I am very pleased with his experience at UDayton so far, I feel he would have had great personal/academic experiences at SMU, Macalester, Va Tech, U Miami, etc. If my son had been accepted into Brown University or Duke or George Washington, youād better believe heād be there right now! And Iām sure heād be doing just as well as he is at UDayton.
Heās not at UDayton because itās a less rigorous university. Heās at UDayton because itās a great school that offered us what we needed.
The sciences are,really taught well at Earlham (mentioned above). Itās quite small and has a quirky vibe.
Allegheny has a lot of resources to help kids succeed. Not so far from Pittsburgh.
Others to consider are the CTCL schools as mentioned above.
I think that at LACS, the profs will try to get to know students and encourage them. But I also think that while they may make the overtures, the energy for that will need to be reciprocated. I would try to figure out what will work best for your DS ā more pre-professional? Hands on? Fewer distribution requirements? My kid loved the LAC experience because he could dedicate a lot of time to ālife of the mindā classes without having to major in them. For other kids, that would be hell!
I think many, many second tier SLAC understand that kids come from different educational backgrounds. I went to Grinnell, and was recently there for an alumni event. The speaker was discussing admissions and said that they get high school grads who have written multiple 20 page terms papers and kids who have not written a single paper through all of high school. They want them all to succeed and give them the tools and resources to do so. Iām not necessarily suggesting Grinnell, but just wanted to point out that your issue is not entirely uncommon.
In any case, I would strongly suggest you look at Bard. They have a mandatory two week summer program for first years that is a reading/writing intensive that will get your kid up to speed quickly. They have a diverse student body and seem to be willing to take a risk on different kinds of students that show promise, even if they arenāt the best prepared and highest achieving. I see others have suggested Lawrence and Knox, which I like. I would also add University of Puget Sound.