<p>LadyArwyn, Again, no offense but the scores do not add up. Both my sons were both 700+ in math on SAT with no effort. 5’s on AP calculus BC(first son yes-son 2 such a “slacker” that he only took AP Stat, not calculus so I know firsthand about boys that could be doing better in high school), physics 5 (both),etc. Your son needs to back up any test scores with solid work in school. Most colleges ,especially math/science oriented ones do not particulary like slackers. There are so many high SAT/AP kids out there that they do not have to take a chance on a perceived slacker.</p>
<p>LadyArwyn - Here on the East Coast there are “Prep Schools” where a young student can spend a year getting his academics in order. These prep schools are generally well-connected with college admissions departments … a real advantage in these circumstances. Is there anything similar nearby you?</p>
<p>BTW, there’s another current thread on this topic. That may be worth reading:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/740706-high-sat-wilting-gpa-needs-campus-nature.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/740706-high-sat-wilting-gpa-needs-campus-nature.html</a></p>
<p>I would be concerned that with his current grades and test scores, colleges will not be able to see the smart part of your son.</p>
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<p>Like the poster before me said, it doesn’t matter what you think when you get a C in the class.</p>
<p>And how do you think AP physics classes are “below you?”</p>
<p>Chaos said “And how do you think AP physics classes are ‘below you?’”?</p>
<p>I meant that I he finds AP Calc fun and easy (as in he enjoys it) the way I found water polo class is easy (I love water polo and think it’s fun). It’s not “beneath him,” it’s something he enjoys doing and it comes easily to him.</p>
<p>I couldn’t do AP Calc to save my life.</p>
<p>This “smart slacker” needs to PROVE that he can walk the walk, not just talk about how easy a class is. If it were easy then he needs to show it is easy by Acing the tests and the classes. He needs to do some maturing and realize that people are judged by what they DO. The sooner he learns that the better. The local community college is the best place for him to PROVE that he can actually do college level work. Then perhaps he can transfer to a 4 year college.</p>
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<p>What did he get then?</p>
<p>I recommend that you send him to the crappiest out-of-state community college you can find. He need to develop responsibility and will power. He won’t make it in life with his attitude, even if he is a genius as you infer. There are 2.0-2.5 students who are actually motivated in doing something with their life and they attempt to find success through communities colleges or very uncompetitive 4 year state colleges. If you are the only motivation that your son has, than you should let him fall flat. </p>
<p>I am a 2.5 student, and I didn’t even know what a GPA was in my 9th and 10th grade year, and technically, I didn’t care. Nevertheless, I have been working hard to pull up my grades so that I can qualify for a uncompetitive 4 year university and show how much intellect that I have actually obtained through intense studying and diverse reading. Despite my GPA, I have hit the ground running by getting involved in many academic and social clubs at my school so that I can stand out from the rest of the 2.5 applicants. Your son needs a new mindset and you need to have reasonable expectations. Send him to a crappy school and see if his GPA improves. If it does, he can always transfer out. Don’t reward your son for ignorance and encourage him to become involved in school and community activities no matter what school he attends. If he has no self motivation, and you are the wind behind his sails, than he is doom anyhow. If he slacks off in high school, with the same attitude and perceptive, he will ultimately fail at a university also. </p>
<p>If all fails, discourage him. Tell him that he is nothing and will never be anything. I think that is what got me on the right track lol. I had a schizophrenia dad who was a religious control freak who committed suicide when I was in the 8th grade. I failed some of my classes that year and had to repeat. Now I have a mother who accused me of being a homosexual drug dealer…no joke lol. So perhaps you are making things too easy for him. Give him a reason to mature and make his life hell to the point in which he has to find a way to escape. He can only do that in one of two ways…he could put a bullet him his head or pursue a decent education, even if he has to start off at a not so decent university.</p>
<p>Is he interested in or has he participated in math/science competitions such as the Mathematical or Physics Olympiad? A challenging and enjoyable activity might help him to develop the self-discipline he needs.</p>
<p>OP - Based on the “other” thread, I feel it appropriate to say that the above posts are intended to be helpful … rather than mean. Everyone would like to have your S succeed. I think the consensus view is that he’d benefit from some additional preparation before tackling college-level work.</p>
<p>Absolutely not, I am not trying to be mean at all. If this was a student with a 0.5 GPA, with a good character and sense of motivation, it would be completely different. The fashion in which he has described his son, gives me the preconceived opinion that he is someone who feel that he is somehow superior and immune to attending a low ranked school despite that fact that he has intentionally not worked to his full potential.</p>
<p>In AP Calc he got an A, both semesters. As I said, he gets mostly As and Bs… then there’s the English classes and the Physics. He liked the physics but was 'distracted" (by everything). He decided he hated his English teacher and simply blew her off.</p>
<p>At least in college you can choose your instructors and change classes if you don’t like the one you have.</p>
<p>He’s currently at a small, rural high school where there are few choices, and one teacher per subject per grade. No options at all. They don’t even offer a foreign language here, and with teacher cuts I think in the next couple of years they will not offer advanced classes much longer.</p>
<p>LadyArwyn, You do your son no favor by allowing your son to blow off teachers. Please show respect(and humility) to all and your son may follow suit. Teachers are there for our children .I am not a teacher but have appreciated help from teachers/guidance counselors over the years.</p>
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<p>Not true. In large universities you often have to take whatever classes have open seats, until you’re an upper division student at which point you’re mainly taking classes in your major department. In small colleges courses may only be offered every other year, and you have to take your major courses from whomever is teaching them when it’s your time to take them. And add/drop periods are restricted, so you can’t “blow off” an instructor you don’t like because your transcript will be littered with Ws.</p>
<p>You’re making excuses for your son’s laziness by citing “distractions”, and you can bet wherever your son applies he will be competing with applicants who persevered despite the death of a parent or other equally dramatic “distraction.” You may have gotten into college with a 1.8 GPA, and your son may have lived in student housing with you, but if you want him to take a more traditional path, you need to inject some realism into the equation. As things are, he has only a small shot a lower tier instate public four year school. His recommenders will be expected to explain his inconsistent grades and test scores, and that means even if his favorite teachers write recommendations, they or a guidance counselor will likely include input from the teachers he blew off. This won’t bode well for your son’s perceived maturity level. Schools don’t want to admit students who appear unable or unwilling to do the work, so unless your son’s attitude changes and that change is expressed in his academic work, he won’t be able to realize the potential you believe he has.</p>
<p>I think the root problem is your son was not challenged enough. I scored in the 99th percentile for every state-sanctioned math test through middle and high school (except 8th grade - I was in the 98th percentile) and on the SAT M (I got an 800)… I was bored out of my mind in school when it came to math - even in AP Calculus. Before my junior year I would get C’s and B’s in Math because I wouldn’t do my homework even though I’d often ace the tests. Junior year I realized that I needed to do my homework or “dumber” people than me would get into schools over me due to their diligence and hard work and earned something like 14 A’s and 2 B’s through Junior and Senior year. Well that performance wasn’t enough for entrance into the University of Florida, even though I qualified for their honors program by GPA and test scores… (I suspect I made some mistakes on my application since I reused the same essays and teacher recs over and over and got into schools like Georgia Tech).</p>
<p>My freshmen year at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology was the same way for my physics courses. I didn’t do a single assignment for Physics I and got an A since the teacher didn’t collect any homework… Physics II I had a 95 or so test average, 99 lab average, an 89.5 on the final, but my homework was an F, bringing me down to a B+.</p>
<p>Over there I can guarantee a professor, essentially, because I wrote a program that auto-registered me for classes until I got the professors I wanted so I didn’t have to refresh for hours on end… So there is that to a degree, but not always, since higher-level courses are often taught once a year or once every two years and you’re stuck with whatever section or professor teaches it.</p>
<p>I guess I would tell your son that the world has many gifted people that shoot themselves in the foot when they don’t apply themselves - but also, realistically, although your son is smarter than average he isn’t “brilliant” or anything (unless he wasn’t applying himself for his 80ish percentile scores)…</p>
<p>Community College will likely demotivate him and although I’ve never taken CC classes, I have taken summer course-work at a fourth tier school and those are much easier than courses at tough university like Rose. Also I don’t think colleges are sympathetic for kids that are brilliant and lazy. If anything, they’d rather have someone who is dumber and harder working. Intelligence isn’t everything. Character and wisdom is much more important in my book.</p>
<p>I don’t <em>allow</em> him to blow off teachers, by the time we realized what he was going on was too late.</p>
<p>I wasn’t going to go into this but… [rant]</p>
<p>As far as the “distractions” go, we ripped him out of the home where he lived since elementary school with less than a month’s warning just before his junior year, moved from a nationally-ranked top school district in a highly educated college town to a tiny burg where half of the town thinks a high school diploma is a major achievement AND a high school that doesn’t even offer a foreign language, much less has high expectations. Then my husband had to stay at our former home for 6 months, my other son stuck in another state with his grandparents, while I went from being a SAHM to a full-time working mom.</p>
<p>This coming after a major (football) injury, he went through major surgery just a few months before we moved and was in a wheelchair for 2 months. That was the semester he got his first F.</p>
<p>I think that qualifies as a distraction and he did well considering what we put him through.[/rant]</p>
<p>Now, rather than tell me why he can’t get into college b/c of his attitude, what can we do to help him get into a 4-year college that will help him get on the path to where he wants to go?</p>
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<p>It’s kind of late for that. </p>
<p>The best thing for him to do would for him to get a good SAT score. But to be honest, I got higher than his junior score in the 8th grade, even if he wasn’t trying really hard.</p>
<p>I don’t know how it is in California but with his grades and test scores he wouldn’t make it into one of the top Florida universities (UF, FSU) and probably not the next tier, either (UCF, USF and UNF). He could go to a lower-tier university to prove himself and then work to transferring to UF or FSU but (at least in Florida) preference is given to CC transfers with Associate’s over 2 year transfers from state universities, so if I was in his shoes in Florida I think I’d rather go to CC since it’d be a better launching pad to one of the better 4 year institutions in my state.</p>
<p>I can’t find the thread but there’s one floating around about people who did poorly in HS (2.0 GPA’s or worse) and turned themselves around in CC - usually getting 3.8+ almost always 3.5+. It’s true that sometimes life deals you a crap hand, but CC, despite its lack of prestige can be a very viable stepping stone to state flagships and later top graduate programs in the country.</p>
<p>“Now, rather than tell me why he can’t get into college b/c of his attitude, what can we do to help him get into a 4-year college that will help him get on the path to where he wants to go?”
Simple, he needs to go to a community college, get great grades, which will help prove that he has shown the ability to overcome difficulties, and take responsibility for his own actions. And you need to stop making excuses for why he did what he did [ he was distracted, he was pulled out a school, he was injured, etc] and let him prove his ability and smarts on his own. He is not the first not the last smart student who has had a tough time due to circumstances beyond his control. He CAN control how much effort he NOW puts into each class, and that WILL determine his grades AND recommendation letters from his profs, which are CRITICAL to his ability to transfer into a good school. So stop feeling guilty for what happened-what’s done is done. And start supporting your son by letting him know you believe in his ability. As long as he is a victim in your eyes, he will likely feel the same way about himself, and will lack the motivation to try his best.</p>
<p>Frustrating, isn’t it? ;-)</p>
<p>It is interesting that the article I have linked to below suggests many of the tactics that have been discussed here. Basically, promote ECs, make the kid accountable to the degree that you aren’t making excuses or unduly rewarding or punishing for grades, and encourage the kid to grow up and take responsibility.</p>
<p>Was this child grade accelerated? Immaturity is often one of the unintended consequences of placing with intellectual peers rather than chronological peers. Perhaps a gap year flipping burgers, attending a HS post grad program or taking classes at a community college would allow him that extra time to “cook.”</p>
<p>The surgery and the loss of the physicality from an injury can also have negative impacts. Working out can really positively impact academics, even outside of organized sports, and loss of that can lead to depression. If working out is not possible, perhaps learning a new skill, such as guitar, would help.</p>
<p>I am a teacher and all too often what I see is that the parents’ experiences coloring the child’s experience. I know we do not want our children to experience what we perceive as mistakes, but if we look at it dispassionately, sometimes we see that they are very like us and need to learn for themselves just as we did. It sounds as if you truly want the best for your son, and see a great deal of potential, but maybe he needs to make this journey with his own timeline. You can give him the information, <em>repeatedly</em> , but he must do something with it.</p>
<p>Oh, and some of the advice I regularly give parents includes not speaking too highly or in too disparaging a tone about any school or system or instructors, since your child may end up there/with them, or not. You have to have a recoverable position, and your personal opinions should not have the end result of making your child feel even more of a failure by not getting in to a particular system or having to “resort” to a CC.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>[Underachieving</a> Gifted Kids: Class, Teacher, and Student Roles in Motivating Improved Performance | Suite101.com](<a href=“Suite 101 - How-tos, Inspiration and Other Ideas to Try”>Suite 101 - How-tos, Inspiration and Other Ideas to Try)</p>