College Choices for Average Student?

gilgo
Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:34:29 +0000

What a relief to find a parent with a child that doesn’t have perfect gpa, sat and ecs and has spent his summer vacation in the peace corps! Yes, some kids ARE just busy being teenagers and not quite ready for the work world.

That said, my son is in a tough highschool but also spent his first 3 years playing world of warcraft – he is a little bit more involved in school because he’s extremely social so he has joined some clubs, etc. his gpa is 2.9, sats verbal 560 math 670 writ 590. I have spent hours reading Colleges that Change lives and pouring through college books, magazines, and these sites BECAUSE CTCL was the only book I found that actually listed options for kids with b and c averages. Unfortunately – since the publication of Loren Pope’s book, it seems that these schools are also tougher to get into – most of them expecting gpas of 3.7 plus high sats. My son likes Juniata, RIT and Goucher.

I agree with what some people are saying, however, about putting your foot down. WE basically told my son that he had to get a job this summer because we weren’t supporting him if he wasn’t going to be responsible. Well, he did. It helped a little but he’s already doing the bare minimum this year again – so we have cut him off financially for a month (of course that doesn’t mean food & lodging – just spending money) until he decides that independence does not mean being entitled and not making an effort but EARNING from hard work and effort.

We are very low income but do not want to send him to State school so he can just goof off so we are hoping that this final semester in senior year he will grow up, and then hope that his senior year grades will show improvement and get him in the door – thus proving that he will work when he gets into college – otherwise its city or state schools.

I agree that Community College can be a depressing scenario and don’t want to take the chance that he’ll feel like a failure. I’ll let you know how we make out.