<p>Thank you,everyone. I am worried about my son 's ability to cope in college. We are hoping he will get in some schools nearby. He is quite intelligent and poor organization and social skills are big hurdles to overcome. He has improved with times and still requires prompting. I have managed to put him in many group activities so he can improve
his social skills. He is not antisocial but he does not like small talk. His teachers have not give him any accomodation or help in school work. He is treated like any other students.
He really has not received much from the weekly social group because he receives this class during tutorial. During the junior year he rarely showed up because he was busy with other things .The IEP is there because I believe he may get some protection. (When he was in middle school, he tended to have problems with Math and Science teachers because he would argue with them if he believe he was right. They would not punish him if he was under IEP)
He has had some decent accomplishments in term of National competion. He is quite qualified for those schools. His GC does not know that or she is too busy. I know he should go to school near home so we can look out for him. I am hoping there are some thing out there of those children of the lesser God.</p>
<p>College12hopeful, your son isn’t getting any more help than other students in his classes-- but by the very nature of high school, students get more help from their teachers than they do in college. In high school, when the teacher assigns a long-term assignment, she will often break in into smaller steps and give reminders. In college, the student must do all that scheduling and organization himself, a task that many Aspies find difficult. </p>
<p>A few small mistakes in English make me wonder whether you were educated in another country. Sometimes foreign-born parents, even very savvy ones, are not as familiar with American college application as they might be. (And sometimes American-born parents have the same problem, not to mention American-born grandparents.) Though your son has good scores, he needs to be absolutely outstanding to be admitted to MIT or Caltech, outstanding in other ways than just scores. A lot of guidance counselors are incompetent or overworked, but also sometimes they have a better feel for admission than parents.</p>
<p>I know a couple of folks whose kids have very Asperger-ish personality traits and social skills, who have done well at demanding schools. The key was that they did not have the poor executive function/orgainzational skiils that many with Aspergers and ADD have. Did y’all read the Jody Picoult book House Rules? That fictional Aspie was hyper-organized and had no problem ever completing work, even when in a public school that was a social nightmare. Those people do exist, but by mentioning orgainizational skills along with the social, OP, I don’t think it’s your kid.</p>
<p>There is something to be said for wanting your kid to get into the best school he possibly can, then carefully investigating the available support before making a decision. Most parents in your position would choose that path. Two years ago, I was of the “we’ve got to let him try” philosophy. I had no idea that it would turn out so badly.</p>
<p>One thing about just letting them try is that if it doesn’t go well, that wonderful SAT score will mean little to nothing after earning a low GPA for even a semester or two in college. The transfer apps I have seen don’t even have a place to fill in SAT scores or HS grades. It’s a lot of pressure to say you only get one chance, because that isn’t true. But they really only have their HS scores and stats this one time.</p>
<p>Missypie doesn’t mention it, but she and I have both found out the hard way that all that merit aid one’s child gets for outstanding high school GPA and wonderful SAT scores just vanishes, poof!, when the child is trying to transfer after crashing and burning.</p>
<p>IOW, not only will the child potentially end up at a lesser-ranked school the second time around, but they also might end up having to pay tens of thousands of dollars more in tuition. Consider your options carefully; a mistake can be costly.</p>
<p>We will consider his options carefully. He will be concentrating in tech schools because he does not like the graduating requirements of LACs He would prefer less foreign languages and humanities. All your advices are helpful. I guess we will discuss with GC about the disclosure.
Other option we consider as well is spending the first two years at CC.
Thanks again</p>
<p>Something else I wanted to add:</p>
<p>Don’t assume the “Techy” schools don’t have humanities requirements!</p>
<p>Someone trying to avoid the humanities entirely might be better served at an open curriculum school like Brown, for example, than a place like MIT.</p>
<p>For example, MIT’s core curriculum (graduation requirements) include:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Check AP rules for colleges too. My son at Carnegie Mellon got out of most of the distribution requirements thanks to having take AP Latin, AP USH and AP Econ. If he’d taken AP World and AP Lit, he’d have gotten out of even more. Most tech schools *do *have distribution requirements and many also have language requirements. Read the fine print!</p>