<p>My daughter has ADHD and she is failing college. She is on academic probation after her freshman year and we feel that we do not want her to continue and be a second class student. We pay a full tuition at Stanford and we feel that there is no return to our investment. Stanford is a good school for certain kind of students but some students do not do well at all in the 400 or more students classes of the CS department. We plan to take her out of Stanford and have her start college elsewhere as a freshman without transferring any credit from Stanford. It is depressing for me as a mother to pay so much money and to stare at a GPA of 2.1.</p>
<p>Are there services and accommodations available? Has she taken advantage of them? That’s a big step to take, if she can pull things together and do better. (2.1 isn’t failing, it it?) Some kids–probably most kids–do better in smaller classes with more attention, but are you sure that is really the fix in this case?</p>
<p>So sorry, rainbowgirl. </p>
<p>Others can speak to this better than I, but my thoughts are that a 2.1 after freshman year at a very rigorous college isn’t that unusual. Freshman year is tough, and students often need a year to adjust. Also, students that were the academic stars at their high schools are now surrounded by other academic stars. This is often a shock, and the grading curve is correspondingly much higher. </p>
<p>Is there any room for reevaluation of your decision? What do your daughter and her academic advisor think? Can a support plan be made?</p>
<p>I have a friend with a son in the CS department at Stanford. He struggled mightily his first two years and they seriously considered pulling him from the school. He got his act together his junior year and his grades were very good. He will be a happy senior this fall. </p>
<p>Note that “very good” grades at Stanford are not always As.</p>
<p>Good luck to your daughter-- the transition from HS to college can certainly be difficult (and I’m scared for my own).</p>
<p>
However, there will probably be problems with this. You cannot start college as a freshman again, especially after completing a full year’s worth of credit. Your D will need to apply as a transfer student, and all institutions will ask for transcripts from all previous schools, including Stanford.</p>
<p>(The exception to this may be after a significant period of time has passed, in the order of decades.)</p>
<p>Accommodations are available but it is not the solution. The quarter system is very demanding and not fitting for students with disabilities that require more time to process the material.</p>
<p>This may be true, OP. I think we are just saying that a 2.1 GPA is really not that bad, and should not be seen as “no return” on the investment. I think your daughter did tolerably well for her first year at a college as difficult as Stanford, especially with ADHD.</p>
<p>Rainbow, your D’s options are as follows:
1- Stay at Stanford
2- Transfer somewhere else
3- Take a leave of absence and either get a job, do something else, etc.</p>
<p>Your D cannot just apply somewhere else as a Freshman and pretend that her Freshman year at Stanford never happened.</p>
<p>So for my nickel- I’d encourage your D to work with the advising staff and the Dean at Stanford to figure out a plan. Maybe with her learning issues she shouldn’t be in CS. Maybe she could improve her grades now that she’s gotten adjusted to college. Maybe she wants a semester off to regroup.</p>
<p>But what does SHE want? I don’t think a 2.1 GPA makes her a second class citizen; I think she sounds pretty typical, and until you can help her unpack which courses caused her difficulty and why, just pretending that she can push the do-over button somewhere else isn’t going to help her.</p>
<p>I think most schools would give your daughter the transfer credits of any courses with final grade of C or above. Did Stanford put her on academic probation because of her 2.1 GPA?</p>
<p>It is definitely true that the quarter system is very unforgiving. But surely she cannot be the only kid with this problem at Stanford. What is available to help her? Now that she really knows first hand what is required, is it possible to make a plan to help her? Lots of kids have rocky first years. If she did well enough in HS to get into Stanford, despite her ADHD, surely she should be able to figure out a plan in college.</p>
<p>Frankly, I’d be concerned that if she transfers elsewhere she will have to readjust and her GPA will be in the same range, but probably from a significantly lesser institution. (It is unlikely that she can transfer to a peer institution with a low GPA.) A few years after she graduates, if not sooner, her GPA won’t matter a bit, but the fact that her degree is from Stanford will continue to stand her in good stead. (To look at the matter from a strictly practical POV.)</p>
<p>Academics aside, does she like the school? Is she getting something out of it?</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is whether CS is really the field for her.</p>
<p>Stanford put her on academic probation because she only completed 5 credit units during Spring Quarter. She failed the CS class of 5 units. She transferred into Stanford 40 credit units from AP classes but she only had 35 units credit from Stanford for her freshman year.</p>
<p>Gotcha. So has your D discussed switching out of CS with her advisor? That would seem to be more of the problem than her ADHD, no?</p>
<p>OP, with that many AP credits, maybe your daughter struggle at the advanced classes (compare to her freshman classmates)?</p>
<p>If my kids attending Stanford, I would ask them to take freshman level basic classes, no honors or advanced; regardless the AP credits.</p>
<p>She is not a CS major. In general Stanford is better for outgoing type A students. The ones that can do many things at once.</p>
<p>Rainbow- your D and her adviser (with input from you) will clearly need to come up with a plan going forward.</p>
<p>However, as a couple of posters here have noted, just starting all over again as a freshman someplace new is not a viable plan.</p>
<p>I know many introverts who loved Stanford.</p>
<p>Op, what is your daughter’s major? Most student’s grades go up significantly once they are taking classes in their area of interest. Why was she taking the CS course? Given that she came in with so many credits, she might have done better to drop the course.</p>
<p>What were her grades in other classes?</p>
<p>She should go back this fall, and pick her classes carefully, looking for classes that are of interest to her, and classes that are smaller in size if in an area where she is likely to need to go for help.</p>
<p>Also, if she is ADHA, what did she do in high school that enabled her to be so successful as to get in to Stanford? What supports did she have? I am sure she is not the only ADHD student on the Stanford campus.</p>
<p>I had no learning disabilities, and I still had a GPA comparable to your D’s after my freshman year. The transition from being the brightest to being only one lowly fish in a big old fishbowl full of brightly colored fish is not always easy. I had to learn how to learn. It required a lot of effort on my part, including joining study groups. I wouldn’t jump ship so quickly. Life is not easy for any of us, and if we just bail when the going gets tough, we will never learn to cope. </p>
<p>I suggest you give her the opportunity to meet with an advisor, develop a plan, and work toward her goals. If her goals must be adjusted to better suit her skills and interests, so be it. Plenty of non-LD kids have to do that! Above all, let her do this herself. If she is capable of being admitted to Stanford, she is capable of dealing with this.</p>
<p>FWIW, I did end up getting my act together. I ended up with a decent GPA, making Dean’s List a couple times (not an easy feat at my alma mater). And … I did it all without any parental assistance (they didn’t even know I was struggling … different era).</p>
<p>A few points:</p>
<p>1) CS is probably the most challenging major at Stanford. Is she passionate about CS or was she just trying it out? She might think about a change of major.</p>
<p>2) If she is taking the intro science/math classes and hasn’t gotten to the major classes yet, I’m not sure how much harder Stanford classes are than classes at a state school. (I think the CS classes may be harder, because Stanford has a high concentration of CS stars.) The choice of major aside, it may be worth sticking it out at Stanford as it may not be that much better elsewhere and at least you’ll have the prestige of the degree. </p>
<p>3) Is she overloaded with technical classes? It might be worth it to slow it down and take two technical classes per term and use the others on humanities classes which aren’t known to be killers. </p>
<p>4) I’m not sure what to make of the ADHD diagnosis. Is she on medication? Does the college have special procedures for accommodations for people with ADHD? </p>
<p>5) I think if she is stressed out about the low GPA she may need a break from school–either a semester or longer.</p>
<p>6) Is she homesick? It could be adding to her stress.</p>
<p>Stanford seems to me a fairly hospitable and nurturing environment as large research universities go. The only thing I can think of would be to go to a school closer to home or to an LAC where the faculty are more engaged with their students and which is more of a close-knit community. Stanford is a nice place, but it’s a large, sprawling campus.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you and your daughter.</p>
<p>At high School she had a support system but she had her parents. In college the parents are nothing. We only pay tuition.</p>
<p>My youngest brother had a 2.0 is first semester at Harvard and ended up graduating with honors. Sometimes there’s just an adjustment period. Some ADHD students prefer quarter systems. I think the problem may be CS, especially since that is a field where there may be pretty big disparities as to how much people already know coming in. Keep in mind classes will generally get smaller after the big intro courses of freshman year. She might also want to choose a major with the idea that a smaller major might serve her better. There were only a couple of dozen students per year in my major - so I got to know my professors and vice versa.</p>
<p>Appears you and your daughter share this CC account.
As stated above, but not acknowledged by you-your daughter cannot start fresh at a new school.
She will be a transfer with her Stanford transcript and academic probation noted.
No clean slate.
Why did she change her major from Math to CS?
Do you think she would have done better at Yale or UChicago?</p>