<p>AND just for the record…the older, brighter brother would not have “rotted in community college”. There are many different tracks to success in life. My bet…this kid would have made the best of his CC years and would have been successful. </p>
<p>FWIW, our kid was asked to leave HS after JR year due to prolong and frequent absences due to medical issues. She is still trying to overcome them nearly a decade later. She was still able to enter CC, transfer to a very competitive U, get into one of the best programs for her major in the country and get her degree. She has no job yet, but she does have her degree. There are, as others have mentioned, many paths.</p>
<p>I’d encourage you to continue working with thie family, espcially the two boys/young men. Help them find and follow their passions, wherever they end up leading.</p>
<p>Take the young nephew out to explore; is there a science museum near you? Maybe take a trip to a city, a concert, an art show….a photography exhibit, a new building going up, a military demonstration, all kinds of stuff in museums. You will build a positive relationship exploring together, free of pressure. He is certainly aware of his brothers path, but that may not be where his strengths lie. Since this is “college confidential” I think we tend to be very biased towards college, yet only 30% of young people finish bachelor’s degrees. The rest have a different path, and most end up happy, independent and satisfied.</p>
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<p>… if the issue is a learning disability
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<p>this is an excellent point. The young man may have an undiagnosed learning disability. The SD may not be interested in exploring that but maybe the mom might.</p>
<p>Let’s of people who didn’t go to college have fulfilling lives. The carpenter working on my house now (no college) is certainly not “doomed”. He just bought a commercial property with CASH-- that’s right, no mortgage. </p>
<p>A previous carpenter I had (also no college) was quite erudite. I recall some pretty intense discussions w him on philosophy & literature. I had utmost respect for his intellect and exquisite cabinetry skills.</p>
<p>Sorry for the delayed response.</p>
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<li><p>I think one or two of you misinterpreted “doomed” to be in reference to community college and then it snowballed. It was not. Doomed means doomed to struggle, struggle in an academic and professional setting. The same work ethic, grit, time management, grasp of social norms are needed to succeed in both.</p></li>
<li><p>With that said, an uneducated adult should not probably not send a 95 percentile student to cc with a <10% grad rate. That would be holding him back, and likely cause regression. Furthermore, the adult had no money for anything. Cc is still $3k or so per term.</p></li>
<li><p>Data shows kids at their household income level, lack of college degrees by parents, and subpar primary education are very unlikely to ever graduate from college. When parents make bad decisions, don’t get involved in school, can’t afford resources to help (e.g. Kumon for math and reading boost), and can’t afford to send the student to college, the outcomes tend to be unfortunate.</p></li>
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<p>Nailed it.</p>
<p>There is no sense of urgency in this family. The kid is so charming and will do well if he’s polished. Their (well, more-so the step father’s low information) decisions are detrimental to him ever reaching his potential. They’ve apparently received the semi-alarming test scores in the mail for years and have never done a double-take, or made changes to get him to proficient or above. They just see the B-pluses and assume everything is great. When the step-dad can’t afford college and the kid hasn’t been polished to succeed, please tell me how that kid’s life turns out. I think we all know it’s very likely a very unfortunate outcome.</p>
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<p>Not a doubt in our mind. Don’t get me wrong, I think his intentions are for them to succeed, but he doesn’t understand how academically. Further, if the kids are successful, he will claim all the credit. If they’re failures, they’re not his, it’s the wife’s fault, etc. He dropped a comment last holiday about “I just don’t see how college is so great, I’m doing fine without it.” I don’t know if he’s really that ignorant, or if that’s just an insecure guy trying to sound like a around the “learned folk.”.</p>
<p>Talk to your older nephew, the one who you are footing the bill for. Ask him what he thinks about the situation. Does he think that his brother needs help?</p>
<p>I agree with the stepdad that college is not for everyone. Maybe it is not for the younger son. But if he is behind grade level, that’s a whole different can of worms. Maybe that is the tack to take, that you are helping him get on grade level, and college may or may not be in his future.</p>
<p>If your sister is not willing or able to support you, save your money. At the very very worst, the younger nephew will turn 18, and then you can help him regardless of the stepdad’s opinion. It is not too late, they have CC courses that are similar to 10th grade in HS, or a private school might take him and get him up to speed.</p>
<p>My father got straight As in school, then was sent to votech because he was poor. He joined the armed forces and when he got back from the war, went to HS at age 19. He caught up to the college prep curriculum and went to college, ended up Tau Beta Pi. The path to college does not have to be straight.</p>
<p>(do you buy books for the kids? do you take them to bookstores and let them buy what they want but also pick a few for them?)</p>
<p>The older nephew is still a bit naive. He’s only 2 months into college. He does acknowledge the current hs left him underprepared, “it’s literally 5x the pace here versus of my high school.”</p>
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<p>I don’t agree with that. More and more parents are sending their kids to CC because it’s cheaper to do the first two years of college at CC. One friend’s daughter transferred from CC to Brown, where she thrived. Another friend’s daughter transferred from CC to Santa Clara, where she got huge merit money as an engineer and won all sorts of plaudits. I’ve taken a Linear Algebra class at my CC with young strivers who would soon be transferring to schools like Berkeley and UCLA. Plenty of 95th percentile students go to CC for money reasons, and some go because they are more comfortable living at home for their first college years.</p>
<p>Our D transferred from CC to USoCal, which is considered quite competitive, and into her school of cinema, where she also thrived. There are many paths to “success,” however it’s measured. Many folks find HS not comparable to college for many reasons. Our S found his engineering a REPEAT of much of what he had already learned in HS, even tho his engineering program was highly ranked.</p>
<p>Yes, it is VERY generous that you are willing to help your nephews, but they have to be interested in being helped, as the older nephew was. If the younger nephew and his folks aren’t interested in your help, you may have to figure out other ways to offer it. Agree that it might be useful to see if they are willing to allow younger nephew to get independent testing to see how he’s doing and whether he might have any academic deficits and/or learning disabilities IF he and the family are interested. </p>
<p>It’s a delicate path to tread when you are offering something and neither the nephew or parents seem interested at this point. Pushing too hard can make them less willing to allow you to help either nephew.</p>
<p>Community colleges are a great resource, especially for students who are attracted to smaller class sizes than for freshmen at the local flagship.
Academia is so competitive that virtually all the college instructors have a Ph.d, some from schools like Stanford and Princeton. Profs may also choose to work at a community or directional college rather than something more " prestigious", because of regional preference or family ties.</p>
<p>Nurture, I’m assuming you plan to pay for,your own kids to go to college…assuming that is what they choose to do.</p>
<p>How does your sister feel? Why does step dad trump biological relative? And lastly, how stupid can people be to turn down this offer??? Gad.</p>
<p>I mentioned on another thread that some families fear their child leaving the fold or doing something different. They can also feel alienated by people who are more educated. Some will subtly or overtly sabotage the efforts of the student who wants to leave home, or not know how to give them emotional support in college. I can imagine step dad not wanting step son to upstage his position as #1 man in the house and may feel that he would lose ground if the son were more educated and began to question him. </p>
<p>Some families just want and need to do things their own way. When S was in preschool, my sis’s BF (who became her H) said it was a HUGE shame and really bad of us as parents NOT to send him to a private school after preschool. The BF “offered to pay” for our S to attend private school (as BF had attended). We politely declined as we honestly WANTED our S (and D) to attend public school to get more experience being around different kinds of kids instead of just being placed in an academic bubble from preschool thru college.</p>
<p>The BF did mention it several times that he thought we were making a huge mistake (S was and is indeed extremely bright), but we blundered along anyway. The BF never again mentioned helping pay S’s tuition, even when we eventually did transfer him into an expensive private S and an even more expensive college. It was a good thing we didn’t rely upon the “promise” to pay that the BF had made, as it would have jeopardized OUR finances and financial planning when he didn’t come up with any $$$.</p>
<p>When someone “offers” to pay, there are often “strings,” and one has little control over the strings and also how long the person will continue to pay. For example, many merit awards are based on maintaining a GPA and also making “satisfactory progress toward a degree.” Will the offer that OP (or others) make have any of these strings? What if kiddo decides to party hard and take “fluff” courses? Will kiddo be expected to show grades? Maintain a GPA? Choose an “approved” major? Pay back the generosity – financially or in other ways? These are issues that I can think of offhand that could make a family reluctant to accept generosity. I’m sure there are many others that have mentioned here as well as more that have not been raised. Money and values are touchy things.</p>
<p>Some families want to do things on their own. There is nothing wrong with that. </p>
<p>This thread was started by someone that continually violates the Terms of Service (multiple accounts) and is therefore banned. If this is a discussion people want to have in a more general way, it would make sense for someone to start a new thread on the topic. - FC</p>