gaming the system....well...yeah

MmeZeeZee
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:46:40 +0000

I think the difference between gaming the system and simply doing what gets you the most knowledge and a better education is a question of intent.

In your child’s case, he wanted (he? sorry, forgot) to catch up on a subject he should have already known by college, but which, due to circumstances beyond his control, he was not as skilled in as he ought to have been. I see it as wanting to make up for lost possibilities, not get ahead of the game in the future. Presumably the benefit would come from the 4-year college’s being a slightly easier course, since initially you were considering him taking it for a grade. That’s not “gaming the system”.

On the other hand, auditing course after course and taking seven years to graduate with a BS, because you took each course twice, in order to get a GPA that would get you funded, though your natural talent and ability to put in the effort are far below what the GPA suggests, would be gaming the system. Unless you planned to pay double for med school by repeating each course, you would be asking to be admitted based on false pretenses.

Doing it once to make up for lack of skill gained in high school=a good idea.
Doing it repeatedly to mask lack of natural talent=disingenuous.



I’m confused here: your child is talking a class essentially 3 times, first in high school, then off-the-record in college and then officially in another college? If I understand this correctly, you aren’t “gaming the system,” you are simply delaying reality. If your child can’t learn this material in one pass, how exactly is that child going to get through the tougher advanced pre-med classes, to say nothing of med school? Some kids just can’t learn certain subjects quickly enough to major in certain fields, be it medicine or engineering; isn’t it better that they learn this early in the process and redirect their energy to a major that’s a better fit?



The OP specifically stated that the quality of high school instruction in that subject was poor, and that the child wanted to make up the material before taking it in college.

Hence, only auditing this one class, and not the entire curriculum. I think that makes sense. There are some classes you have to take again in college, in which everyone else has a good base from high school. It’s reasonable to play catch up if you essentially missed that part of high school.