My son begged to attend a very expensive college because it was the most elite school he was accepted to. Yes, I know, that’s a very poor reason to choose a school. However, he did make a good pitch as to why it would be a great fit (struggles with EF and the class sizes are small) and we were promised straight As. My son went to a very rigorous high school, is very smart (gifted) and is finding college classes easy. But even though he is finding classes easy, and even with an EF coach, I am seeing assignments are often submitted late and grades are not looking stellar. We are full pay and it’s 90k per year!!! He had options for state schools with scholarships at half the price or less. We have more than half of college saved, but it will certainly be a stretch to pay for all 4 years. We’ve worked our butts off saving for the past 18 years and I’m feeling like I’ve been taken advantage of. We have to kill ourselves working long hours, but my kid can’t submit assignments on time or bother to go to office hours??? I feel that if he wants to get average grades, he can get them at a much less expensive school, or, take out loans to pay for 1/3. But in my heart I know loans will be a giant mistake because he is not planning for the kind of career where he will ever be able to handle the payments.
Has anyone ever been in this boat and has found a way to handle it?
Fact is…he could be at your inexpensive colleges and still be turning in assignments late, and not getting things done.
You don’t get A grades because you are paying more for an expensive college. The student has to earn A grades.
When my kid went to orientation in 2003 at Boston University, the Dean said that most of the kids of the parents in the room would get their first B and C grades. It was college.
We were almost full pay parents at two expensive private schools. We never thought that our kids should get all A grades. All we asked was that they do their best. We also were clear that if they didn’t maintain a 3.0 GPA, they could come back home and attend a public university at far less money. BUT that was our choice. Both kids graduated with GPAs above 3.0. And yes, both got at least one C grade in college.
So…I would say it is not fair to expect high grades just because you are paying a high cost for your student to attend college.
Many kids don’t get all A grades, and still are successful.
I think a conversation with the EF coach might be in order…to find out what is happening to prevent on time assignment completion. And what perhaps can be done to help that.
Encourage your kid to do their best…and please don’t show disappointment if the student gets B or even a C grade. Encourage! Don’t discourage. My opinion.
This. Quite frankly, it sounds like the EF coach is not doing what you’re paying him to do. I recognize he/she can’t force your son to do something but isn’t the main point of an EF coach at college to help get assignments in on time, etc?
It’s another discussion but ideally these issues should be sorted out before the kid goes to college. Scaffolded grades at high school tend not to be sustainable. Bottom line is that there are clear EF issues that need to be sorted out, maybe they need a different coach.
@LDM_1 , how is your son feeling about this? I know my kid who really battled with EF issues for a long while would always feel terrible when they let things slip. And many kids have an adjustment phase at college. Assuming your son is a freshman, he’s most likely still in that phase. There is a continuum somewhere between support and consequences and it’s hard to know from the outside where on that line a specific family should be.
But that’s the point, he’s not doing his best. He is not finding the class materials hard. He is too busy with his social life and is an EF hot mess. We had good $40k options, but he begged for this $90k school because it’s a feeder and promised top grades so he could go to a top grad school becaue his goals require it.
This sounds like the main issue (yay for his social life, because that’s an important part of college, and one that 2E kids can struggle with). People with EF issues are not lazy, they really do struggle with planning, etc, and that is what the coach is supposed to help with. Have you spoken directly to the coach? Is it a private coach or linked to the school’s disability office? Does he have any accommodations with the disability office to help academic success?
He went to a school with zero scaffolding. Several years ago we tried an EF coach for several months with no success. Once diagnosed with adhd grades improved due to the extra time accommodation. Now in his freshman year we’ve been working with a new EF coach for 3+ months. He doesn’t think it helps. The problem is I know it takes a while to see results so I don’t necessarily want to make a change.
I think his EF coach needs to have a chat with him about what it will take to attain his goals.
But I will say…many first term freshman have this adjustment period and don’t get top grades. Is he failing his courses? Or just not getting all A grades? There is a difference.
Extended time doesn’t necessarily help with turning assignments in on time. In fact, it can sometimes work at cross purposes because the kid can procrastinate getting things done.
Does your son have any accommodations through the disabilty office at his college?
I will add, straight As, in college (or at least many of the colleges I know of) is VERY VERY hard even for very smart kids.
Some classes are curved (one of my kids is presently in a university class where only a few kids get As, and kids with Bs are working their butt off - many first years are getting their first Cs and Ds and are working hard).
We have a family friend that was a salutatorian (there were few) at a top 20, and I think there were 3 kids with straight As (shared valdectorian) and 4 that had 1 A- (shared salutatorian). That is pretty rare out of thousands!
I don’t have a child with EF issues so my views may be off base. But, what I believe I’m hearing is less a concern with the grades themselves but a concern that you think he’s not prioritizing/doing all he can/should to get the best grades he can. This would be a problem for me as well, especially given the agreement he made with you to allow him to attend the school. My focus would be less on the grades and more on expectations based on that agreement:
assignments need to be submitted on time
you expect him to go to office hours x times a week
any other expectations that can be verified
These things can be objectively verified and I would have penalties if those are not done. Up to you the penalty - but for me, given that relative finances were clear (cost of this school vs alternatives) and what you expected if you stretched for him - that there should be financial considerations to him. Could be for each late submitted assignment or office hours agreed to attend but missed he owes you X. This could be paid for from summer savings, deducted from allowance if you provide him one (that he uses for the social life he’s enjoying and clearly would not want to give up), or a loan that he must take out. I know you don’t like the idea of loans so you could set aside the money and ultimately pay them off but the threat might be sufficient. I don’t know your son (stating the obvious) but you need to figure out what penalty might motivate him.
Again, I don’t have a child with EF so perhaps my suggestion is off-base.
I’m going to give you my two cents as the mom of 2 ADHD kids who struggled with EF. It’s not fair of you to expect straight A’s no matter what college your kid attends or how much it costs. It is reasonable to expect your kid to put forth their best effort but demanding perfection is unrealistic. College is a huge adjustment both academically and socially - especially for someone who has ADHD. Give the kid a break and give him a chance to figure things out. It may take a semester or two for him to hit his stride. In most college classes, a couple of late assignments are not going to be catastrophic. I don’t think either of my kids ever had a class where daily assignments accounted for more than 10 to 15 percent of the grade. How did midterm exams go? If he is acing exams and finding the material easy - you probably don’t have a lot to worry about.
College is not high school, full stop. High school is a cake walk for many students. My son also went to a rigorous high school all honors /Aps no regular classes #1 in state the year he went and ranked in the top #25 nationally that year. Saying all of this getting all As is not the point of college. Gaining knowledge and experience and growing up a bit is.
My son took 18 credits /semester. Worked 10-15 hours a week. Started a now known tech organization as a freshman and getting $15,000 in grants to run it. Did well in his classes but did get his first “C”ever. When I asked if he needed a tutor he told me that was a high grade for that class and most importantly he played flag football Sunday night’s at 10:30 pm sometimes wearing his cookie monster bottoms. Lol. My point is he was an very active participant on his college campus. Made a name for himself. Had a positive change for his community and had some fun. He told me once that in engineering “we all struggle together “….. That’s college.
Self advocating for your son to go to professor hour’s and get the help he needs with peer to peer study groups etc. There is a book that might help your son and its really not about getting As. It’s a book on time management and has many strategies that are suggested with kids with adhd etc. Quick read and many useful tips.
Would it be ok if he slacked, but passed, at an public/less expensive school because it was $40K?
College is a different level of independence, little hand holding, if any - and perhaps that’s the issue. He may need to learn to grow into it.
I’d also advise that highly ranked doesn’t mean more rigorous. It may but not necessarily.
You can have a talk with him but I wouldn’t tie the monetary aspect to it.
If the budget is an issue and it sounds like it might be, that conversation should have been a year ago and a school choice made with it in mind.
This may simply be a part of learning how to be an adult - and hopefully he’ll figure it out on his own or with the extra resources he is provided via coaching.
@LDM_1 First, no one, regardless of how bright they are, can promise A’s. College is in so very many ways different from HS (lots of unstructured time, a very different social environment, lots of planning and time management needed, few if any chances to do “extra credit” to clean up problems during the semester, usually one big paper and/or one or 2 big tests rather than many shorter assignments, to name a few) and all of this takes a major adjustment. If this is your kid’s freshman year/first semester, it sounds not surprising that they are having challenges. Choose to study or go to the football game? Use the several hours between classes to study or go to the student union? Or simply play on social media? Can they read 100 pages for an assignment due Monday when they went to the pep rally and game? And they intended to study but they got invited by their roommate and they didn’t want to say no. Making friends is important.
EF kids have poor time perception, poor time management and , obviously, poor organizational skills. The tools they used in HS are probably insufficient in college.
@LDM_1 Right now, as we have said for years on CC, love the kid on the couch. If he truly cannot handle the demands of a top college, even with support, then talk about transferring . But not yet. Have him (you cannot do it) be sure to meet with the college disability services office if his accommodations aren’t yet in place or if they are but he hasn’t met with them.
I have worked in the field of evaluating kids with a variety of disabilities. Seeing college freshman crash just before big assignments are due before Thanksgiving is sadly super common. AND, my favorite accommodation, especially for organization and other EF challenges, is to have only one test a day. They simply can’t get themselves organized well to successfully prepare to take more than one test a day. But disability offices need time to review the materials that have hopefully already been provided. He needs to contact them ASAP.
I will cross my fingers and hope your family provided all the necessary documentation prior to his starting school, to have accommodations documentation on file. Sometimes they are all on file but the student never follows through to get them implemented. Thats not uncommon. But I cringe when I hear families say (for example) “well, he seemed to be doing well so we decided to let him start college without XXXX (fill in the blank— ADHD meds, accommodations, etc) because he wanted to have a fresh start”. UGH. That’s like saying “he sees and hears well and he wants to be a “normal kid” so we are letting him start school without his glasses or hearing aids”. Please, no.
Getting straight A grades in college is generally much more difficult than in high school, and would be an unrealistic expectation as a condition for continued parental college funding.