More questions about C.A.R.E

jannahickey
Tue, 15 Jan 2013 03:23:40 +0000

I agree with Pasbal that ilovethe47 doesn’t have the firsthand knowledge to assist you with this. He has admitted as much in other posts. And, SrVishi, you will come to recognize that almost without fail when Pasbal tells you something it is accurate.

SrVishi, you are required during the SBP to do a certain amount of study hours (based upon your incoming GPA), also some testing if you appear to fall into an area of academic need and then classes are many times based off of how your testing went.

Because my daughter did not need to do any testing (her GPA and test scores were high enough to preempt her from this) I cannot tell you how tightly CARE controls your need for “special” classes based upon these test results or if you would need to undergo these tests.

You are not allowed to take more than 7 credit hours during the SBP and they encouraged my daughter only to take 6. She took 7. They asked her to take American History and she insisted on Ancient European History. They did make her take a diversity class (worth only one credit) which she found boring, not because of the content but because they was no diversity in the class. It was all based on black history and she has studied this in high school and middle school and all the way back to elementary school. She would have appreciated it more if they had included Indian, Asian, etc. history in this class as that truly would have been a diversity class.

Additionally, during the SBP you are required to meet in groups and in 1:1 sessions with your CARE advisor (just an older CARE student) on a weekly basis. There are also many larger assemblies that require your attendance and many of your smaller meetings come with little to no notice. For instance, when we first dropped her off at Landis, we stayed in town for a few days with friends. We went to pick her up for dinner one night before we left and before we could even get to campus her advisor had called a mandatory impromptu meeting for the 12 or so students in her small group. It was a minor thing but gave the feel of being disorganized. I want to qualify this part of my entry as much of the CARE leadership has now left and the new leadership may be much more organized. My information is almost two years old.

During the SBP you are subject to a curfew (I believe this was 11PM on school nights and slightly later on the weekends). This didn’t bother her too much because she’s not much of a partier and so didn’t feel the need to go out late at night. The few times she wanted to go get a milkshake or something after curfew she just got her advisor and they drove wherever together and it was fine.

Your first two semesters at FSU beyond the SBP you ARE required to not only do a certain amount of procotored CARE study hours in the CARE lab but you must also attend a set number of retention meetings, etc. These can interfere with your classes but they offer multiple sessions of each assembly so you are mandated to attend even when they are completely without value to your particular situation. For instance, my daughter was a junior for a portion of her first year but was required to attend sessions as if she was a sophomore. When she brought this up it was dismissed and she was held to the sophomore requirements.

When she entered her major college this past fall she was told that her proctored CARE study hours would be done away with but she is now required to meet with an academic success coach once or twice a month even though it is evident from her extensive course load and Dean’s list designation that she is academically successful. She doesn’t mind this as much because the CARE hours are gone and she’s willing to meet with the advisor in order to avoid the CARE study hours. She is still required to attend infrequent assemblies as part of the program even now that she is a junior.

The CARE program took away most of her “extra” renewable CARE funding (~$3000 annual first generation grant that is only available to CARE students at FSU) after her freshman year just like they do to most freshman admitted through the standard FSU admission process. They tied this to the fact that her FAFSA form was late being received but I filed it before I went to sleep on NYE (around 1 AM EST like I do every year)so I don’t know how all that many people could have filed their FAFSAs prior to hers. She supplemented this by going to her major college and explaining her situation in regard to financial aid and they gave her a scholarship that more than made up for what she lost through the First Gen grant from CARE.

Overall, I have mixed feelings on the program. Pasbal can attest to the fact that I was not a big fan of theirs going into this school year but that’s changed slightly because I think most of these things are put in place to help the majority of the kids. Just because my daughter did not need all of the measures they put in place does not mean that the majority does not.

No one had to know that she was in the CARE program except her professors who were required to fill out grade progress reports for her that she had to turn in to the CARE office (most professors had no idea what these forms were or what to do with them as she didn’t take any special CARE classes). And some of her sorority sisters know because her sorority also requires study hours and they allowed her to use the CARE hours in place of the sorority study hours. Now that she has above a 3.5 she is not required to do any study hours at all. But no one ever treated her any differently because she was a CARE student - except for the CARE staff.

I hope this is helpful. I read her some of the comments from the various CARE threads over the last few days and she was discouraged to think there might be other students out there that could be as successful as she has been and would be discouraged by some of the comments others are making about this program.