3.13 is not very low and there are plenty of wonderful colleges that would accept students with that GPA. What part of the country do you live in? There are a lot of great schools out West he could get into.
3.13 is a B average…that’s not bad at all!
I think the issue is that he works very hard and has excellent test scores, so it appears there is a problem when that doesn’t correspond to top grades. A B average is fine — but not necessarily for someone who spends all waking hours studying and who has proved high academic achievement with excellent standardized test scores.
His grades now are worse than his prior grades. We tried ‘easing things up’ for him at the beginning of the semester, but that led to him failing multiple tests.
oh noooo 
My son’s issue is not boredom - the issue is that he cannot perform well on homework, quizzes, or tests, no matter how hard he tries.
His physics teacher said that he is the most attentive student in the class, but never raises his hand and cannot answer questions when cold-called on.
I’m sorry to hear that his grades are dropping.
Generally speaking, does this still feel true?
He seems content. I wouldn’t say that he’s happy, but he is not actively unhappy like he previously was.
Well, if his mood has shifted from actively unhappy to content, then I would say that’s an improvement. His mental and emotional health is the most important thing. He can always take longer to learn academics, but damaged emotional and mental health can have far more long-term impacts.
Has he expressed any feelings regarding his academic performance? Or his thoughts about what will happen after high school graduation?
Has he looked into his learning styles or even his studying techniques? @Clemsondana’s post #216 has some good examples in terms of how studying techniques can really impact results.
Are you sure he just doesn’t appear to be the most attentive…but his mind is really elsewhere?
Sorry, I don’t remember the rest of the thread - has he been texted for ADHD-PI (predominately inattentive), anxiety, and depression?
I also can’t remember all the details of this thread, but I am sorry to hear that his grades are slipping. What his teacher describes reminds me of my son. It turned out that he had a short-term auditory memory issue that made it difficult for him to retain what he was hearing in class or respond to cold-call questions. It was caught very early by an observant teacher, and he was able to overcome it, in part through memory training and in part through learning to understand and work around the issue. When my daughter started having similar problems, she went through a full neuropsych workup and, again, short term memory was the issue, in her case both auditory and visual. She deals with it well in an on-line college program, where she can listen to most material as many times as necessary to capture it, but she had some difficult years in live classrooms. I don’t know whether your son may have some similar issues, but if he does, it would be worth finding out, not only for academic reasons but for his own peace of mind.
Sounds like there’s either a disability issue or perhaps these subjects, building upon one another, grew in difficulty but the student never understood the basics so has no or little foundation.
There has to be direct experts who can help assess.
This just reminds me of something. In high school I had a friend who was a very strong student (he went to MIT after high school, along with me). He had a sister who did very well in some classes, and badly in some other classes, and no one could figure out why. Eventually they figured it out. Her hearing was very bad. She had, without even realizing it, gotten very, very good at lip reading. In the classes where the teacher always faced the class, she was lip reading and getting everything. In the classes where the teacher would sometimes face the blackboard while talking and writing, she was missing anything that the teacher was saying when facing the other way. She got hearing aids. Her grades suddenly became consistently strong across all of her classes.
Sometimes it is something small that is hard to diagnose.
There’s been a lot of discussion of this student’s deficiencies and what might be the cause.
I’m wondering what his likes are, what he loves to do, what he’s passionate about, what he’d give up other things for in order to spend time on.
He has passions and hobbies, he enjoys reading popular mathematics books and articles. He is also a fan of European soccer.
Interesting. I believe that my son’s neuropsychological testing ruled any auditory processing disorder out. The psychologist read a passage aloud and my son had to summarize the passage to her, and my son scored well.
My son has a very, very, very good long-term memory, he is able to remember the full plots of books that he read as a young kid. I don’t know about his general short-term memory, but I haven’t noticed him having any difficulties.
Yes, he has. On his test of attention and impulse control he showed above-average attention and average impulse control, ruling out ADHD.
He has some anxiety and depression. The neuropsychologist did not believe that he has these disorders in of themself, rather, he feels anxious and depressed because he fails to meet his expectations of his academic performance.
Yes, he does get higher scores when he reads the textbook instead of watching the videos his teachers post. He’s also found that he retains the material better if he does not take notes and just focuses on the teacher. These observations were quite helpful.
He has always been quite unhappy about his academic performance. He was rejected ED from a ‘reach’ school that he applied to, but he applied EA to a nearby school that he likes and will likely get into.
I would be very, very supportive if/when your son gets into this college. And I would be trying to help him pivot away from feeling lousy about his grades, and towards feeling great about the other aspects of his life- friends, volunteer work, loving family, activities he enjoys.
At some point, the focus on grades is going to really grind away at his self esteem.
Aren’t there other things to love about him besides his academic performance? Can’t you emphasize how proud you are of him as a person/citizen/family member?
If you’ve taken the right steps to identify possible learning issues or a medical problem which interferes with his academic work-- and come up dry-- it’s time to love the child you have in front of you, not the mythic 'perfect" kid who was advanced for his age, was deemed “gifted” and now seems to have fallen off that pedestal. You can’t keep grinding away about a medical/neurological issue which could “explain” away his grades (which are perfectly respectable, by the way). Time to embrace the kid you have.
I spent a career as an educator, part of which was as a school psychologist. I’ll be the first one to say that in K-12 schooling, we ask students to be good at everything.
But in life we only have to be good at one thing.
And college is more like the rest of life where the goal is to find your focus and specialize in it.
I agree with Blossom. I think that it’s time to help your son focus on his passions and not to worry about the rest of it.
Just my 2 cents.