Outcome for an average student - AMA

Parents Forum
1

Just now returning after a long hiatus from CC. However, as my son graduated HS in 2020, I thought I’d provide an update for how things went and are going for him.

To recap: My son was an average student, bright (don’t we all think so?) but no 4.5gpa/1500SAT. As a single father with an income far below 6 figures, I/we searched high and low (70+ college applications) for an out-of-state school to offer enough financial aid for him to get an out-of-state experience. He had several affordable options and chose University of Dayton.

Post College: My son did not graduate in a highly sought major - he switched from Economics to Communications. He graduated in 4yrs with average meh grades, without a decent job offer, and moved back home to figure out his next step.

After a couple months of applications he accepted a part-time entry level position (that required a college degree) with a Fortune200 company. Several of his friends said he settled for a “lesser” job and should have kept looking. One thing he liked about the job/company is there was a clear path for advancement if he did well.

He learned the job, was given more responsibility/duties, went from part-time to full time, and received small raises. He saved the majority of his paycheck, planning to use it as a downpayment on a home when he received a raise, and bided his time.

He was overlooked for a significant promotion and I suggested he look out of state. His hometown has a higher-than-average cost of living, and real estate specifically was more than he could qualify for. Besides, he seemed to have hit a ceiling at his job.

Fortunately, his company operates all over the country (and world), so he looked for transfers. He decided on Baltimore. We visited to look at different neighborhoods he might move to so we could decide on the right fit for him. He talked to the manager of hiring in that area. Son had hoped for a promotion, but he was hired as a lateral move, with a promise but no raise. He accepted the position.

More important than an immediate raise/promotion was that son’s income qualified to buy a home in Baltimore. He moved in April to start work, lived in a hotel for 3 weeks, then closed on his fully-renovated rowhouse.

Last week, after working there for 2 months, he was informed he was being transferred to a different spot in the city and would be given a promotion (and 50% raise) in a month or so. He’s on a career path at the company that could realistically see him over 6 figures in another couple of years.

I say this to let other parents know, we don’t have to feel the world is coming to an end if your child isn’t the HS class valedictorian, or doesn’t attend an elite college, or graduates from college in a major that doesn’t ensure a high salary from day 1.

For my son, college was a waystation, not the ultimate goal. He entered college not as a fully mature adult, but as a teenager who progressed along the maturation process while in college. Rightly or wrongly, son did not think he needed to earn a 4.0 GPA while in college. When he faltered in one major, he took my advice and promptly switched to a less demanding major. Honestly, I really wanted him to earn that Economics degree, but the result speaks for itself. He bought his first home 18 months after graduating, at age 24, with every dollar of his downpayment+closing costs coming from money he saved after graduating college. He plans to pay it off in 4-6 years.

Parents of average students, keep up the good work. With your encouragement and attuned ear, your students will be just fine, whether they earn a degree in a highly-sought major, or earn that “C’s Get Degrees” degree.

Ask me anything - I’ll answer most

48 Likes
2

Thanks for posting this and congrats to your son!

Do you think your son got value from going to college and especially, going away to college? I mean beyond the ability to get a job, but was it a growth experience for him? Could you talk about that aspect?

2 Likes
3

I think all students mature in college. In the wider picture. all 18-22 year olds are in a maturation period, in or out of college.

What I think college provided was an arena where he began to accept more responsibility for his outcome. Not that his college GPA was better than his HS GPA, but he looked at the outcome more maturely. He knew he could study more and get better grades, and in some classes, he did because he saw value in it. He saw less value in other classes, and put less effort into them. The maturation part of it was he acknowledged he controlled the outcome, and he accepted his grades (good and not so good) without trying to deflect.

As a parent who was once a high-achieving student, it was difficult at first for me to see him acknowledge he did not care enough to get better grades in all classes. As a man who might have engaged in some of my own blame deflection when I was his age, I realized we all do different things better or worse than each other. He might not have been as engaged a student as I would have liked, but I saw he was a better person than I was at his age. I accepted that as a win.

Yes, I think going away (an 8hr drive) was an extra benefit of his journey. A lot of his HS classmates going to college in-state (and my friends’ children in college in-state) visited home as much as 3 or 4 weekends a month. For the first three years, my son came home only for winter break and summer. Personally, I feel being on his own like that allowed him to gain confidence not just being in a college setting, but being on his own, responsible for his own entertainment. It’s not necessary for all students, and it might even be detrimental for certain students. But for my son, it was beneficial.

19 Likes
4

Great to hear from you! Congrats to your son on finding his path and on the house purchase… and thanks for returning with an update!

If you were starting the college admissions process with him today, would you feel differently about the array of options than you did in 2020, given the political, economic, and cultural shifts that have occurred?

2 Likes
5

I would have done the same as then … because the reality is all those things about America haven’t really shifted in my opinion. Things are the same in America as they have always been. Recessions happen like clockwork every 7-10 years. This president isn’t really any worse for cultural relations than the ones who gave us the Gulf War under false pretenses, Willie Horton race-baiting fear mongering commericials, mass incarceration, union busting riots, Teddy’s “manifest destiny policy”, the Exclusion Act, all the way back to whatever era we spotlight. I do what I’ve always had no choice but to do, which is use my brain to figure out a way to find cracks in the persistent oppression America was founded upon. (sorry, you asked :laughing: )

Admittedly, I’ve taken a different education path with my younger daughters than with my son. Mostly because they are different personalities than my son, and I try to give each of my kids access to (and guidance for) the paths better suited for each of them. My girls have both been homeschooled since middle school. One will soon start classes at a community college, with plans to later transfer to a 4yr university. The other is taking a slower path of self-discovery, which I fully support.

Inadvertently, my life might have given my kids cues for how they approach theirs, so I guess I have no one but myself to blame. I myself have not lived a conventional life (high-achieving student who dropped out of college, worked and took work sabbaticals for the next 15 years, haven’t had a W2 in 25 years, periods of multiple income streams, etc) so I did not shy away when my young ladies chose less conventional paths.

12 Likes
6

Congrats!

1 Like
7

it’s terrific to hear how your son is doing! Thanks for the update.

2 Likes
8

Thank you for this. This speaks to some things that I’ve been thinking about a lot and, to some extent, struggling with and against right now.

My older son was easy. Super driven, sets a goal and achieves it, very conventional college student in every way. My younger son… is not that. He’s very bright. Heck, he’s probably the smartest of all of us. But he’s still working on that maturation piece. He picked a college that was absolutely right for him in a lot of ways - he needed to get away, start fresh, have a different environment and have the space to learn and grow and mature.

But. In picking that college, he also chose a more expensive option. Which was fine, because he had a $10k/yr scholarship. Well, he lost the scholarship this last year. He can get it back, but it will require a lot of hard work. If he had gotten no less than 4 As and 1 B spring semester it would’ve evened out, no loss of money. He didn’t. So we signed him up for summer classes - three. But he didn’t get high enough grades in the spring for even three As to balance out. So he will definitely lose the scholarship for at least the fall semester.

I’m struggling with watching this, because it feels like he’s not putting in the effort he could, and he’s not doing it, because it’s just not worth it to him. And what I’ve been trying to communicate to my spouse is that we need to stop thinking about the grades. We need to accept that the cost has gone up (financially we can afford it. I don’t want to pay it because I think he should’ve been able to maintain a 3.0, but it’s the same we paid for his older brother and we have the money) and we need to remember that there’s so much more to college than just grades. That some of what we are paying for is the time for him to mature and gain that confidence and to become the person he’s going to become.

I think because my spouse did college first as a commuter at a community college, then finished as an older student at a very urban school he didn’t have the same experience that a typical student has who lives on campus and really becomes part of that community so he’s not grasping the other benefits that our son can reap.

Anyhoo, sorry to make this so much about me. Our son is living with us this summer while working full time and taking classes and I’ve really been struggling with how to get my husband to stop harping about “have you done your homework yet” and “what grades are you getting and how can you improve that” so all of this is very top of mind for me right now.

8 Likes
9

Is your S becoming a part of that community? I’m not picking up on anything about your S at school other than the fact that he isn’t getting the grades necessary to keep his scholarship.

10

Thank you so much for sharing part of your and your son’s story. It’s heartwarming and reassuring to read, especially in an environment (online or offline) where there can be lots of pressure to be academically notable.

How do you do this? Are there certain commonalities in how you raise all of your kids (i.e. the non-negotiables) and then guidance based on their individual paths? And was there a certain age when you started customizing things more for them, or have they always been on divergent paths and you’ve treated them that way accordingly?

11

I once harped like your husband. All situations and people are different, but in my case, I realized I misinterpreted my son.

I thought he wanted to get better grades, but wasn’t aware how hard he needed to work to get them … or that he did not know the later benefits of getting good grades … or that he was somehow forgetting to do certain things. It was none of that. He knew good grades could benefit him and he knew how to get better grades. He simply did not want to change his life to get straight A’s.

Eventually, I let it go. Son was not flunking out (of HS before, nor college later). He was simply not going to be on the honor roll.

After my son changed his major, he realized he needed to make up a couple of classes in his new major. The timing meant he had to take 3 summer school classes while home over the summer. I was worried because he’d never taken summer classes and I thought he might not keep up with the faster pace of summer classes. Son aced all three, with A’s and a B. He said he really like the topics and he wanted to use those classes to pick up his overall GPA a bit, so he would not have to worry as much about good grades during the fall classes he might not like as much.

He’d learned when to push hard enough to get the outcome he wanted. I wanted all A’s, all the time, but that was not for me to dictate. Son knew what he needed to do to make continuing his education viable, and he did it. When I realized he asked me when he did not know how to do something, that was another clue to completely eliminate harping.

2 Likes
12

I’m not EconPop, but I want to address this on the thread.

I sincerely doubt your older son was a conventional college student in every way. You don’t mention his college GPA, but from what I suspect, your oldest continued on the norm-for-CC excellent academics trend.

To provide some context for those of us who live in a very academically-focused bubble, below are some average college GPAs based on various categories. Sources for the average GPAs are linked below (which also shared their sources which seemed legitimate, but I did not follow through on all the links).

Group Average College GPA
Total 3.15
Men 3.09
Women 3.2
Other (Nonbinary, Gender-Nonconforming) 3.19
High Food Security 3.21
Parent’s Education Level: Doctoral 3.33
Chemistry majors 2.78
Psychology majors 2.78
Economics majors 2.95
Education majors 3.36
English majors 3.33

Source has categories of GPAs by gender, family income, food security, and parental education level.

This is the source I used for average GPA by majors. It also lists the average GPAs for the Ivy League, some liberal arts colleges that get airtime on CC, and some large public Us (that also get decent airtime on CC).

https://www.thoughtco.com/average-college-gpa-4163565

5 Likes
13

It’s great to see you @econpop and I’m so happy to hear about your S’s success!

For anyone who has harped to their kids about grades, especially when in college, my H and I check each other by asking ‘what type of relationship do you want with your adult child?’

My S didn’t really start working as hard as he could for grades until he transferred colleges. Lots of things were a factor in his effort re: school and grades, but suffice to say if we had been harping regularly about grades when he was in college (we did sometimes register our displeasure about his grades, mostly during jr high and HS), I feel certain he and I would have a different relationship today (he graduated college last Dec.)

4 Likes
14

I’m no expert and some of the following may apply only to my family and our situation.

My main two non-negotiables are being very literate and being financially literate. My son doesn’t read for enjoyment, but he is a very good reader. My second child was reading at a college level while in elementary school, and likes reading for pleasure. My youngest also reads extremely well, but is closer to my son than me and my other daughter when it comes to how much she reads for pleasure.

The financial literacy is less about stocks and bonds, and more about their personal relationships with money in a Capitalistic society. I won’t get too much in the details of my philosophy about this, but I like how my son has approached it so far. And my youngest is very into this. With my middle child, let’s just say financial literacy is a work in progress.

But that gets at the last sentence of your post … their divergence. They’re all different, and they’re not robots. In all things, when it comes to my kids one will be best, one will be second best, and the other will be the least capable. But it will be a different order for each topic. It’s my job to realize their differences and help them customize their lives to fit their strengths and desires.

Mostly, I’ve tried to eliminate all preconceived notions I may have had, and allow their personalities guide how I support them. I’m probably not communicating this as clearly as possible.

7 Likes
15

Great job, Dad.

From a single mom who knows.

6 Likes
16

Can’t put my finger on exactly why, but there’s something kinda beautiful about this to me.

I’m glad he’s doing well.

5 Likes
17

Thank you so much for coming back to update! I very much remember your son’s journey. What a great story about him. It helps reinforce that our kids know themselves more than we realize.

My son has parallels to yours. Meh grades, no post-grad plans. Took a job we weren’t sure was great for him, but it ultimately enabled him to work for himself, living the life he wants to live.

Hope you stick around for a while because there are plenty of people who could use your insight :slightly_smiling_face:

9 Likes
18

As a fellow parent of three, I can say this perfectly sums up the dynamic. The tricky part for me has been putting appropriate weight on categories that are not easily quantifiable - it’s fairly obvious who is the most athletic or has the best grades, but less so who is the most patient or most generous with their time. My child who tends to lag in the former categories excels in the latter, but not as many people notice or praise this, and I sense that the comparisons weigh on her self-esteem. I try to be mindful about celebrating these less visible traits, but on some level I’m still a little worried for her.

As I think about it, there’s even a spectrum of preference on things like where to eat or where to go on vacation - for every idea, one will love it; one will hate it; one doesn’t care. Somehow a vote among three people always ends up tied at 1.5-1.5. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

4 Likes
19

Thank you all for thoughts (and sorry for the brief hijack @EconPop)

To answer a few questions / respond, then I’ll return us to our programming (unless this is useful to anyone).

@kelsmom - S25 is becoming part of the community, maybe not how I envisioned, but in different ways. He hasn’t found a club or organization that he wants to be part of, but didn’t put a ton of effort into that - that’s a goal of his for sophomore year. But he has a solid group of 5-6 very close friends that attend the school events together. He goes to Clemson, and has attended athletic events for I think every sport, he’s in a class that plans and builds houses for Habitat for Humanity (class continues in the fall) and he’s active with those folks, and he frequently tells me how much it feels like home and how happy he is to have found a place that feels so special to him. I’d like him to find a club or activity too, but he seems to have found the community he wanted, and that’s valuable.

@EconPop -re: the above - I think that’s true for S25 too. I also think, like your son, he knows when/how to push harder. I might wish he’d do it now, but it really is up to him. I think I’m there in understanding that, but I don’t think my husband is.

and @AustenNut - yes, good check and reminder for me. Older son not really conventional when I think about it. He’s super driven, like sometimes I wish he was less driven so that he’d take more time to enjoy himself. He did extremely well in college- he graduated last month with a 3.98 (he got one B in a summer class that was virtual and asynchronous and he still complains about it). I shouldn’t compare the boys and I think I generally don’t. I would never expect S25 to get the same grades as S22, he’s a different kid with different motivations. I mainly brought up older kid to point out that although we sort of did this rodeo once, it was such a different rodeo that now husband and I are trying to figure out new ways to manage.

@Mwfan1921 - I need to make this:

more clear to my husband, because this is what I’m worried about.

@EconPop - I really appreciate your focus on financial literacy. I’ve had to withdraw job offers from people because of their financial issues (it’s a security clearance issue), and it’s heartwrenching. Both times that I did it and the person called me to discuss, it was obvious that they were trying to fix things, but that no one had ever taught them the basics and they got into trouble. It was just so sad. I think a focus on financial literacy as a key part of learning to adult is really important.

5 Likes
20

I think my son will ultimately end up working for himself. He absolutely detests working for someone else - he inherited my disdain of being managed. He’s good at his job, but he’s absolutely giddy about being able to walk away from a 40hr work week while he’s still a young man

This job is very good for him now. He’s learning a lot of what he’ll need to take the next step after he quits. Also, being a homeowner is already having a huge effect on him. He’s still maturing and learning what he wants his life to look like, and I’m loving the front-row view.

5 Likes