<p>We insist that our d take a minimum of 12hours partly to maintain her insurance coverage. Every year we have to produce a letter from the school proving that she is taking no less than 12 hours per semester or her coverage is dropped. Isn’t that standard?</p>
<p>I think that what matters is that the college considers the student to be fulltime, which appears to have been the case with the OP’s S.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with what the OP’s S did. Overall, I’d rate it a successful first semester based on what I’ve seen with other strong students who attend a top school and based on how the OP has said that her S is taking responsibility for his grades and dropping the course.</p>
<p>I agree with someone earlier on this thread that a big part of the college experience – especially at the top colleges --is the ECs, which at such colleges tend to include lots of work with productive clubs and other organizations. While the students certainly party, for such students, partying isn’t what makes college special: What makes college special is being able to run with their ideas in student-run media, arts, community service and other activities – in ways that they weren’t able to do in high school.</p>
<p>What the students learn from such experiences often is the kind of skills and insights that often people in professional jobs don’t get until relatively late in their career when they finally get to manage things. </p>
<p>Learning how to balance all of that while also having a social life and thriving academically are important lessons that students learn by trial and error. I agree that I’d rather have an offspring with a 3.0 average who is socializing and participating in ECs than one with a 4.0 who’s only studying. </p>
<p>The peer interaction particularly at top colleges is important because if one makes a lot of friends and stays in contact with them, one will have an amazing network throughout one’s life. Honestly, if all one did were to make lots of friends at a top college, one would have accomplished a great deal in terms of helping one’s future opportunities.</p>
<p>Starbright I love your perspective, and that is mine as well but many tell me (inc husband) that I’m being naive. My son LOVES college, loves the big city he is in, is thriving on his independence, has learned about laundry, bank accounts, party moderation, hasnt gotten into trouble and has made tons of friends.He is very much into the social scene/nightlife of the big city, and is exploring his musical and athletic talents as well.(and no, no one that he regularly hangs out with has dropped out after this semester). He practically beams every time I see him and I am fortunate to live an hour away so I’ve been able to meet him for dinner once or twice a month. So yes, he’s getting a well rounded experience and has made it through first semester. Tuition: $54,000. happiness: priceless? (but with a time limit)</p>
<p>Starbright, I really enjoyed reading your post as I see our S all over it. He is a high school senior but I think will continue the style you describe in his college years. We pushed for him to spend more time with his nose in his books, but he chose to have a B average and get very involved in activities, sports and an active social life. When I picture him in college next year, I envision a kid who could get As but continues to get mostly B’s and some occasional Cs, but affords himself of everything else the college has to offer. </p>
<p>I was thinking we should set a 3.0 goal for the college years, but maybe graduating in a specified period of time is better like you suggested. Then we can let him loose and see what he does with himself. I just hope he thrives and balances doing well enough in school with enjoying all the other things. Time will tell. </p>
<p>Dubette58, I agree with the others that think your S is doing fine for a first semester freshman. The fact that he loves college and is thriving would be worth every penny to me. It is a big transition from high school to college and all in all, it sounds like he made the transition well.</p>
<p>Both of our girls have merit scholarships in which a specified GPA is needed in order to continue to receive merit money so in our house, it would have been an issue as the expectation was that maintaining that GPA was essential. College students do settle down more in sophomore year especially as they begin to see that success is much more than just showing up once they’ve made a successful transition to college. They need to develop relationships within their departments and mentors who will help them with summer internships,research opportunities or programs or outside contacts to develop their interests, develop resumes to help them stand out, develop leadership roles in their ec’s or campus jobs. While they may have joined lots of clubs freshman year, usually some of those fall by the wayside as they devote more time to the areas they are the most passionate about. Some of those efforts result in departmental awards, sometimes with monetary rewards. If they want to study abroad, most schools require a certain GPA in order to do so. Neither of mine are in business or finance but I know from h.s. friends that in order to get a prestigious summer internship which frequently leads to a career offer down the road, you need to be at the top of those in your major with outstaning recommendations. If you just do the minimum and get by… those opportunities will not be there. Neither of my daughters were in sororities or chose schools with big Greek presence, but leadership and rewarding opportunities can be found there as well.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, as a college senior (with only a handful of undergrad grades left to earn), I’ve gotten 2 C-range grades, a handful (6, I think) of B-range grades, and two A-'s. I’m likely to graduate with high honors from my university (cum GPA in the 3.75-ish range) and majors (major GPAs in the 3.9-4.0 ranges), with two majors and minor in four years. True, my GPA isn’t the perfect 4.0 it was in high school, but in these 3.5 years, I’ve also: taught, published a peer-reviewed article (with more under-review/in-prep), done multiple theses, done a ton of research, joined a sorority, worked two jobs, had a summer internship with the government, presented research at national conferences, been named in a $1 million+ government grant, taken, until this semester, no fewer than 19 hours a semester, joined and held leadership positions in student clubs, gotten excellent clinical internships, and so on. And that doesn’t even account for the social, non-qualifiable aspects of college. Getting excellent grades is still important to me, don’t get my wrong, but I agree with the other posts that a lot of collegiate learning, growth, and development takes place outside the classroom–including (seemingly) simple life skills (doing laundary, shopping for food, etc). College is a HUGE life adjustment, and it’s rarely an easy one. Your son will probably find his “grounding” as goes through college.</p>
<p>I do agree, however, that insisting on a four-year graduation and a decent GPA is reasonable. I would also make sure your son knows harm-reduction ways of “partying hard,” as to minimize his risk for negative–even fatal–outcomes</p>
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<p>I strongly disagree. Tuition is the cost of attending the university, and even the academic offerings of a university are far more than just classes. That tuition also provides access to research and teaching opportunities, tutoring services, career counseling and placement assistance, internship opportunities, academic advising, student chapters of professional organizations, and more. Classes themselves, while valuable and important, are the tip of the iceberg.</p>
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<p>Incorrect. Possible, but not necessarily true. 4 classes instead of 3 could also mean, for example, 25% less learning in each class.</p>
<p>When I dropped a class as an undergrad, I did so because I thought that my struggles to stay afloat in that particular class were seriously harming my learning (and my grades) in the rest of my classes. Interestingly, the only term that I completed what was considered below the “normal” number of units, my final term, was also the one where I had the highest workload (one of my remaining classes took 30 hours/week, for one thing).</p>
<p>Also, <em>applauds starbright</em>.</p>
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<p>While I believe in personal responsibility and looking out for your friends, I think holding a kid accountable for someone else’s choices and behavior is stretching the bounds of friendship. I know that if a friend came to my kid and said, “look, I have to pull up my grade in such-n-such class,” my son would willingly help him. He’s done this already. But to hold him accountable for his grades or lacking of them? Not sure that translates. I also don’t think it’s quite fair to assume (ever) that kids are being dragged to the party.</p>
<p>I know earlier in the fall semester one of his suitemates was sleeping through classes and then was up all night playing video games. They staged an intervention of sorts to get the kid on the right track, and in the end he switched rooms with a single to remove himself from distraction. He’s still friends with the guys, but it works better that is out of a suite living arrangement.</p>
<p>As an aside: All friends of son have returned for a second semester and his floor seems intact as well. He can’t be sure of the entire freshman class, but really? How could he possible know that.</p>
<p>No one has said you can never drop a class, but the reasons for dropping the class need to be well thought out. In the OP’s case, she didn’t feel he dropped it for much other reason than not wanting to do that much work preferring to reserve his time for the party. And if you are always available for the partying, you are not taking advantage of all the other things offered at a school, including “access to research and teaching opportunities, tutoring services, career counseling and placement assistance, internship opportunities, academic advising, student chapters of professional organizations, and more.” So I am not saying that anytime a kid wants to drop a class I am going to whip out my calculator, but it is part of this family’s mentality that you don’t just quit without very good reason. Persistence is something that generally works in your favor.</p>
<p>I very much agree that a great deal of college is the learning outside of the classroom and I agree with most everything Starbright had to say on the subject. I would even go so far as to say it applies to road trips taken with the boys and a host of other things that don’t necessarily seem “educationally” related in the least. However, if the kid isn’t engaging with those opportunities offered at a school that has a very high price tag, the question becomes, “Are you getting your money’s worth?” Again, it’s all about maintaining a good balance socially, academically and in son’s case, athletically. He’s never been a joiner and so I don’t expect him to join a bunch of clubs just to be able to list them on his resume. I also don’t expect him to have committed to any kind of major or career path (there’s a reason why most schools don’t require declaration of majors until the end of sophomore year or close to it). All of this said, the conversations thus far seem to point to his attempts at branching out and fully understanding the need to prioritize.</p>
<p>jessiehl: what’s “incorrect”?</p>
<p>If you can’t handle 4 classes per term AND YOU ADMIT TO BEING A PARTIER you aren’t working hard enough for 54,000 of my dollars. </p>
<p>Really, this is silly.</p>
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<p>What’s incorrect is that completing four classes necessarily means that you learned 33% more than if you completed three.</p>
<p>Whether the person completing the classes is working hard enough for your money is irrelevant to the correctness or incorrectness of that point.</p>
<p>I can’t equate tuition to a cost per class, perhaps because during my college years we were charged a flat rate and not a cost per credit hour. In my day at my school you took 3 classes (or 4 if you were crazy) each quarter and they got “counted” one, two, three and so on. My son’s college is set up the same way there is a flat tuition rate and the kids take between 12-19 credit hours as a full time student and the credit hours are added up over time. Consequently we’ve never talked to our kids in terms of semester by semester short-term success and instead focused on the long haul. We “expect” you to complete this in four years, we expect you to make good decisions regarding your credit loads within the constraints of 12-19 etc. etc.</p>