Predicting whether a student will succeed or struggle transitioning from high school to college

Parents Forum
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Beyond academic indicator history and financial affordability, are there any indicators about whether a given student will succeed or struggle transitioning from high school to college?

For example:

  • Does having taken a college/DE course at a college (not “college in the high school” DE) while in high school let the student know what to expect in college, increasing the chance of success when entering college?
  • Does heavy parental supervision and scheduling of homework and ECs limit the student’s own practice in time management and self motivation, making it more likely that the student will struggle in the much less supervised environment of college?

If such indicators are predictive, that could have implications, such as whether the student should take a harder or easier first term schedule in college.

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One of the biggest indicators of student success in transitioning to college is the relationships that they build on campus. Students who are connected in clubs, activities, residential life, success center, etc. are far less likely to fail than students that isolate. You can support your student by enabling them to pursue their interests and seek support when needed.

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I totally agree with this. Schools that have good orientation programs help with this but sometimes it’s just luck related to who they meet that first week or two or which activity they try.

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Scaffolding. “A little extra support at home”. Intervening when there’s an issue with a grade, an issue with the coach, a problem with the band leader. Driving the kid’s lunch to school because “he doesn’t like cafeteria food” and he habitually leaves the lunch YOU pack for him on the kitchen table. Shaking the kid awake every morning because she doesn’t like the sound of the alarm. Doing a load of laundry at midnight so she’ll have a clean leotard for dance rehearsal the next morning– even though she owns 6 leotards, how can they all be smelly when you did laundry yesterday?

These are all fine in moderation. Or in an emergency. But taken together, these are often predictors of kids who will knock the cover off the ball intellectually once they get to college but can’t handle “adulting” very well. Your kids roommate isn’t going to wake your kid up in time for her 8 am chem lab. Your kid’s professor doesn’t want to talk to you when you think the deadline for the research paper is unreasonable. Etc.

The kids I know who have flamed out in college were perfectly capable of college level academics. It was independent living that flummoxed them. Explaining to a dean that there was a conflict between a review session and a lab. Asking the housing office to replace a broken light bulb. Visiting the bursar’s office when kid tried to register for spring classes but was blocked due to “balance due” (lost key charge- $25. overdue book- $3.).

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I think a strong indicator is how well the student knows the current students in the colleges they plan/want to attend.

I’m a high school teacher. We invite students of previous classes (2-4 years) back to visit during their breaks. Our current students talk to the now-college students, both in person and on their social media channels, to get snippets of college lives at different places. Those who know what they sign up for and what to expect have highly positive experiences.

My own children have grown up hanging out with kids 2-5 years older (via several EC activities) and have always observed how they handle things. The kids don’t like listening to the adults telling them what to do or not to do but they listen to slightly older friends much much carefully. I think the process of figuring things out, reflecting on own experiences, then passing along “the lessons learned” is beneficial to all parties involved.

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This post and the shooting at Brown all brought up memories of my youngest’s freshman year in college. I remember that year a kid had jumped off one of the dorms or parking garage high levels and killed himself. It was determined he couldn’t face letting his folks know he wasn’t passing and would not graduate. It broke my heart and created a lot of conversation between my son and myself about letting us know if he ever had any concerns about antthing or just wanted a break becuse school just “ain’t that important”. He was so involved with marching band and super close to his roommates that he had pretty solid support system but I can see how dissappointing ones parents, especially those who pressure them to succeed could be hard to handle. Maybe this is something else they need to teach in high school - sometimes you need a break,a reset, or a redirection and that is okay.

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Yes, yes, and yes . The number of “my student didn’t get up in time for their exam” (Mom knows because they track both the student and all their classes) and “How come my student has a 7:30 exam, when they signed up for classes starting after 11 am because they are not a morning person” is astonishing.

Of S23’s freshman suitemates, I know that 3 are formally diagnosed with ADHD/ EF issues, but all are very serious students. Lizardkid attended a school that promoted remediation, independence, self-awareness, and self-advocacy. Two of the other roommates took gap years. One in a formal travel program, and one worked to save money for school. I’d describe all three sets of parents as setting their kids up to adult early and then letting them fly, with expectations that they would stumble and it would be a learning experience. None of us can tell you anything specific about our kids’ homework, schedule, or classes. Yes, we talk to our kids about how school is going, and they share a lot, but we are not involved with their classwork, teacher contacts, schedules, or social life. All three have done very well despite their diagnosis.

Then there is the one whose parents were very involved in their school work, making appointments, cleaning their room, running social and academic interference, scheduling their extracurriculars, etc., right up until the end of high school. He’s not doing that well socially, is the one most likely to miss a class, and doesn’t know how to deal with curve balls. He seemed to count on the other suitemates to bail him out, and it got old. They decided to not ask him to live with them sophomore year, and he almost didn’t return to school. I had called it before we even left dorm drop-off by how mom was setting up his room for him. I think his parents did a pretty good job letting go once he got there (aided by the distance), but it was a little too late.

For some kids, that may be appropriate, but I’m a big proponent of finishing one phase of development before jumping to the other just to “be prepared”. Think about the reason we give 1st graders homework. So that they’ll be able to do homework in 2nd grade. But why are they doing homework in 2nd grade? To be prepared for the homework in 3rd grade. And on it goes. You end up giving up developmental opportunities for things that really make a difference (play time, independent “work”, family discussion, BOREDOM) just to make parents feel better about “being prepared” for some future step. I tell parents it’s like toilet training. You can really master the skills before you begin (like hand washing, dressing, and initiation), or you can be reminding your kid to go to the bathroom every hour for the next 18 months, going in with them to pull up their pants and wash their hands, and doing loads of laundry because they just weren’t ready.Both kids will master the skill (achieve independence ) about the same time, but one way will be way more miserable for both the parent and child. Many kids might benefit more from staying in high school while the parents turn over responsibility to their child, rather than signing up for an on-campus DE course with a parent still overly involved.

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I think every kid and family are different. What works for one isn’t necessarily going to work for another and I think it’s hard to predict who will succeed and who will struggle.

I was lucky to have had good role models in older friends who helped me find the balance in fostering independence while keeping my D safe. I was also lucky that D went to a rigorous college prep HS where kids were expected to self advocate, be responsible for their own work, be organized, and own their successes and failures. And if parents overstepped, we were called out on it by teachers and administrators. We were also lucky to have a kid who was self motivated, enjoyed learning, and was mature. She had a fairly easy transition to college.

In my circle the kids who struggled were those who were pushed into going to college at all, or into a major they didn’t really want. I have a few friends where it seems like their kids would have been perfect candidates for a gap year, community college, or a trade but the parents wouldn’t hear of those things and those students really really struggled.

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Time management and dealing with failure/consequences are critical. If the student doesn’t have some experience with this while growing up, getting hit all at once in college might not be pretty. Another consequence of curating every minute of your child that I have seen is once they are out of the day to day control of parents, it is easy to slip into excessive partying and low motivation since their prior motivation was not their own but their parents’.

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Sometimes in some situations, there can be too much bubble-wrapping of a child by the parent(s), which can eventually sometimes be not helpful to the child. If you never allow your kid to fail, then they never learn how to fail & how to pick themselves up from a failure, setback, etc.

The result of that COULD be that when the child does eventually fail/not succeed at something, the child could mistakenly attribute it to “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not smart enough,” etc. By comparison, a child who HAS failed/not succeeded at something before will be more likely to attribute the failure/lack of success at 1st try to something like “Ok, that method didn’t work. I’m going to try it a different way next time.”

In other words, NOT protecting a child from making mistakes can help the child build a sense of resilience.

Of course, there’s exceptions to this. Like if your child has ADHD, learning disabilities, or other stuff like that going on.

I also think that it’s important for ANY child to learn & practice how to advocate for themselves & to learn that asking for help on something doesn’t mean you’re dumb or a failure. Wise people ask for help all the time.

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I know a lot of people who flamed out of college. Two of them stand out. Both are young men I knew when they were still kids. (Details modified.)

“Eli” was just not very interested in academics, though he was a decent student. He knew from a young age he wanted to fly airplanes. I think he went along with the “going to college thing” because he was the eldest and there had been some tragedies in the family, so perhaps he felt he was doing what was expected. Anyway, it wasn’t a good fit for him. His dad soon understood it was pointless paying a lot of money when his kid didn’t want to be there and was earning C’s and D’s. His parents used the money they had put aside for college and funded his flying lessons. He never looked back and is a private pilot.

With “Jonah”, it was completely obvious to everyone except his parents that he was NEVER going to do well at college. He is very much a free spirit and very quirky. He once said to me that he wanted to be a mechanic and I said that was a good idea. I mentioned the conversation to his mom and she scoffed and said he was going to college. It was a disaster. He didn’t want to be there and failed out. He has frankly been a bit aimless since then, but seems happy enough. He does work hard for long periods of time, saves his money and travels whenever he can. He is still young and I am sure he will figure out his way at some point.

So in both these cases, I think it was as simple as young people knowing what they didn’t want, and well-intentioned parents who felt their kids could do “better.” I’m not sure either of these young men fit into the two examples you provide, but I would definitely say in the case of Jonah, it was pretty clear to everyone that college would be a struggle.

I think we often don’t give young people enough credit for knowing their own minds. We need to be there as they grow up and provide support, but we also need to ensure they are able to find their own way. It’s a tough balancing act sometimes. Parents can definitely have blinders on about their kids.

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Mental health is a big one. Sometimes a kid has a preexisting diagnosis, so it’s not a huge surprise, but sometimes it is a new development. I’m a doctor, and 2 that I see sometimes that cause kids to have to drop out are anorexia and schizophrenia.

A common story for anorexia can be when a kid starts “eating healthy” in the summer preceding freshman year because they want to “start college off right” appearance-wise or “avoid the freshman 15.” But then the illness really explodes once they get to college, and by winter break they need to be hospitalized.

For the schizophrenia, age ~18 for onset is super typical, especially for males. Boys may go off to college seeming totally normal, or perhaps just a little moody or “off” and have their first episode of psychosis their freshman year.

Then of course there is just plain old depression, anxiety etc.

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Tons of good insights here. I’d also add that students who miss a class in their first couple weeks are at risk. Another sign of students who struggle to transition is when they have a hard time using resources, whether that be accommodations, tutoring, office hours, student activities, etc.

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This depends on what you consider succeed vs struggle. For example, you’ll get a different list of strongest predictors if you are comparing having a 3.x GPA vs 3.y GPA, leaving prior to end of 1st year vs persisting to 2nd year, and being happy/content at college vs being unhappy/stressed.

With any such indicator a variety of criteria have a statistically significant correlation after controls, but that correlation is going to be fairly weak. The prediction metric is going to have a lot of specific students who have the opposite result as the prediction. One can list anecdotes about specific kids who succeeded/failed, but many other kids will have a different result than that anecdote.

An example dissertation that looks at first semester/year retention is at https://repository.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5291&context=gradschool_dissertations. The author concludes:

The pre-college HGLM results showed that high school GPA, registered credit
hours, academic self-efficacy, campus engagement, planning to work in college, institutional fit, gender, first generation status, scholarships, financial aid, high school status (i.e., public or private), and high school enrollment were significantly related to retention outcomes. Some of these relationships were moderated by ethnicity and/or first generation status. The post-first semester HGLM results showed that earned credit hours, GPA differential, and participation in Greek life were significant predictors of retention along with high school GPA, registered credit hours, campus engagement, institutional fit, gender, scholarships, and high school status.

The results from these models showed that the most important pre-college factors were scholarships, family income, distance from home, high school GPA, and percentage of minority students at the student’s high school. These variables remained influential in the post-first semester models, but GPA differential and earned credit hours became the most important factors.

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