Smart but unmotivated HS junior

vwlizard
Sun, 19 Feb 2023 18:13:20 +0000

I have a kid that was actually described in a neuropsych report as “a gifted underachiever”. The thing was, he wasn’t underachieving when he was interested and challenged. Just when he was bored or didn’t buy into grades as a form of competition. We switched school settings going into high school and that changed everything. I think your son will be the same once he finds the classes that interest him in college. On one hand, you don’t have to worry because he’s smart enough to make anything work, but I understand on the other hand you want him to have the best opportunities possible.

These are my observations after watching a couple of years’ worth of the college cycle for kids like ours:

They are going to start their search later. It isn’t important to them right now and they have other things to do. I’m a planner and this can be infuriating, but I’m sure your son always manages to pull it together by the deadline.

It has to be their search. You can give suggestions and guide them, but of the people I know that did the “work” for their kids, all of the kids have ended up at home within the year. He has to be invested.

Stress the importance of “fit” rather than prestige.

I find dropping the information into their lap but not following up somehow gets my kid to start the work at some point. The more follow-up from me, the more he pushes it off.

As I said, he sounds like a kid that is smart enough to make anything work. Once he realizes everyone is way ahead of him, he’ll start to explore. Just be glad when he starts exploring and don’t add more pressure to create a “list”

Part of the problem can be he’s tracked with the Ivy crowd, but he’s not interested in that type of college experience. He probably hasn’t heard about anything other than Ivies and flagship state schools. Maybe send the Colleges that Change Lives list or the 50 Underrated Colleges Doing Great Things list. There are also searches he can run like “Colleges for Eagle Scouts” or “Schools with exploratory programs”

I’d rethink the 5 minutes a day. That becomes a chore. Smart kids will get super focused and dig deep once the interest is there.

DS college counseling wouldn’t let them make a list of specific schools in the beginning. They listed attributes they wanted in a school. They started with exploring one topic at a time such as “clubs I could join”, “what are the on-campus living requirements/options?”, “university required courses outside of major”, etc. at various random schools to see how different schools could be. I found this to be really valuable as it helped him form a picture of what he wanted without getting too attached to a “name”.