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I think we need a “bang head on wall” avatar on this site.</p>
<p>In the first semester, if your son fails a class with a course number below 50 (that’s all of his courses unless he placed out of something), he does not receive a grade of F in that class. He receives a grade of NC – No Credit – and it has no impact on his GPA. You might not see a difference between F and NC, but college Admissions officers do. If he applies as a freshman transfer student to, say, a state flagship, I really doubt they’ll reject him on the basis of “No Credit” grades in, say, Linear Algebra and Quantum Mechanics (not typical freshman-year courses at most flagships afaik). They’ll look at the actual grades he receives in his second semester. And if he were to take the Transfer Studies option for a “terminal” second semester, he’d be able to spend that semester making higher grades in courses that are not as difficult as the Core courses he’s taking now. Those second-semester courses would be the only grades computed into his GPA.</p>
<p>But from the dozen or so other posts now scattered through many threads on this forum, it sounds like your son isn’t really in danger of failing after all and you’ve been eating yourself up with what my grandmother would call “borrowed trouble.” This Transfer Studies thing is the “nuclear option” – the safety net that should make your worst fears go away, because Mudd does have an exit strategy for students who find they need one. A last-resort option exists, if your son needs it, which it sounds like he doesn’t.</p>
<p>As to what the “model should be,” HMC seems to have a pretty good track record right now – in their shoes, I don’t think I’d be looking to chuck it all and start over. Engineering is probably the toughest course of study out there, for the very reason rocketDA states. </p>
<p>It’s perfectly normal for your son not to have the same grades at Mudd that he had in high school. Few students do. In the 50+ years since Mudd was founded, ten students have graduated with 4.0 GPAs (one of them teaches Math there now :D). Mudders don’t enjoy the grade inflation that students of some other colleges do. But they do get terrific job placement and grad school placement. Must be doing something right.</p>
<p>You know what made the biggest difference for a frosh Mudder my son told me about, who was struggling in multiple classes – what helped this guy was finding out that his folks understood he was going through a huge adjustment, that they weren’t freaked and furious over a string of low (even failing) test grades, but they had confidence in him and his ability to pull it out. He found it a lot easier to focus with the weight of that stress off his shoulders. Went to talk with his profs, found he could understand the material after meeting with them a few times, and is now pulling up in every subject. I think that’s part of the process for most Mudders, really, based on what I’ve heard from faculty/staff, students, parents, and alumni. They learn a way of working and thinking that’s different from what they did in high school, and that takes time. And of course it causes stress in these kids who spent the past four years at the top of the heap as the smartest kids in their classes. For a lot of them, it’s the first time they’ve encountered something they couldn’t grasp on the first try. Maybe not on the next try, either. But what pride and satisfaction they must feel when they finally break through.</p>
<p>Good luck to your son, BcM.</p>