<p>Mstee - I just read your post from this morning. Thank you so much for your story, it’s probably not easy to share your regrets with the world, but your experience really confirms that backing off now is the right thing for me to do. Thank you!!</p>
<p>SBMom, </p>
<p>Hey, for me it could always be A, B, or C too. If you squint your eyes and look…I personally think that trait makes for very good problem solvers because they can dump assumptions faster than a…</p>
<p>Guess I need cur for the right salty saying.</p>
<p>I’m late to this thread but boy is it therapeutic. I’m not alone.</p>
<p>I’ll break one pattern…my underachieving son was the first born. But for what it’s worth he has 2 overachieving parents, both of us. I think this had little to do with his lack of motivation but we had a lot of trouble understanding why he wouldn’t hand in that homework, how could he forget his books again, how come he forgot he had that calculus test… why he just didn’t seem to care. This in spite of his being far smarter than his straight A mom and dad.</p>
<p>There are a lot of reasons for this behavior. One…he was tired all the time! He once told me he never really woke up till lunch in hs. A night owl by nature, he was able to construct his college schedules sans morning classes…he loved the night classes best. Second…a case of undiagnosed ADD, not strong but still there, diagnosed at age 21–it explained a lot of his behavior and he (and I) was actually relieved to get this diagnosis. Third…he doesn’t like wasted anything. HS was 3/4 wasted time in his opinion, and (I’m not trying to be arrogant in any way) he was frustrated by the overall lack of intelligence.</p>
<p>The first day of college (somehow he managed to get into some very good ones) I could see the transformation…finally happy, that is where he was meant to be. He’s 23, has his masters, and is happily living and working in NYC…I just don’t ask about the laundry situation!</p>
<p>2331clk- inspiring story. My S feels that most of the day at school is wasted time. Did your son come out of HS with a decent gpa?</p>
<p>After looking at the Naviance site for the high school my son attends, I have partially answered my own question concerning colleges that accept students with low GPA’s. Here is the list of colleges who have accepted kids with a weighted GPA of less than 2.5 in the past three years from this highly competitive mid-sized suburban public high school. The number in parentheses is the lowest weighted GPA that was accepted during that stretch.</p>
<p>Bloomfield College (2.3)
Bloomsburg U. of Pa. (2.1)
Brigham Young U. (2.3)
Cabrini College (2.1)
Caldwell College (2.3)
Centenary College (2.0)
Chestnut Hill College (2.1)
City College CUNY (1.6)
Dominican College of Blauvelt (2.4)
East Stroudsburg U. of Pa. (2.4)
Fairleigh Dickinson U. (2.2)
Franklin Pierce College (2.2)
Frostburg State U. (2.4)
U. Hartford (2.1)
Johnson & Wales U. (2.1)
Kean U. (2.1)
Kennesaw State U. (2.1)
Lasell College (2.2)
Lehigh Valley College (2.4)
Liberty U. (2.4)
Long Island U. CW Post Campus (2.4)
Louisburg College (1.6)
Lynn U. (2.0)
Monmouth U. (2.4)
Montclair State U. (2.1)
New England College (2.4)
Pace U. (2.2)
Pennsylvania State U. Hazleton (2.0)
Pennsylvania State U. Schuylkill (2.2)
Reinhardt College (2.1)
Rider U. (2.3)
Roger Williams U. (2.4)
Rutgers (2.1)
Southern Polytechnic State U. (2.1)
SUNY College Potsdam (2.4)
U. Tampa (2.4)
Washington College (2.4)
West Virginia U. (2.2)
Western New England College (2.3)
Wheelock College (2.1)
William Paterson U. New Jersey (2.2)
Wittenberg U. (2.4)</p>
<p>Maybe the problem is the high schools. Maybe all those succesful entrepreneurs I see from these colleges are these same kids 20 years later.</p>
<p>“Gifted” only takes you so far. Hard work will bring it home. DD is “gifted” yet self sabotages, DS is NOT “gifted” yet works three times as hard to get good grades and excel in school. I think the “worker” will succeed in life much easier than the “gifted” student (granted, she has mental health and substance abuse issues).</p>
<p>I believe the gift can also be the obstacle.</p>
<p>The school system frequently makes the gift a liability. I agree that working hard is a skill necessary for every child to develop, which is why I try to encourage my children to be engaged in learning activities more challenging than those in school.</p>
<p>It was out of concern that my S would become unmotivated and that I would need to constantly nag him to do work he was uninterested in that I worked hard to provide more challenging work both in and out of school.<br>
I was sometimes asked if I was not demanding too much of my S, putting too much pressure on him, etc…, but, honestly, this was the best way for him to maintain motivation. He was not bored. He always knew that if the challenge was excessive, he could go down a notch, and he knew, too, that he did not have to get stellar grades.<br>
He was not always organized, he sometimes forgot to turn in assignments, he had the annoying habit of waiting until the morning to print out papers that were due on the day, but I did not have to nag him to do his homework. Of course, he and we did not have to deal with LD, ADD or other issues, so our task was made easier.</p>
<p>BassDad, I was surprised to see Rutgers on that list.</p>
<p>northeastmom,</p>
<p>So was I, but that was just one kid out of 231 applications. (This HS sends a lot of kids to Rutgers.) They must have had a big “hook” because their SAT was 1060 and the next lowest accepted GPA was 2.7 with a 1200 SAT. By contrast, the same HS has had kids rejected at Rutgers with 3.6/1220 and 3.1/1380. (SAT’s out of 1600 in all cases.)</p>
<p>BassDad: Why am I not suprised that the two colleges that get a good chunk of the kids from my high school (ESU and Bloomsburg) are there?</p>
<p>Actually, a couple of kids in the top ten of my high school classwent to ESU so they could live at home and save money even though they would have been excellent candidates for full rides at some of the less competitive privates (but much more competitive then ESU)</p>
<p>Screenname,</p>
<p>I only included 4-year programs in the list above. The college that gets the single largest chunk of kids from my son’s school is the local two-year county college by a pretty large margin. I don’t think they reject anyone. Number two is Rutgers, which was in the list. </p>
<p>We also have kids with a 3.4 accepted at ESU and a 3.8 at Bloomsburg. I can’t tell from the charts where these folks actually went.</p>
<p>I’m actually from the East Stroudsburg SD, which is why it amuses me so. I’m also talking about 4 years, since only about 50% of my SD goes to any college at all, even a CC (about 20% ends up in the military).</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure I know at least two of the kids with 3.8s at Bloomsburg. Identical twins who were 7th and 9th in my class and are majoring in elementary and secondary ed.</p>
<p>Very wery few kids from my high school (there are two in the district, the other one’s a much better school. In 2004 their Valedictorian went to Swat, ours to Penn State) go a non-state supported school. </p>
<p>Sorry for the threadjack.</p>
<p>But, if your son is ever interested in ESU, send me a PM and I’ll tell you all the nice places to hit in downtown Stroudsburg/East Stroudsburg (they’re borroughs and basically meet at where Walmart and Kmart are).</p>
<p>Bassdad, Coincidentally, I gave my son’s friend a ride this afternoon. He is just dying to get into Rutgers. I cannot see why he won’t get in, but one never knows. He does not have the most stellar stats, but well within what Rutgers is looking for. He has a sibling that is currently attending. He cannot believe that he has not heard yet, but told me that he knows lots of kids with 2.5 that have gotten in. Maybe they do take a lot of C students. He has not applied anywhere else yet. I suggested that he find some other schools that he would be able to attend (and happy attending) if Rutgers rejects him. He has no idea about what a safety is. He thought a good alternative school to apply to would be Boston College. I tried explaining, but I could tell that he was tuning me out.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which Rutgers was it? Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Newark have significantly lower requirements (Newark is 3 tier in US News rating)</p>
<p>My son’s friend was referring to NB.</p>
<p>My post also referred to the New Brunswick campus.</p>
<p>I just looked at the scattergram again on Naviance. It plots acceptances and rejections with SAT on the x-axis and GPA on the y-axis. It looks like Rutgers takes pretty much anyone from our HS who has at least a 3.3 weighted GPA. Below that GPA, acceptances run perhaps 20%. They do not seem to be very heavily influenced by SAT scores.</p>
<p>momnipotent, S had about a 3.5 unweighted, only because his tests were usually good, it was the homework and other things that are supposed to bring up your grades that brought his down. Plus I guess the school was so darn easy. Lots of honors and AP’s brought up the weighted gpa. His SAT’s were highest in his grade so you can imagine the frustration on our part. </p>
<p>I’m not so sure the hard worker will succeed over the gifted kid in life. If “it” kicks in I’ll take the gifted person, who can do things the hard worker just can’t. Often they’ll shine once they get into that artificial world (like at a selective college, or in certain work areas, like software developer for Microsoft) where everyone is smart.</p>