She certainly could - and that’s how many meet the cal poly slo rec too - but I worry that from the way the OP phrased the earlier quote that they don’t think she needs to.
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Or less likely since she will have to disclose her income for gap year…
BTW, getting good job with AA is extremely difficult. Been there…
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Yes and no… One of my kids (technical) was never good at writing but could write a lot and amazing for topics that she liked. That was not the case in school (since topics were preset most of the time.) Kid barely survived college writing… By the time of last writing class ChatGPT (the very first lame free version) appeared. Kid would rather “write” with ChatGPT providing instructions for every single paragraph instead of writing from scratch. (Include this idea, remove this, modify that, restate that differently, use word x instead of y). That madness happened for hours, but that was her writing after millions of modifications. Fast forward several years, I caught this kid writing simple email with ChatGPT. There was no rational for that, except “ I like it that way.”
Moral is - life is different. Most people will not be writing from scratch 10-15 years from now. There is no reason to force kids to do smth because it was done some way in the past or because we think it is useful.
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And there are kids like that and I respect that. Some kids work on their own schedule. For them virtual degree is the way to go. Kids may not be functioning well in the morning but be active at night. Working on strict schedule maybe a problem but if a kid masters all necessary info and gets 5 in AP, then he learned material. Is this kid smart? Yes. Is that kid good fit for top college? No way. Is this kid useful for society? Absolutely. Especially for remote or flexible positions. This kid can be genius for some roles but not others. By the way, it is very possible that this “troubled “ kid can be more useful to some companies than top kid from rigorous school. Why? That “troubled” one always thinks outside of the box and often does not follow the rules, and that is how new discoveries or inventions done.
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Agree completely. Or some sort of executive functioning Disability. All of which needs to be addressed immediately. Some may allow accommodations in high school and college with appropriate testing. But it sounds like work was not completed on time/turned in late/not at all resulting in zeros with no makeup work allowed. That is how college is structured and if that was a problem, then it needs to be fixed regardless of where she goes to college. Testing and counseling would be appropriate.
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I wouldn’t say this is a troubled kid at all—just one who followed a slightly different path and is now at the point where some decisions need to be made.
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That is why it is in quotes. This kid is “troubled" for majority people in this forum 
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I’m just skimming through here and also unclear on the grades. Assuming this is a junior, I would have a sit-down with the current high school counselor to ask (1) what the transcript looks like, exactly (printed out), and (2) whether credit recovery courses over the coming summer are possible for the classes with D grades. It’s odd that they wouldn’t be available. They don’t have to occur at the same high school.
If there’s a missing English credit, I’d check high school’s academic planning guide to see if dual enrollment provides more high school credit (one of my kids’ high schools would give 1 high school credit for a semester DE course, for example, though then the policy was changed). She will need 4 high school credits of English by high school graduation.
Whether or not someone will be required to write from scratch 15 years from now (not sure I agree, but let’s assume you are correct) doesn’t change the reality that the “mega generous/mega rejective” colleges the OP appears to be worried about do NOT agree with your thesis. Columbia, U Chicago, etc. have not ditched their core curricula because “who needs Aristotle when you have Wikipedia and Chat GPT.”
Nobody is saying that the kid doomed to fold sweaters at the Gap for the rest of her life. But aiming for the mega rejectives when you haven’t covered off what is considered a standard HS curriculum is often a waste of time.
So we’re trying to save the OP time. Some kids with C’s and D’s are able to overcome the grades with a very strategic application list. But once the transcript shows the grades, the move back to the easier HS, the missed classes it starts to get very fuzzy.
And a kid in CA who has not followed the recommended track doesn’t even have the option for many of the fine and less expensive public U’s.
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I don’t know a lot about virtual schools…but if this student is attending one now…how easy or accessible would the school counselor be?
Not at all. You have misinterpreted AND misunderstood what folks are posting.
Kid isn’t “troubled”. We need more information to help guide a clearly bright HS into the right college which the family can afford. That’s not “troubled”.
Reading and writing in a rigorous English class really helps with comprehension, tone and nuance! ChatGPT isn’t good at that- no matter what your kid is telling you.
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I think part of messy understanding what is going on is virtual school and unknown transcript format for colleges. I suspect that also different schools do it differently. Publics in my area give quarter grades but put only semester ones on transcript. Some may put only final grades on transcript. How colleges treat them (look at semester or only final) may differ too. I doubt that parents know how transcript would look too. DE will show as semester=final.
Or not.
Might be appropriate.
I expect that the school has faculty and staff who can advise on this subject better than random strangers on a message board.
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Like that matters . . . Or is even meaningful.
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Yet so far it appears that they have not, so at least getting OP to ask them to look into it could be helpful.
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I do not think this kid is “troubled”. I DO hope the family looks at a variety of colleges and finds a place that this student can call home…and where they will thrive.
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How would we have any possible way of knowing this?
There’s a real person who initiated this thread. S/he was very clear about what s/he was looking for. When the thread started generating other responses, s/he reiterated her/his initial request. What appears to me to be the likely result of repeatedly questioning this student’s mental health, executive functioning, etc is that the parent would leave and not subject themselves to any more of it. I would.
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Might or might not. But a bright capable student getting zeros in classes for not turning in work is a very common symptom for an underlying disorder. And in this case, it was multiple times in multiple classes which resulted in the school not inviting her back. That would be something that I would want to get to the bottom of. To determine whether an underlying disorder exists you need to look to testing and/or counseling. There is no negative to taking that path as many school systems will provide it free of charge. There is also no stigma to it as you seem to be suggesting.Either you eliminate that as a possibility or you get the tools to manage it. The Cs and Ds are a symptom not the problem.
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It’s hardly the first time a poster has posted a question here and other posters have realized they may not have known all the right questions to ask. (A common one, for example, is people posting about schools without realizing the constraints budgets and available loans might impose on their choices.) I find it odd that you seem upset that people are trying to look at angles to help this student succeed in college.
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Lots of people will be writing from scratch, whether it means design documents, marketing proposals, descriptions of something that happened, emails, etc. Seems inconvenient to depend on ChatGPT or whatever for that.
That said, writing that most people will need to do is much more varied than the literary analysis that is the usual focus of writing in high school English courses.