Son has good grades with little effort. He has no job and doesn’t care about anything other than video games. His high school friends and he play online games all the time. Lots of shouting, teasing til very late at night.
I am concerned about his college/future, tbh.
He has a couple of small scholarships so far, about 10% of tuitions from 2 OOS schools. I don’t think I am willing to pay for 60k schools given his work ethic.
Still waiting to see if there are any scholarships from his state flagship, likely cheapest one.
FWIW I think there probably is a video game scholarship.
It depends on the game. For example, League of Legends has some but they’re for extremely competitive players at a few select universities.
Who pays for his video games? Who pays for his video game systems? Who pays for the TV he is playing on or the computer he uses? Who pays for the electricity???
Seriously.
My children would have loved to sit around and play video games with their “free” time but that just wasn’t going to happen. Not in my house, not on my time.
And yes they were expected to do well in their classes all through high school and college. That was the minimum. They knew early on there was not enough money to go around and they would need to earn their college degree.
Whether that was through earning scholarships (athletic or academic), getting a part-time job and paying their way through a community college part-time ($76 per credit hour), attending a service academy, attending dual credit high school and college classes (free while in high school), joining ROTC and/or taking as many APs courses as possible.
Mine did all of the above. Whatever it took.
Two sons gained appointments to 3 (each) of the service academies, knowing that their college costs would be covered. In addition they also made sure they applied for ROTC scholies for all 3 branches of services that could be used at the colleges they had also been accepted at. Applying to the academies and ROTC scholarships is much, much different than applying to any undergrad. The time intensive applications can take months, 6-9 months. Each requiring numerous hoops to jump through including testing, physical exams, dental exams, optometry exams, meetings and nominations with your member of congress, US Senators…the list is extensive and exhausitive.
So in comparison an outside scholarship requiring a few hours of effort for a return of cash to use on your OWN college expenses does not seem too much to ask.
Children do exactly what you expect of them, no more, nor less.
As a single mom it was not always easy to corral a houseful of teenagers but between school (academics), community volunteer projects, varsity practice, meets, and games and household responsibilities there wasn’t any time for playing video games.
And I made sure there wasn’t.
Just venting.
Kat
We never owned a video game anything.
Video game seems to be a hobby for most of the boys in his school.
I read somewhere that some MIT kids are very competitive gamers.
I would be very concerned about his video game habit (not hobby) - he will have even more freedom and pockets of “free” time in college - to protect your full pay investment, you need to nip this gaming habit in the bud NOW.
My kids didn’t have the luxury of us being able to full pay for them. All 3 attended different Ohio privates. One still in school. She is a freshman and was on spring break last week - she relaxed, had a little fun, slept in, did some homework ahead of time and completed two scholarship applications. She has a good chance (as anyone) to receive these scholarships so we talked with her and she understands why taking a shot at them is important. A couple hours of work for a $1500 scholarship? That could be some pretty darn good hourly pay if she receives one of them!
For what it’s worth, between my three kids, they received a total of around $20K in local scholarships. In our world, those hours spent on those applications - extremely worthwhile!
I also would be worried about the video gaming. DS13 had a few friends from freshman year that spent too much time on video games and had to drop out of college. It can be very addicting.
There are competitive gamers at almost every decent-sized school. (Although most pro-gamers forego college, and sometimes even their high school diploma, to go pro.)
One of my best friends went semi-pro when he was at Purdue. However, he also almost flunked out of school because competitive gaming is really a full time job.
I love gaming and very much think there’s nothing wrong with it. However, I’d highly recommend against getting any kind of gaming scholarship because to stay at a top level, you need to grind for at least 8 hours a day. That is just not doable on top of doing reasonably well in school.
If you are not willing to pay 60k then he needs to know NOW if he doesn’t already. IMO, it’s not fair to tell him last minute.
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Video game seems to be a hobby for most of the boys in his school.
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video games can be a legit pasttime as long at they don’t interfere with school, chores, job, exercise, and other normal/healthy activities.
video games can also be like a drug. An anxious or depressed person can use them to “escape” from the world. Some can seem almost addicted to them. Sadly, there are actually people who cant get their tushes to their jobs (or classes) because video games keep them up all night or are too enticing/distracting during the day.
will your child be taking his video games/systems to college with him?
a hobby may be a few hours a week. An addiction is more like 3-5+ hours a day, nearly everyday. How many hours a day is your son playing video games.
To tell you the truth…when a parent has a child like that, it may not be a great idea to tell them that you can pay all costs. Once they hear that, the situation is taken care of.
Agree with mom2collegekids. I am worried too. But we can’t fight every day. Besides, his grades are decent and he got very high test scores without even looking at the prep books. He spent the past 4 summers at gifted camps with very good reports.
I think he is not challenged and he doesn’t know what to do.
Well, he could be challenged by filling out some of those scholarship applications.
Or getting a job…
Yes i am working on getting him a job. Also he has two scholarship apps awaiting.
Long time lurker, but very infrequent poster here.
We told both of our kids that they had to pay 1/2 of their college expenses, to the extent possible. This meant working full time in the summers and not more than 8 hours/week during the school year (pocket change), and applying for all scholarships for which they were eligible. We also put a limit of $10K on the max we wanted them to take in student loans. We told them if they met all these requirements we would pay whatever part of their half they couldn’t come up with. Oldest graduated two years ago. Youngest is a junior.
For the scholarships our deal was this (some won’t like this): Whatever scholarships they got as graduating seniors came off the top as far as freshman year COA was concerned. For freshman year, we split expenses that remained after credits for scholarships were applied. Any scholarships they earned during college applied 100% to their half of the bill. The combination of financial responsibility and potential payoff meant there was a LOT of motivation to apply for as many scholarships as possible.
Kids attended public colleges. Oldest did pay half including his $10K in loans and received $40K in scholarships during his 4 years. Youngest has only taken $4500 in loans to date though. They both attended state flagship. We live in a small town, so local scholarships were maybe easier to come by. So far youngest has received $30K in scholarships (largest one was $8K) and is actively applying for senior year scholarships now. Last I knew she was applying to 11 this year. After senior year in HS, the app process is pretty fast since they basically just involve updating previous apps.
Love some of the ideas listed above. My own did all their applications and all the scholarship apps. Honestly, their approach to college apps and scholarship applications is probably simply an extension of their overall attitude. Entitled kids are entitled kids when they apply to college and when they go. A person who appreciates what their parent or parents have done for them and understands the value of a dollar will be eager to apply for scholarships and those who have no appreciation won’t. But the problem is generally beyond just applications. Good luck!
Not sure if this oringinal post is about how to motivate a senior to apply for scholarships or how to get him less obsessed with video games. There is no incentive to apply for scholarships if the parents are full pay and the cost of education has been presented as a non-issue from the get go. Those of us who have managed to impart a different attitude in our children aren’t really going to be able to pass that attitude to the poster’s child at this point in senior year. Now whether or not his video game playing habit predicts a good investiment of the parent’s generous monies toward his education is another question. Depending on the nature or extend of his video game obsession, there is a risk of those college monies for which the child is taking for granted will go right down the drain. I suspect this is the actual fear of the OP.
@OP
I fully commiserate. X(
S1 couldn’t be bothered to submit applications for our employer scholarships (pretty much a sure thing). He said he already contributed by getting a sizable merit scholarship from the college, and if he got more scholarship money, then we parents just wouldn’t have to pay as much-- TRANSLATION: it is our obligation to pay.
It wasn’t the sum of money that got us steamed, (only 500 bucks), but his sense of entitlement.
We cut his $200/mo allowance to $0. He whined for a while, but eventually got a part time job. Maybe he’ll be less flippant now when he sees how long it takes to net $500.