<p>I know there are loads of other factors that go into students flaming out while they’re still undergraduates, such as their inability to adjust their work ethic, their inability to adjust to life in college (there are more causes to that if the student does not attend a commuter college) and sometimes other extraneous factors. But this is just to get the discussion started, and, having seen both types of splitters on the chances board, I know for a fact they exist, and I saw both types of students flame out. So which type of student is more likely to flame out in college?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The high GPA/low SAT/ACT student; these students exist because some of those come from high schools where tests are primarily long-answer, or perhaps even short-answer, as long as multiple-choice is not used often, and students from that sort of schools do not have that much exposure to multiple-choice questions. Or they might otherwise come from low-rigor high schools.</p></li>
<li><p>The low GPA/high SAT/ACT student; these students exist because they couldn’t motivate themselves through high school coursework and/or excel at multiple-choice testing rather than at short/long-answer questions (if their high school makes use of short/long-answer questions to such an extent that students rarely see multiple-choice questions). Or they might otherwise come from high-rigor high schools.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Perhaps that question has already been asked before, in which case please post the link(s) to previous incarnations of that question.</p>
<p>The answer is too nuanced to fit your question.</p>
<p>I’ve seen dozens of kids flame out. Sometimes the HS prep was just inadequate (kid had never done a real research paper that didn’t depend on Google and Wikipedia. Kid couldn’t write a topic sentence. Kid didn’t know how to keep lab notes.) Sometimes the parents micromanaged (kid had never made their own orthodontist appointment or had to advocate with a school authority or done a load of laundry). Sometimes the kid was just lazy (decent grades, high scores, but no work ethic and poor study habits).</p>
<p>Etc.</p>
<p>tell us what you’re worried about and maybe we can help you. The grades/scores issue is sometimes just a distraction from the main event.</p>
<p>Generalizations aren’t accurate when it comes to the behavior of young adults. Quite often, the different types of individuals you describe will cross over in college. So the answer is that we really don’t know.</p>
<p>But let’s suppose that all other issues that could cause one to flame out could show up regardless of what kind of splitter we’re dealing with.</p>
<p>I’m actually OK with chancing so many students at a time, and sometimes I can make suggestions based on their reality so that they can go to a college, but I just don’t want my efforts go to waste by them flaming out once in college. Here I suppose everyone I chanced since I started chancing eventually got into a college, although not necessarily colleges that were high on their chancing lists. I know, I have no control over that, but still…</p>
<p>There are lots of students with relatively low GPAs and high test scores because they are highly intelligent but don’t see the value of working on things that don’t interest them. Many of them really blossom in college, where they have much more freedom to concentrate on what they want to learn.</p>
<p>Then there are people like my spouse, who always had great grades but never tested that well. She went from a terrible, nonrigorous rural high school to Yale and then Penn Law, where by dint of hard work and great organization she continued to get great grades and to become a BWOC notwithstanding marginal test scores for both institutions (albeit not “low” by any definition other than, perhaps, College Confidential’s). The real world has tended to value highly her focus, vision, discipline, time-management, leadership, and organization, and mostly to overlook her lack of facility with analogies and geometry. She isn’t plodding in the least. I have gotten to attend lots of award dinners thanks to her, and I have heard her described again and again by those who work closely with her as “brilliant”.</p>
<p>In short, people from both groups can succeed beautifully in college.</p>
<p>I agree that there are exceptions to every rule and it also depends on what you mean by “low” GPA, but I think type 1 is more likely to perservere in college and finish than type 2. Type 2 students often have a hard time making themselves jump through the hoops almost any institution will put before them. They resent requirements, but life has a lot of them. Few are fortunate enough to be in a position to ignore them.</p>
<p>My own observation in life has been that that a person of average intelligence with good social skills, self-discipline and work ethic will outshine an intelligent person who has poor impulse control, low social skills, and lack of self-discipline.</p>
<p>Some of the people in group 2 have low grades because they believe that they are smarter than the teacher, and behave accordingly. These folks often think they are smarter than their college professors, and later, smarter than their employers. They don’t tend to do very well.</p>
<p>In my experience (more than two decades in higher ed working with incoming freshman), low test scores and high GPA will be less likely to flame out than high test scores/low GPA. Why? Generally, the work ethic exhibited to maintain the high grades in high school is an indicator of motivation. </p>
<p>Of course, all kinds of circumstances come into play and students from both groups are perfectly capable of flaming out. In all honestly, any student coming in with a big difference between GPA and test scores is waving a red flag.</p>
This is S1. He works much harder in college than he did in high school because he’s more motivated. He also went to the top academic high school in our state and was better prepared than most for college-level work. However, kids in our area with relatively high grades and low test scores tend to be the flame-outs. Most of our high schools are small, rural and not too demanding. A 3.80 unweighted at one of these schools is like a 2.80 unweighted at a larger, more rigorous school. Kids think they are much better prepared than they are, they end up in remedial classes and take extra time to graduate, if they graduate at all. That’s one reason why retention is a problem in our state higher ed system.</p>
<p>Everyone I know who has flamed out has had high test scores and high grades. One went to an inadequate high school and had never done a research paper and also had a disability for foreign languages which caused her to fail German. The others had helicopter parents who provided far too much support in high school.</p>
<p>My guess would be #2, because of possible lack of work ethic and/or the self-discipline to do what is required whether you feel like it or not. </p>
<p>That said, I have a kid with tremendous work ethic and self-discipline who so far does not test particularly well. Any other kid who had put in the same effort would have gotten an A without a problem. She needs more time to learn and process test questions and assignments, and I’d say she is more hard-working than she is smart. I wonder if and when she will hit a wall and not be able to handle the intellectual level of the work. She could very well flame out later.</p>
<p>–where do you get the idea that students did poorly on SATs because are used to “long form” tests and they are not used to multiple choice tests? Most academically rigorous high schools do not have lots of multiple choice tests in their curriculum, and the students from those high schools do fine on standardized tests.</p>
<p>As far as "flameouts’ ?? They can come in all flavors. One student I knew worked incredibly hard in high school and prepped really hard for standardized tests-- graduated with a 4.0 and middling scores. She flamed out in college–she didn’t have anything left in reserve, she was already working at the hardest level she could. In high school, she did everything she could for every single grade—she did every single assignment perfectly, chased every single extra credit or bonus opportunity, memorized for every test–got the grades. Got into college (she went to state flagship because of $$) and she was in over her head. She worked just as hard as ever–but there was a much heavier workload, and there were no bonus activities or extra credit opportunities to get those extra points, and university-level tests don’t stop at the ability to memorize, but instead test the ability to synthesize and extend to show true understanding of the material. She didn’t get the class participation points she was used to in high school, because the professors were not looking for the answers, but for intelligent discussion. She was killing herself for Bs, and getting some Cs in the mix–and lost her merit scholarship.</p>
<p>I’ve also known flameouts of the low GPA/ high score variety. Really smart kids–but they cut themselves off at the knees by not doing what they need to do when they need to do it. If they don’t grown up in college–quickly–they flame out too.</p>
<p>My boys were not enthusiastic about a lot of the high school busywork, and their grades sometimes showed that. (e.g., they would read the Russian novel, and enjoy it, and ace the exam or paper on the book–but lose points for not writing down 3 vocabulary words from the book every night ) But they did do most of what they needed to do, and got good scores as well, so each got into the schools that they wanted to go to.</p>
<p>But all 3 excelled in college–getting their acts together–because there was no more daily busywork.</p>
<p>That’s not necessarily always the case. #2 may have also been caused by being placed in a pool of highly accomplished academic achievers with many genuine G & T kids thrown in for good measure. </p>
<p>That was my situation in high school where I ended up hitting the academic wall in 9th grade due to the great increase in rigor, expectations, and quantity of workload hitting me all at once combined with the sink or swim campus culture. </p>
<p>Those factors were such that undergrad at my LAC and grad school at an elite university were much more manageable in comparison. Even with maxed out course loads and working around 20 hours/week. In contrast, I had to quit my part-time/weekend job as the store’s cashier/stockboy sometime within my first year of high school because it proved too much with the academic requirements and commute time. </p>
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<p>Those have been my experiences and observations as well during my undergrad years and to some extent, beyond.</p>
<p>In general I would guess more flame-outs come out of group #2 … then again I’d also guess that more huge academic improvements come out of group #2 also.</p>
<p>Frankly, as a believe in fit I believe the group #2 kids are the ones that finding the right environment to draw out their potential is especially important.</p>
<p>There’s also the assumption that #1 is due to greater work ethic in getting grades which doesn’t account for high schools with high grade inflation and workloads so low one can easily coast to graduation with a high GPA if they got whatever little work assigned done and kept their noses clean. </p>
<p>Knew several college classmates and later on, undergrads who fit that profile and consequently, struggled once they hit the academic wall in college.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can predict this because the “whys” vary so much.</p>
<p>Using group 2 as an example: A lot of high school kids with mediocre grades are just immature. Once they mature, they excel in school. Sometimes, these kids “click” about junior year of high school. So, why their overall GPAs may be low, their GPAs for the last 2 of high school are high. Sometimes, they don’t "click"until later—these are the kids who may benefit from a gap year. </p>
<p>Personally, I think sometimes high school teachers don’t recognize when kids DO click. Julie or Sam gets “a rep” in high school and teachers see the name at the top of an essay and that influences the grade the kid gets.</p>
<p>Some kids have less than great family situations and their grades go up when they are removed from them. If your stepparent hates your guts, mom expects you to spend too much of your time babysitting your younger sibs, your sibling and your parents spend a couple of hours each night screaming at each other or dad is an alcoholic, getting away can help. </p>
<p>Other kids find subjects they love in college. </p>
<p>And,yes, then there are the kids who just don’t work all that hard, who are immature when they start college, or just not interested in academics. </p>
<p>You have to know WHY the kid has mediocre grades and high scores to predict college performance…and even then it’s “iffy.”</p>
<p>Actually, I am always somewhat amused by how some people feel that one kind of student is so much superior or inferior to the other, and that one or the other is inevitably bound to fail horribly in college.</p>
<p>There is just so much variability with each situation. Some people feel that because a student made immature choices at 14 or 15 or even 16, he should be tarred and feathered and branded with a big red F on his forehead for the rest of his academic career; some people feel that the 4.0 student in high school should be granted a golden crown to wear all through college; some people feel that the student who achieved high test scores is a shoo-in to excel at college.</p>
<p>But the smart kid who loafed through high school can leave others in the dust when he ignites his academic jets; the 4.0 kid from high school might hit an academic wall, able to work no harder or might find that he is a single small fish in an ocean with lots of fish of all sizes; the kid who excels at standardized testing might falter at essay exams, long papers, research, or group projects.</p>
<p>Not to mention that students in college face other challenges as well: a different way of learning, a different way of being graded, time management, etc.</p>
<p>There is no way to answer the OP’s question.</p>
<p>Here’s what I think: People are really very complex. You can’t neatly categorize them into two categories. Didn’t Benchley once say something like There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who dont"?</p>