<p>I also feel like freshmen in college get the short end of the stick that coincidentally just happened to break off too, at least in research universities. Intro classes are huge, professors care more about their research and teaching is at the end of their priorities, they weren’t trained as teachers like teachers in high school were and don’t know tips and tricks on how to handle students and write tests, lecture time is too short, etc.</p>
<p>The thing to remember with college is that there is very few assignments. In order to do well in college you may find yourself needing to do extra problems, or read the chapters in you book or whatever else. In high school I always got a lot of homework and thus had adequate practice, but with college you’d be lucky if a professor actually gives you homework.</p>
<p>I went to a high school with a 39% graduation rate, that just got off the country’s needs improvement list. So I did no work and graduated near the top of my class.
I don’t go to a notoriously hard school by any means, but a lot of classes have little to no curving, and there is definitely no grade inflation. But most of my peers at that school come from top high schools, and therefore knew how to study. I never studied for a test in my life before getting to college. Hence, my grades went down.</p>
<p>My S’s experience has been the opposite: he graduated with a 3.15 weighted GPA, but got a 3.8 his first semester in college. He did go to a very challenging high school and took mostly honors and AP classes, and they had a “modular schedule” with free periods throughout the day and an open campus for upperclassmen - I guess he was better prepared for college than I thought.</p>
<p>Grades drop because they must. When 90% of your student body were in the top 10% of their HS class, then at least 80% will be disappointed, right?</p>
<p>Statistically, most people find their grades go down, but for some it’s the other way around (almost always it’s just regression to the mean–it’ll fall for valedictorians and it’ll rise for the crappy HS bums). The real question is: who cares? The amount of work goes down, classes are more interesting, and you spend more time reading and/or learning than doing busywork. </p>
<p>Personally, I just study and the grades pop up in my transcript at the end of the semester.</p>
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<p>Your son’s experience sounds just like mine…except I was never allowed to take APs and my high school GPA was much worse than 3.15 (Trust me…it’s the stuff of cc parent worst nightmares). My high school also didn’t have honors courses because all the “standard” courses we took at our public magnet high school were considered honors and most college admissions offices…especially the elite ones knew about the rigor of our curriculum. </p>
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<p>Crappy HS bums?!! Gee…thanks. 
:D</p>
<p>For what it’s worth I had a low hs gpa.</p>
<p>Really depends on how well you know your true abilities.
Some people know that they’re not so smart and can only earn good grades by working hard; others believe they’re smart and can earn good grades by partying everyday.</p>
<p>I did so much better in college than in HS.
Got my first straight A.</p>