Why do some kids crash & burn yet others succeed?

Parents Forum
1

I’ve been mentally chewing on this article/thread again over the last few days. → http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/2011156-getting-into-college-was-the-easy-part-staying-there-is-becoming-harder-than-ever-experts-say.html

Why do some kids crash and burn at college but others complete their bachelor’s degrees & succeed? I’m not quite sure. I know what some of the obvious reasons are:

  • physical health issues
  • mental health issues
  • financial
  • the kid “just wasn’t ready.”

I don’t have the answers. I’m curious what everybody else’s opinions are. Other than fostering an environment at home that reinforces good study habits in high school & stuff like that, what other non-book-related skills should we parents be teaching our kids to ensure a successful and sustainable launching of the high school grad to college?

Here are 3 very different examples…

Student #1:
Good student in high school. Earned a high GPA with honors and/or AP classes. Lots of extracurriculars, spent a lot of time on a club gymnastics team. Had a part time job as well in high school. 2 weeks after high school graduation, decided to move ~ 100 miles away to move in with a new boyfriend who she’d met in person 2 times (they apparently had an online relationship for a few months prior). Student #1 decided to try to work full time and go to community college part time. Last I heard, Student #1 had decided to go into nursing because she wanted to make a lot of money and wanted to become a nurse anesthetist, but had decided against a 4 year college degree. However, a nurse anesthetist usually requires a graduate degree. New boyfriend had no college plans.

Student #2:
Good student in high school as well. High GPA, decent test scores…high enough to have earned admission to state flagship university. Some APs. Some extracurriculars. By May of senior year, Student #2 had earned acceptances from a couple of universities but did not make a decision on any of them, so lost that opportunity to enter as a freshman. Student #2 decided to move out in August with a friend…got an apartment, tried to work full time and go to community college. Partied too much and flunked some classes. And couldn’t make ends meet with multiple part time jobs, so Student #2 and the friend got evicted. Student #2 moved back home and is now taking community college classes part time and working part time, still trying after 3 years to figure out what she wants to do.

Student #3:
Stellar student, high GPA, good test scores, earned enough AP credits to start college as a sophomore. Also earned a merit scholarship to pay for all of the tuition at state flagship university, where she attends. Student joined some clubs on campus, got involved in campus life, worked a part time job for spending money, got an internship in her field. Student #3 is graduating at the end of this semester and has full time employment lined up for after graduation.

2

Why do some people at work get promoted every 2 years, get raises and bonuses, while their colleagues flounder, end up leaving, only to repeat the cycle again and again (5 jobs in 6 years type of thing). Why do some people celebrate their 50th anniversary surrounded by friends and family and others have two divorces and a string of short term relationships and are estranged from their siblings and cousins?

You haven’t posted enough information for any of us to weigh in. Some people reach their peak in HS and others reach it at age 50. Some people coast in HS and expect that to work in college. Some people are humble about what they don’t know, readily ask for help when they need it, and are generous helping others while some people think they know everything and when they hit a wall, they retreat, quit or withdraw.

What exactly is your question- are brains more important than work habits? Yes and no. Are organizational skills more important than quantitative skills? depends on the field.

Can anyone predict which kid is going to graduate college summa cum laude and which kid is going to drop out freshman year? No. But there are some leading indicators…

3

I do think a lot has to do with the expectations set at home. I have a daughter who was a very good student, but a lot of her friends (and teammates) were not. They skipped school a lot (with parents’ permission), didn’t study, put off projects to the last minute, etc. We had one blow out fight when her team lost a playoff game (and the boys team lost too, so double sorrow), so they were all going to skip school on Friday to mourn. Right. I told D to do whatever she wanted, but I would not excuse her from classes (which meant she’d get a 0 on any assignments, a big deal to her). She wailed and ranted and finally I sent her to bed.

Where are these classmates now? Some are like the students described above, trying to hold jobs while going to CC. Or not going to school and working minimum wage jobs. A few are in 4 year colleges but not UF or FSU. A lot of drugs being used. One, sadly and unbelievably to all of us, was murdered last month, obviously not because she skipped school in high school but IMO a factor was the type of ‘friends’ she made in post high school life.

I was a very strict parent. My kids did not miss school because they didn’t feel like going. They had to own their decisions to do homework or join clubs, but if they committed to something, they finished. I might have done too good of a job since neither would consider a gap year.

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@tucsonmom - I agree with @twoinanddone about expectations. I was the parent that drove my daughter and her friends to school, and usually picked them up, until they all started driving in Junior year.

When I picked them up, I would go around the car and ask each how their day went, quiz, test, etc. One of her friends I had to talk down from the cliff all the time about her Spanish (she ended up getting through it).

My daughter would get annoyed with me because her friends would tell me how one got an 83, one maybe an 88, another an 86 on tests and I would tell them all “good job”. When I got to my daughter, she might say she got an 84 on a quiz, and I would say “do you know what you did wrong”. I would tell her it was a good score but the quiz was preparation for a test and was used to help her identify area’s she needed to work on. Basically, my expectations for her were higher.

When we were alone, I explained to her that, while I wanted to give her friends positive encouragement, she was my daughter, she was capable of "A"s, and that’s what she should strive for.

I told my daughter, and all her friends, if you act like a knucklehead your options upon graduating would be limited. If you worked harder then more options would be open to them.

She indicated a preference to apply to more selective colleges so I discussed her class selection as well. She was the only one of her friends who took the “big four” AP’s; Chemistry, Calculus, Physics, and Biology. She wasn’t too happy at the possible GPA hit, but I told her, and our college visits confirmed, colleges look for these classes. The only B’s she received in high school were AP calc, physics and chemistry. She offset the B’s by getting a 4 on the AP calc exam and 700+ on the chemistry SAT subject test (she didn’t take the AP physics test and got a 4 on the biology).

I also told her I didn’t care how she did on the AP exams. The important thing was being exposed to the material. Calculus, Physics, and Chemistry are weed out courses, particularly Calculus. I, personally, believe being exposed to the material in these classes during high school is critical. At her college orientation, they split the students up into their majors, and half were freaking out about their class load. The half freaking out had not taken AP Calculus or Chemistry.

I know all of her friends and feel a lot of sympathy for some of them. They are going to feel like they got hit by a truck with Calculus. I know some students who took Calculus in high school, tested out of the subject, and decided to take it on college to get an easy A and boost their GPA. A lot of them got a C. College professors can be unpredictable.

You also have to consider, they all think they are adults when they graduate. Legally, they are, but they are not equipped to function as adults yet. They just don’t have the skill set. They’re getting there but they are delusional if they think they’re ready. They just don’t want to hear that. Take those students, put them college where they’re effectively on their own, and they can be irresponsible.

Of all her friend group, maybe 8-12, I believe maybe 3 or 4 are ready for college. One is in college but dealing drugs, one dropped out and lives with her meth addict boyfriend, etc.

When my daughter was wrapping up her senior year, she told me “Dad, I have to admit, you were absolutely right. My friends are freaking out because they didn’t get accepted to their college of choice. Some of my friends are on a destructive path. You were right”.

I felt confident that my daughter was ready enough to agree to let her go from the East Coast out to California to attend USC. I have to admit, I am keeping a pretty close eye on her. If she gets through Freshman year ok, not acting like a knucklehead, I’ll breathe a lot easier. First year will tell you a lot.

5

This could be a cause for concern. Success seems to come a lot easier to kids whose friend groups consist of people who plan to go to college, plan to graduate from college, and have at least tentative ideas about careers. Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing.

6

@Marian - All of her friend group is in college now except for the one with the meth boyfriend. My daughter tried to stay friends with her for a while to give her a stable friend (the others wrote her off). It started to get too hard though and my daughter has essentially broken off the friendship.

She did agree to spend a couple hours with the friend before she went to USC with the stipulation that the boyfriend wouldn’t be there. My daughter has always been extremely loyal to her friends.

As far as her other friends, they’re in college but only 3 or 4 of them have demonstrated the drive and maturity that indicate they’re ready for college. That doesn’t mean the others won’t be successful. They will just have more of an adjustment, that dose of reality when they understand their parents are paying for college and not a 4 year drunken binge.

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Lets also not get to assuming “good parenting” trumps all, here. I gave both my kids the same encouragement, resources, belief in them, expectations–everything to lead to supposedly instant success.

One graduated in four years with a sky high GPA from an elite LAC. Now very happy working a job that requires no degree at all. This is perfectly fine.

The other? Well, took ten years to graduate. But when he did, he did fine. Working now at fine NGO where he’s progrssing rapidly up the ladder.

The fact that he dropped out in his senior year and didn’t go back (to a top ten school) for six years, is just a fact. It wasn’t because we had this standard or that standard, this support or that support. It’s just something that happened.

I say this for two reasons:

  1. don’t assume you can make a certain result happen, or not.
  2. don’t assume a given result is a pattern–this student will “always” be like this, this failure means “this is ALWAYS true” about this student, this success means this student was “always destined” for this stellar achievement.
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@garland - I absolutely agree with you. I wasn’t trying to convey the “good parenting” factor. All we can do as parents is provide the support and tools to our kids. It’s up to them to set goals and work towards them.

I made clear to my daughter that it was up to her to work hard to achieve her goals. I couldn’t do it for her. I also told her if she didn’t take her education seriously, I had no problem with her going to community college for two years and then we would discuss her plans to finish college. That would save me a boatload and teach her how to be responsible and take her education seriously.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the community college route. It’s actually the smarter way to get her education. I did promise her, however, that if she did take her education seriously, I would do everything I could to assist her in her college of choice.

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Amen to what @garland said. Humans are organic beings, not complicated machines that when treated and maintained properly, will function the same way.

Both of my kids were raised with our values. Both had great study habits and were high achieving in high school. But our oldest child has a mental illness that seems to make every step exponentially more difficult than it is for her intellectually matched peers. While some of her friends seemed to coast the last semester of their senior year in college, I had to drive 4 hours down to her school almost every week at the recommendation of her doctor and sleep on her dorm floor for a couple of nights just to give her the encouragement she needed to get to graduation. Yes, she made it, but the cost was unusually high.

And I don’t think for a minute that her struggles are due to bad parenting, low expectations, helicoptering, neglect, or general cluelessness. Some things just happen.

10

The discussion in this thread is similar to the following thread:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2014498-why-are-some-children-are-pushed-to-learn-whereas-others-can-achieve-the-same-results-naturally-p1.html

I’d also add,

Misprioritization of one’s time even if the student was initially seemingly mature and academically ready (i.e. Spending too much time with ECs, especially beer/partying) at the expense of one’s academics.

Spreading oneself way too thin across too many academic courses and/or co-curricular/EC activities. This was especially a serious issue with many Oberlin classmates who’d max out or worse…overload on academic/conservatory classes, participate in political activism(including off-campus marches/conferences), join an intensive art collective/music band or few, and feel they’re still not doing enough when they’re actually overcommitting themselves.

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It is not all good (or bad) parenting, but at least I feel I gave my kids some structure. They are very different academically (I always say that if I could combine them I’d have one perfect kid), but they do have similar views on how you treat other people, drinking to excess, the importance of following through on commitments. They also do look at their friends who didn’t go to class, don’t care about school and don’t want to be like that. The three examples given in the OP show kids who don’t care (except #3) and I think mine do care about life and themselves.

One of my kids is on the track I thought she’d be on - slow and steady, graduating in 4 years, nothing flashy, no big honors but well liked and likely to get a job that is good but not ‘conquer the world’ level. I think she’ll take a job somewhere near her boyfriend’s home, get married and be average. My other kid has done much better than I expected, is only one semester behind,but plugging along. We are all hoping she doesn’t take a job anywhere near her boyfriend’s home!

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It’s interesting how for some people, life works out in a straight path and for other folks, it takes a slightly longer route to get to their destination. My DH took 10 yr to graduate with an engineering degree. He had to learn through the school of hard knocks.He worked a string of dead end jobs for awhile and stopped going to college altogether for awhile. He eventually realized that he didn’t want to work retail the rest of his life and pulled his head out of his rear end and buckled down.

My DH made some really dumb decisions upon high school graduation. He moved out of his parents house and moved into an apartment with some friends, got a full time factory job and tried to take a full load of classes at community college at the same time. What put it over the edge is he decided to party too much on weekends (weekends which would start on Thursday evenings). He said that he was rarely sober on the weekend for an entire year. He flunked all of his classes. Burned out. Did that 2 or 3 semesters in a row before he figured out that the hard core partying wasn’t going to cut it.

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How do you know so much about these students?

You list challenges that can make college hard, such as mental health or medical problems, or money, then launch into parental values and environment as a big factor. Which is it?

I also don’t really think in terms of “crash and burn” if a kid leaves college for awhile, or even if the kid fails. There are all kinds of turn around stories at many different points in life.

I feel as if splitting young people into success and failure stories so early is not healthy.

As a side note, many kids with the challenges you list, thrive in college. Maybe with some accommodations or medical leaves but it is perfectly possible to succeed with mental health or medical problems, and with financial need as well.

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My daughter who is little spacy surprised me. I’ve told her a number of times she doesn’t have to stay in college, she can take a break and go back, earn some money and live a little nicer. Nope. She has big plans to be a disney princess, but wants to graduate first.

So back to the original question,I don’t know why some crash and burn (but often arise from the ashes) and others just coast along. A friend’s daughter didn’t do well in a ranked LAC away from home but is a very good student and succeeding at a local university to which she commutes. A bunch of my nephew’s friends went away to school and transferred back, and are doing just fine at a closer-to-home college. Of course thousands of kids do fine away from home too. I think luck, good healthy (mental and physical), and finances have a lot to do with it, but expectations do to. Not too high, not too low, but a steady course can win the race.

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While lack of finances can definitely be a serious hindrance, having good finances can only go so far and is highly dependent on the student being aware/appreciative of that parentally bestowed privilege.

Most of the students I saw crash and burn at my LAC tended to be from upper/upper-middle class backgrounds with comfortably full-pay parents. A few of them continued to crash and burn after college(i.e. Getting expelled from grad school, bouncing from job to job due to bring fired for cause, etc)…including a few to this very day.

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I agree with @compmom. Why should we assume that the only people who can ultimately be successful in life are those who are ready to go to college at age 18 and who are able to finish a degree in 4 years? That’s an awfully arbitrary requirement. Some students just won’t be ready till a few years later, or they need to work for a few years first, or they need to take longer to graduate.

I think asking “why do some kids crash and burn while others succeed [at college]” is like asking “why are some 13-year-olds already 6 feet tall while others are still the same size they were at age 9?”

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Don’t give up on your C&B kids! I think there needs to be a separation into two groups: those capable of performing and those who aren’t. Standardized tests are a good way to figure out the capability.

I went into a tailspin late in HS and finally crashed and burned in college. I dropped/flunked out after three years of EE school. None of the reasons given above explain it … and I’m not exactly sure how to explain it myself! About the only thing I can think of is that I didn’t like being told what to do. It had nothing to do with “parentally bestowed privilege” or other grand explanations. The HS and college sequence was a well-worn track. I hated doing balls-rolling-down-planes experiments in physics (my transcript shows an F in physics lab, yikes!). I was only interested in a few things. I probably spent more time in the excellent UT-Austin engineering library than any of the A students but I simply could not grind through the regular curriculum (transcript shows a D in English, seriously, what was I thinking!). My parents never said a word and only showed complete confidence in me, for which I will be forever grateful.

Once I was out in the real world it was up, up, and away. Within three years I was at a tech company writing code with all the HYPSM people. That company became a behemoth. The unstructured, freewheeling early days became yet another well-worn track so I quit.

Anyway, the best school for me would have been one that concentrated on independent projects, where you define a goal to achieve and research/learn what’s needed to reach that goal. D18 has a lot of me in her. That’s why I’m happy that she’s in “Directed Study III” right now, working on a difficult project with a dozen other kids. She also has a lot of DW in her, so she’s able to maintain a 4.0 UW in HS. I don’t know what’ll happen when she gets to college.

Edit: heavy drinking, drugs, criminal activity are a completely separate issue. I don’t know how I’d deal with that in my kid.

18

Some parents I’ve known who had kids who exhibit the above considered that a sign of immaturity as they felt one sign of maturity in the K-12 and college contexts is to understand what’s are the expected requirements and fulfill them within the parameters/timespan…or to exceed them(go beyond the parameters positively/finish earlier than expected).

More discerning folks will allow for the possibility someone who doesn’t want to conform to externally set expectations may be doing so because they’re in the wrong environment(i.e. Some creative and/or entrepreneurial types tend to chafe under heavily structured/regimented environments whereas others don’t mind or enjoy having that structure.regimentation).

And the extent to which it’s the wrong environment or individual immaturity is dependent on how far one takes the "I don’t like being what to do’ mentality.

One older college classmate takes it to such extremes that he not only encountered much trouble at our college, but also long afterwards. It’s one critical reason why from graduation to the present he’s jumped from job to job because he kept getting fired for cause and never held one for longer than 3 months.

It sounds like you’d have been happier at an engineering version of Hampshire College where the entire curriculum is project based, self-directed, and written evaluations are used in lieu of grades or just jumping headlong into a tech startup environment straight in from HS…assuming they’re inclined to hire high school graduates.

19

These threads too often become a way for parents whose kids are “turning out alright” (at least so far) pat themselves on the back for “doing things right” while their inlaws/friends/that guy in the newspaper did things “wrong.” As has been said upthread, so many families have two or three kids whose paths are completely different, despite the same environment, same parents, same advantages, Every parent needs to take each kid as they come, and do their very best to serve that kid well. It may not be the same treatment for each one.

20

I think there are many reasons why some kids crash and burn, while others thrive. And… don’t forget about the group in the middle- the group that eventually thrives after they adjust etc.

Sometimes it’s parenting, sometimes it’s environment, sometimes it’s genetic (anxiety etc), it could be personality… sometimes it’s a combination of several factors.