Engineering Majors and low GPAs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, grades are trickling in and it looks like my kid isn’t pulling it off. Not sure what happens next.

I am I’ll with worry, anger, and yes, embarrassment.

I humbly suggest that you bite your tongue a LOT and give your kid some space to assess the situation and figure out what he wants to do. I have a kid getting some bad grades in HS. It's maddening. BUT, it's SOOO important for them to find their way. Be there to listen, to ask questions, to help them come up with options (if they aren't sure what to do next). But, they have to find their path.

Ask what they think went wrong. Would a tutor be helpful for next semester? Ask if they need help coming up with a plan. BUT let them do it! They are capable. Even if the kid does the wrong thing right now, he will learn from that. It is so hard to give them enough leash to make bad choices... but that is the way to learn and take ownership of life.

Resist the urge to figure this out for your kid. RESIST.

Nice post

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, grades are trickling in and it looks like my kid isn’t pulling it off. Not sure what happens next.

I am I’ll with worry, anger, and yes, embarrassment.

I humbly suggest that you bite your tongue a LOT and give your kid some space to assess the situation and figure out what he wants to do. I have a kid getting some bad grades in HS. It's maddening. BUT, it's SOOO important for them to find their way. Be there to listen, to ask questions, to help them come up with options (if they aren't sure what to do next). But, they have to find their path.

Ask what they think went wrong. Would a tutor be helpful for next semester? Ask if they need help coming up with a plan. BUT let them do it! They are capable. Even if the kid does the wrong thing right now, he will learn from that. It is so hard to give them enough leash to make bad choices... but that is the way to learn and take ownership of life.

Resist the urge to figure this out for your kid. RESIST.

Nice post

...yes, very idealistic too.

[Anonymous]

May be the following will give some new hope for you, and may be hope and inspiration for your son.
This happened in the last 10 years. Someone I know initially joined an engineering major in one of the top engineering programs but couldn't cut it. Changed major but it affected the overall GPA by graduation time and couldn't get into Med school. Did masters program, then was successful in getting into Med school, went on to specialize in a high demand, lucrative surgical specialty. Enjoys the medical profession a lot.

Best of luck to your son in whatever he pursues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:May be the following will give some new hope for you, and may be hope and inspiration for your son.
This happened in the last 10 years. Someone I know initially joined an engineering major in one of the top engineering programs but couldn't cut it. Changed major but it affected the overall GPA by graduation time and couldn't get into Med school. Did masters program, then was successful in getting into Med school, went on to specialize in a high demand, lucrative surgical specialty. Enjoys the medical profession a lot.

Best of luck to your son in whatever he pursues.

Thanks. Couldn’t cut it is a big bitter and hard pill to swallow. The masters was the solution, as it often is.

What he and I really need today, though, aren’t stories about landing at the top, but rather simply landing on one’s feet. My kid just doesn’t know what he wants to be or do.

[Anonymous]

DS switched specialties within the Engineering School and that helped a lot. Would that help? Some specialties are much harder than others (ChemE).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS switched specialties within the Engineering School and that helped a lot. Would that help? Some specialties are much harder than others (ChemE).

You think ChemE is the easiest? or the hardest?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS switched specialties within the Engineering School and that helped a lot. Would that help? Some specialties are much harder than others (ChemE).

You think ChemE is the easiest? or the hardest?

Hi. Not the quoted poster but that answer depends on the school and the kid.

My kid finds chem unbearably hard (not sure why) and physics fairly straightforward. Others, the opposite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS switched specialties within the Engineering School and that helped a lot. Would that help? Some specialties are much harder than others (ChemE).

Honestly, what will save him, if anything does, is to slow down and then accept more help than he has so far. The issue isn't the specialty so much as the fact that at his school he is in one of the more selective ones.

[Anonymous]

College boards on reddit are full of engineering kids with awful GPAs struggling to get call backs and jobs. "Interview went well, I thought, but then they brought up my GPA..." sort of stuff.

It's a giant red flag. Why would a hiring manager risk their own skin to hire some kid who's a liability?

[Anonymous]

The "let them find their own way" is such Psychology Today bull****. Most kids if left to their own devices will just piss your money away on the easiest degree and party. Then you can have fun paying their rent through their 20s and for the grad degree they'll need when it finally clicks in their 20s that their BA was so damn easy because it was essentially worthless.

[Anonymous]

^ did you? PP, sounds like you would have "pissed" the money away. Not most of us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The "let them find their own way" is such Psychology Today bull****. Most kids if left to their own devices will just piss your money away on the easiest degree and party. Then you can have fun paying their rent through their 20s and for the grad degree they'll need when it finally clicks in their 20s that their BA was so damn easy because it was essentially worthless.

So many posters here, whether they are talking about drinking or studying, assume the lowest common denominator.

It really does make you wonder what they were like in college, or what kind of kids they raised. Probably a correlation between the two!

[Anonymous]

College roommate gave up majoring in engineering (ChemE) and managed to get into medical school. Without any gap years. She had to load up on some social science (psychology) her Sr year to show she had "the soft skills". She was surviving in ChemE but struggling as all were.

[Anonymous]

12:45 ~ what you say is a point of view many need to hear but your opinion would be more powerful and seriously taken delivered with a little less edge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:College boards on reddit are full of engineering kids with awful GPAs struggling to get call backs and jobs. "Interview went well, I thought, but then they brought up my GPA..." sort of stuff.

It's a giant red flag. Why would a hiring manager risk their own skin to hire some kid who's a liability?

I don't know where you are exactly but here in the DMV, there are plenty of engineering kids with awful GPAs but they have AWS cloud certifications. I can guarantee that those kids have no shortage for getting high paying IT jobs, especially in the gov. contracting sector.