How to advise 8th Grader about College

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow -- I'm not from DC and I am very surprised to hear that courses taken before 9th grade factor into a high school GPA. That doesn't make any sense.

Colleges don't count grades from outside institutions in a GPA for transfers and study abroad students. High school should not count grades earned outside the high school into GPA either. Weird.

The school systems here do it if you take high school level classes in middle school. They consider world languages and math classes starting with algebra I to be high school level. Generally, you can choose not to have those classes on your high school transcript if you didn’t do well in middle school. Those classes can be retaken in high school.

[Anonymous]

Whatever you do, do not let your DD know you’re already worried about her future!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD is in FCPS and in her second year of some high school credit classes (language/math). It is obvious from conversations that she doesn’t understand the impact of her grades on her high school GPA and ultimately college opportunities.

She is a mostly A student, but ended 7th grade Algebra with a B+ . On the one hand she is highly self motivated, an avid reader and excellent writer. On the other hand she puts a lot of stress on herself and doesn’t understand time management or that the high school courses require the most focus as they “count.”

Parents: Graduated College in 2002/2003 from HYP and a SLAC having grown up in a high pressure cooker environment where everyone we knew was college bound. We both have graduate degrees and doing well, but have tried to de-emphasize the over pressure of our youth for our own kids.

Yet, so much of our education was funneling us, we understood young that we needed to be “well rounded, high achieving and in solid stand out ECs.”

Is there a class for younger kids? Should we casually be visiting college campuses? I just feel like it is both way more competitive now, and some how my child is clueless. (So maybe we the parents are too about how to prepare her.)

Yet here you are worried about a B+ in 7th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You tell yourself that there will be a college that's right for whoever your kid turns out to be, not that your kid needs to make herself fit a preselected group of colleges. Then you relax.

This is the best advice on the thread. I have a high school sophomore and we are just (barely!) starting to talk about college and probably won't visit any until this summer (summer before junior year) at the earliest. Focus on helping your kid figure out who they are and what they love, not on perfect grades.

[Anonymous]

Read Overachievers: the secret lives of driven kids (or something similar) by Alexandra Robbins. Written by a journalist who followed kids at a Montgomery County high school for a year.
And then back the heck off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let your kid be a kid. Please stop. You’re on track for the kid to hate you and or have a mental health crisis.

Unfortunately, That one B+ in 7th grade could already ruin her chances at top schools.

If this isn’t a joke, please seek help. But anyway, at least in our school system, you can drop all middle school grades at the end of junior year. Of course then you don’t get credit for them, but people go this. Even with As, because they’re unweighted As.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD is in FCPS and in her second year of some high school credit classes (language/math). It is obvious from conversations that she doesn’t understand the impact of her grades on her high school GPA and ultimately college opportunities.

She is a mostly A student, but ended 7th grade Algebra with a B+ . On the one hand she is highly self motivated, an avid reader and excellent writer. On the other hand she puts a lot of stress on herself and doesn’t understand time management or that the high school courses require the most focus as they “count.”

Parents: Graduated College in 2002/2003 from HYP and a SLAC having grown up in a high pressure cooker environment where everyone we knew was college bound. We both have graduate degrees and doing well, but have tried to de-emphasize the over pressure of our youth for our own kids.

Yet, so much of our education was funneling us, we understood young that we needed to be “well rounded, high achieving and in solid stand out ECs.”

Is there a class for younger kids? Should we casually be visiting college campuses? I just feel like it is both way more competitive now, and some how my child is clueless. (So maybe we the parents are too about how to prepare her.)

There are only 2 things you need to explain to this kid: “pipeline” and “street.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its not that hard, honestly. You point out the team of workmen digging up the street and holding the "stop" sign and you say these guys didn't generally do well in school and likely didn't go to college

And the people at the grocery store working the check out.

And then you talk about the doctor you visit or the dentist and how they needed very advanced degrees to do what they do.

And then you talk about money and what you can afford and cannot afford depending on your career.

I told my son this when he was EIGHT and he 100% took it on board.

Given the state of the economy and job market this would be a horrible idea as there are people with graduate degrees who are in employed.

OP, your kid is self motivated and adds stress themselves. All you need to do is continue to set the expectation that academics and grades are important and so is figuring out what things actually interest her most. Ensure she continues her work ethic development and help jer blossom into the young woman she can be proud of. Push with purpose and embrace their passions.

Getting a B is not the end of the word. You can’t change how competitive things are, and neither can she. And DCUM is not the real world.

[Anonymous]

A kid who's too anxious to function will not have the mental or psychological space to thrive academically until the anxiety is under control. So don't foster anxiety! Promote self-love, self-care, and a healthy, balanced life that includes sports, hobbies, and friends. Your kid isn't a carbon copy of you - she's her own person, and she will do well when what matters to her receives your sympathetic ear and your enthusiastic support. Maybe her best thing is academics. But maybe it's an art form, or creative writing, or athletics. You'll never know if you don't give her space for self-discovery and teach her resilience so that she still likes herself even when she makes mistakes or doesn't earn As. You remember how good it felt to be excellent in school (at least you sound like that mattered to you). Want the same thing for her - but want her to be excellent at what gives _her_ meaning, not you. There will be a college out there that will give her an excellent education and launch her into a good job. It doesn't have to be HYPSM or an elite SLAC. It will be fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You tell yourself that there will be a college that's right for whoever your kid turns out to be, not that your kid needs to make herself fit a preselected group of colleges. Then you relax.

+1 - great advice!

OP, you may want to make sure she has a solid understanding of algebra, though. It may not be a bad idea to retake the class so she has a strong foundation for more advanced math, not because of the grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its not that hard, honestly. You point out the team of workmen digging up the street and holding the "stop" sign and you say these guys didn't generally do well in school and likely didn't go to college

And the people at the grocery store working the check out.

And then you talk about the doctor you visit or the dentist and how they needed very advanced degrees to do what they do.

And then you talk about money and what you can afford and cannot afford depending on your career.

I told my son this when he was EIGHT and he 100% took it on board.

As someone who excelled academically in 8th grade and beyond and went to a great college AND who is struggling to find employment at the moment, this is not only obnoxious, but just bad messaging. Please don’t use working class people as some sort of cautionary example. Anyone might find themselves in a position of having to take any kind of work they can find at some point in their lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please don’t put additional stress on your child.

Please let her find enjoyment in the journey. Always focusing on the future will make you miss out on the present.

+1 Yes, top colleges have gotten more competitive but they are super competitive even if you are going in with a perfect 4.0. Let them make mistakes and when the time comes you find the colleges that are a good fit for them. One thing that helped my DD when she was having a meltdown about college pressure in 9th grade (all coming from peers and teachers) was to show her a few schools with 70%+ acceptance rates that had great things she was interested in. Kids get this idea that only certain colleges are acceptable or that it is universally "hard to get in to college." Let them know there are lots of options and you will be there to help them figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why the push for high school classes in 7th grade? Do you have an end goal in mind?

People move to Virginia for UVA. The price + prestige combination seems unbeatable to them. Then they discover that getting into UVA from FCPS is a developmentally-inappropriate arms race which at this point requires students to run a six-year marathon in a pressure cooker. Faced with the choice of their child attending a lower-ranked Virginia state school, or paying for a similarly-ranked private or OOS school, parents instead decide to put more and more pressure on their kids. The end goal is UVA, but it’s also about justifying the parents’ choices about where and how to invest in real estate and raise their children.

That’s ridiculous. VA has better colleges top to bottom. UMD is fine as a near (one notch down) peer to UVA, but actually the real value in VA is having VT, JMU, and W&M for the kids that don’t make UVA.