Anonymous wrote:If only other parents would share that their kids struggle after getting GPAs in HS above 4.0, maybe parents would wake up and smell the coffee. The HS grades are based on practices that don’t exist in college. I’m talking about about retakes. If your kid’s high grades come from retakes, make sure you understand that this won’t be happening in college. Plus most college classes have midterms and finals. If your kid has never had them, they will need to seek out help to learn how to study. Public schools are not really preparing kids for college. They just like to brag about their high graduation rate.

My kid had a 4.44 in HS and currently sits at at 3.0 in college. Us not because of retakes. She rarely had a situation that she had a retake, maybe calc. The reason it’s so different is purely the lack of structure, she herself would say that.

If only other parents would share that their kids struggle after getting GPAs in HS above 4.0, maybe parents would wake up and smell the coffee. The HS grades are based on practices that don’t exist in college. I’m talking about about retakes. If your kid’s high grades come from retakes, make sure you understand that this won’t be happening in college. Plus most college classes have midterms and finals. If your kid has never had them, they will need to seek out help to learn how to study. Public schools are not really preparing kids for college. They just like to brag about their high graduation rate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did she go to a rigorous high school?

If she went to a public high school, this may not be her fault.

I remember the valedictorian at Wilson, or maybe he was salutatorian, wine to a top ten university. He was super smart and driven but got bad grades freshman year. He just wasn’t adequately prepared by his high school.

It would be really inappropriate to send her to a high school thwt didn’t prepare her for college and then get mad at her for performing poorly her first semester.

GO away TROLL

I’m not a troll. He finished first or second in his class at Wilson, is now a successful person, but did poorly his first year at Duke. Despite working hard in high school. Wilson didn’t prepare him well.

I don’t think this person is necessarily a troll. Many people have said that MCPS does not prepare them for college, namely, by taking away final exams. Also, allowing them to turn in work late and inflating grades doesn’t help.

In that case I wouldn't force her to pay. It sounds like she's truly struggling after making a mistake about not using the accommodations. I'd chat with her over winter break. As long as she recognizes her mistake and presses forward by seeking out the accommodations for next semester and beyond, I'd just chalk it up to a maturation process. Now if she doesn't seek out those accommodations going forward, well that's not learning from a mistake so I might make a point of having her pay, but for now I'd take a calm, non patronizing supportive approach of learning and growing into adulthood.

OP here. No, not hard classes. Psych major. Although the class she withdrew from was notoriously difficult language class. She actually said she enjoyed all of her classes, and oddly that the difficult language class was her favorite, despite her bombing and withdrawing.

Is she taking all the hard classes like physics, chem, etc? Next semester, take easier classes. Need to balance the difficult classes with easy classes. Did she go to office hours, discussion class etc ?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did she go to a rigorous high school?

If she went to a public high school, this may not be her fault.

I remember the valedictorian at Wilson, or maybe he was salutatorian, wine to a top ten university. He was super smart and driven but got bad grades freshman year. He just wasn’t adequately prepared by his high school.

It would be really inappropriate to send her to a high school thwt didn’t prepare her for college and then get mad at her for performing poorly her first semester.

GO away TROLL

I’m not a troll. He finished first or second in his class at Wilson, is now a successful person, but did poorly his first year at Duke. Despite working hard in high school. Wilson didn’t prepare him well.

She needs to take advantage of the school's supports. Help her make a plan: what resources are there, how does she access them, when and how will she do that? If there are things that aren't available through the school, can they be obtained elsewhere? This might include tutoring, executive function coaching, study groups to keep her on track and accountable, etc. She needs to do this, but you can help her figure out what's available that will help.

OP here. Thank you for all the support. Just want to give a shout out that this is actually the kindest I’ve ever seen DCUM.
Couple things. I don’t think the school was too hard for her, as someone suggested. This is a large public university that caters to good students and inner city kids. It’s a true mix, and I think it was a good fit for her. Her scores were in the 75th percentile. It was a target school, borderline safety school. She was accepted to “better” schools. The point about the school accepting her knowing this would happen (losing merit aid) is interesting, I never thought of that.
She did have a lot of money in her bank account. She worked for two years scooping ice cream, and got pandemic pay for one of those years. She also had bat mitzvah money and a gift from grandparents. It’s a savings account that she pretty much has never touched.
The hardest part of this, as a parent, is watching her be so hard on herself. She too went to an MCPS school with inflated grades, and where there were no final exams. This week was horrendous for her studying. Something she was not accustomed to it all.
I think we just need to talk to her and see what the real problem was. It wasn’t partying, I think it was a bit of a screen addiction, and the freedom of not having me nag and look at Canvas. She wants to do well.

I agree with the others. Sometimes it's the intended major. Pivoting away from that can help. Finding classes that really engage her - so she can see and feel that college can be more than the grind that those intro classes often are. A summer class is a great idea to lower the pressure on a semester or two.

Anonymous wrote:Did she go to a rigorous high school?

If she went to a public high school, this may not be her fault.

I remember the valedictorian at Wilson, or maybe he was salutatorian, wine to a top ten university. He was super smart and driven but got bad grades freshman year. He just wasn’t adequately prepared by his high school.

It would be really inappropriate to send her to a high school thwt didn’t prepare her for college and then get mad at her for performing poorly her first semester.

My daughter had good grades (4.5) at a middle of the road MCPS high school; 9 AP classes and a 33 on the ACT. A very smart kid, but not super studious and not competitive with grades. Classes at a good but not great university have been a shock for her. First semester was a 2.9 even though she was repeating several AP classes. Second semester was better (3.2), but she got a D in a class and needs to retake. After MCPS she needed some time to actually learn to study, and to learn subjects in depth. She was able to skate through MCPS and it didn’t prepare her well for college at all. It could be that your daughter just needs time to acclimate to the increased demands.

Kids can certainly start poorly in college and recover. As a hiring manager I put very little weight on freshman year grades.

My son had a 1.8 2nd semester but a 2.5 1st so the year ended up 2.1 at a T30 school.

He graduated last year and said to me, you never mentioned my 1.8 to me that summer after freshman year, why?

I guess I just knew you knew you had to fix it or the next year you’d be coming home to go to a state school and either you’d fix it or you wouldn’t and there was nothing I could do to make that happen.

I can’t promise you she will fix it.

My youngest got a sub 3.0 and was kicked out of the business school so he changed to communication and had to either sink or swim. We did discuss what would be options for a new major. He was sad.

I don’t advocate for coming down hard.

The natural consequence are pretty apparent.

Anonymous wrote:Did she go to a rigorous high school?

If she went to a public high school, this may not be her fault.

I remember the valedictorian at Wilson, or maybe he was salutatorian, wine to a top ten university. He was super smart and driven but got bad grades freshman year. He just wasn’t adequately prepared by his high school.

It would be really inappropriate to send her to a high school thwt didn’t prepare her for college and then get mad at her for performing poorly her first semester.

GO away TROLL

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can afford. One idea to take the $9000 (the merit) out of her bank account as a way of getting “skin in the game”
She is not a partier, like at all. She is introverted and has a bad case of ADD. She did not take advantage of any of the supports in the school, or what they had to offer. In terms of accommodations, even though she was entitled to some like extended test time. She said socially, She loves it.

Don’t punish her. It sounds like she needs support to figure out what happened. Help her find solutions.

THIS^^^

An introvert with ADD will likely find college hugely different than HS. It's hard to ask for the help needed, and then as they "do worse" it gets even harder---it becomes a downward spiral for many kids with ADHD/ADD. Also, may kids with ADD/ADHD also have some level of anxiety. So when things get out of control the anxiety kicks in and renders them damn near helpless (Signed a parent of a kid diagnosed with ADHD during freshman year of college who had to change majors but graduated on time and started first job 2 weeks after graduation).

Help her come up with a plan for how to "right the ship" next semester (start using the support system the school offers). Then you may need to be a bit more involved and help her stay on track. She needs your support right now, not to be punished/told to figure it out alone.

Did she go to a rigorous high school?

If she went to a public high school, this may not be her fault.

I remember the valedictorian at Wilson, or maybe he was salutatorian, wine to a top ten university. He was super smart and driven but got bad grades freshman year. He just wasn’t adequately prepared by his high school.

It would be really inappropriate to send her to a high school thwt didn’t prepare her for college and then get mad at her for performing poorly her first semester.