My son Alex is 15. He does OK in school, not great, not bad. Maybe an average of 2 As, 2 Bs, and 2 Cs on his report card. He is smart enough to do better, but doesn’t really apply himself. The thing is, he is very active in extra curricular activities. He is in the marching band, in the Mechanical Engineering club, runs track, volunteers at the library, and is on the robotics team. Not all of these things happen at the same time, for example, marching band is in the fall and track is run in the spring.
A certain relative thinks we should not let Alex do so many after school activities (or any at all) until his grades go up. She thinks it is rewarding him for mediocre work. My opinion is that his grades aren’t because he lacks time to do his homework, and that if he stops his activities he won’t spend his extra time doing school work, he’ll just spend more time on Facebook or watching Youtube videos. I hope that he’ll find his passion through his activities, and then see a real life application for those classes he has to take. Maybe Alex will fall in love with robotics and then the math and science class will be more meaningful.
Unless he is going to high school that is recognized as being a very good school those C’s need to go. Each C is canceling out an A and you are ending up with a solid B average. I don’t know how scholarships are these days but it seems to me a 3.0 aint exactly going to be a “i’m rich bitch” moment.
Could those Bs become As with just a bit more work? Or the Cs made into Bs at least?
Cs are damn good at bring down the GPA. Not to mention a D or F here or there (do the math on how many As you need to bring a D or F back up to something pretty good like a 3.5)
Yeah, every kid has a subject or two that barring 24/7 study (or even that) they aren’t going to get a good grade at. OTOH not getting a good grade on something just because you can’t be arsed to spend a little time at is IMO a big mistake.
Yeah, this extracaricular stuff is nice. But you know who is going to get the sweet college deals? The ones with the good GPA’s AND the good extracaricular stuff.
Then there is this. Plenty of students do pretty good just coasting through high school. Then, they flame out pretty spectacularly in college because they have never got in the habit of having to actually work at making a good grade.
2As, 2Bs and 2Cs is above average work. If he were getting Ds and Fs, I’d be more inclined to say his extra curricular activities may be influencing his grades. I am sure you are encouraging him to get his Cs up higher but you know your kid and what will happen if he has more free time.
Creating a well rounded person is much more important than having a straight A student. This relative seems to have some priority issues.
Extracurricular activities aren’t a reward for getting good grades. They make for a well-rounded education and are giving him skills and experiences that will likely help him throughout his life.
There’s also no guarrantee that paring down his extracurriculars will cause him to apply himself more in his classes. Which means not only would he be missing out on activities that could mitigate his GPA weaknesses, but his grades would not even be helped.
What I think you should do is figure out why he’s not applying himself in his C classes and see what can be done about that, if anything.
A 3.0 these days probably just gets you admitted to “a college”. Nevermind the scholarship part. If pops and the kid don’t care about a good college, much less a great college and are willing to go into debt to pay for it. I say let em have at it.
Don’t get me wrong. Maybe the kid ends up wanting get a real honest working mans job being a welder or some such. And he likes the job and the pay is good. Good for him. OTOH tossing away your academic options before you’ve decided is a bad idea IMO.
It all depends on what the kid’s goals are. If he’s wanted to go to Harvard or MIT since he was 6 years old, those grades are a problem, but I don’t suspect that’s the case. If he really enjoys the extracurricular stuff he’s doing, that’s good, and he should keep doing them. As you say, doing one doesn’t really affect the other and if getting into a good college is the goal, it doesn’t make sense to reduce one thing that helps, extracurricular activities, to potentially boost the other, higher grades. If anything, they should be treated separately.
If he’s in the mechanical engineering and robotics clubs, I suspect he may be interested in pursuing something along those lines for his degree, at which point a 3.0 probably won’t cut it. Speaking as someone who was fully capable of nearly a 4.0, but was happy to be lazy with a 3.2 in High School and wanted to go into a similar field, had I known it would affect getting into the school I wanted to, I probably would have applied myself harder. I ended up going to community college, got nearly a 4.0 there, and was able to transfer, so it worked out well for me, but that may not be an option depending on the competitiveness of the school, quality of community college and all that.
Even in all of that, it still depends on what his goals and motivations are. He’s 15, so chances are that getting into a good college isn’t exactly his top priority and, in my opinion, probably shouldn’t be. Again, unless he’s had his heart set on MIT, but then that’d provide the motivation to get his grades up on it’s own. I’d just say have a conversation with him, figure out what he wants to do after High School, and then figure out what would best serve him to reach those goals. You may find out he’s not all that interested in college, or that certain schools he’s looking at concider certain activities or particular classes or course loads differently and simply raising his grades isn’t going to be the best approach.
We live in a state university town, and I think he wants to go to State U. He likes making things, building things, and I think it could either go towards something non-scholastic like welding (he got a job teaching welding at a camp last summer) or something more brainy like mechanical engineering. We’ve had lots of talks about his grades and applying himself more, but in the end it’s his decision and his life.
It seems to me that he should be able to get those Cs to Bs without having to cut activities. Is there anyway you can help him with the classes he’s got the Cs in? Quiz him on what he needs to know before tests? go over homework with him? Stuff like that? My kid was getting Cs in history until I started looking at his homework and discovered that while he was essentially doing the work, he wasn’t really answering questions fully. We worked on how to answer the questions the way the teacher expected and he’s doing much better.
I think unless this certain relative is your son’s other parent, they need to butt out. It’s just none of their business. If it is the other parent, well, it’s time for the three of you to sit down and work something out.
That may be true, but at his age it is your responsibility to make him see the consequences of his actions before his senior year and him getting rejected by the colleges he wants to attend.
Why is he getting Cs? It is one thing if that is the best he can do, though he tries. It is another if he can do better and isn’t for some reason.
Does he have time management issues? That is something he needs to learn now. Especially if he has any hope of getting into mechanical engineering.
There is nothing wrong with welding, but Tom Friedman had a column in the Times about a woman who runs a factory and her shortage of skilled welders. The issue wasn’t just welding, it was that she couldn’t find someone with the metallurgical background to understand how to do complex welds.
BTW, I don’t buy the “It’s not relevant” excuse at all. Grades on the next test and next report card should be relevance enough. Especially when someone is so young that they can’t possibly know what a career requires. Anyone starting a job, or going to college, is going to do lots of stuff where the relevance is far from clear. That’s no excuse for not doing ones best.
I don’t mean this nastily, but have you considered your expectations of him? My daughters improved the grades of several boys by just insisting they buckle down and get to work.
But at 15 did you have enough smarts and common sense to intelligently map out your early life? I sure as hell know I didn’t. Most of my young life success was due to lucky genes and dumb luck.
Yeah, you can’t FORCE them to take the least risky path. OTOH, the moment they want to do A when B makes more sense is IMO not the time to pull out the "hey, its your life card " either.
I’ve seen parents pull that on several occasions and it pisses me the hell off.
A 3.0 will get him admitted to a state school with his extra curricular activities a lot faster than a 3.0 without them. OP needs to explain that to his relative. I don’t know what you consider a “good school” but if he has high Cs, they don’t necessarily cancel out the As. My son had solid Cs in Spanish all through high school, still ended up with a 3.6 and got accepted to Rollins while his buddy with a 3.9 was wait listed. He was drum major and volunteered for various geriatric charities in school which put him ahead of his friend that did nothing extra but honestly, worked harder and got better grades.
I said a C cancels out an A and results in a B. You slacked off in math in high school didn’t you?
Yeah, everybody has got the “slacker in high school kicks ass later” stories. Because they make good stories. Few people run around telling the “I fucked off in high school and screwed up my future potential” stories. I wonder which one is more common?
I really think our definition of “slacker” is miles apart. To me, a slacker gets Ds and Cs. Not As and Bs with an occasional C. But more, I am wondering what kind of schools you are familiar with that As and Bs are so easy to come by that people that do not get them are “slackers”. Or perhaps you did as well in English as you assume I did in math and don’t understand what that word means.
Tell me the ratio of how many As to to Cs it takes to come out with your sons 3.6 GPA. It sure aint about 1 to 1 as the OP describes. Off the top of my head its about 4 to one give or take without doing the calculation. I’m going with what the OP describes. If the OP is overstating the amount of Cs great then. However, you are making stuff up as you go along and reading stuff into stuff thats just not there.
However, its my understanding that good school/good scholarship money starts around 3.5 give or take. And, in ADDITION to that you need good extracarricular activites AND good SAT/ACT/whatever the test of day is scores. And keep in mind I mean “good”, not fracking Hawvard.
Sure, you can lag on any one of those three. Or maybe lag a little bit on two or just get by on all three for that matter.
But, if any one of those can be significantly increased with a little bit of work without hurting the others IMO its a darn good idea to do so. Unless you really don’t care where you go to college or don’t mind footing the bill yourself.