Aquinas--
I wonder how Madison's story might have been different if her parents had encouraged her strongly to withdraw for a semester (or longer) to regroup or to significantly reduce her courseload, not just transfer. I wonder if she would have felt so trapped if someone had told her that she could scale back until she found her comfort zone.
Probably would have made little difference. When kids are offered full scholarships, there are strings attached. A lot of them.
If you drop to 'part time' you forfeit the scholarship. It will go away, and likely never be reinstated (back of the line, basically).
This is the problem with a huge merit scholarship, by the way. For example, DD would be considered "full time" at 12 hours per term. However, for the purposes of her scholarship, she MUST maintain 15 (minimum) for each term of her freshman year, and her gpa
must stay above 3.25 in order to maintain her placement. Her incoming credits don't get averaged-- so kids like her, they start that freshman year with nothing in the gpa bank. One class that turns out with a C (which happened to my DD, by the way), winds up ratcheting metaphorical thumbscrews and making them reconsider their majors in a HURRY.
Add that kind of pressure to the ordinary transition-year pressures (such as they are now) and it's easy to see why this can become a crushing burden.
Walking away from an award like that is easier said than done. This is big money, in a lot of cases. Maybe 50K, 100K-- or more. Do you really tell your kid "okay, let's try that if you think it might help" when you
don't really KNOW what the problem is?
