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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181 |
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?
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 05/09/15 04:02 PM.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Apr 2013
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... have the supports and role models he needs to develop a healthy internal monologue and life habits as he grows up. I want to consciously model struggle and failure around personally meaningful goals to him as he grows up so that he learns how people--even outwardly successful ones-- pick up the pieces of a shattered dream, be it personal or professional, and pivot toward a new path.
I fully plan to have DH and I share with him our personal and professional failures when appropriate. He needs to know that marriage, work, health (physical, mental, spiritual) are the product of grit, struggle, and learning. When the passion in any of these areas inevitably wanes, success boils down to a sequence of small habits repeated consistently over time that center on a guiding set of values. Well said.  huge merit scholarship... Walking away from an award like that is easier said than done. Unfortunately it appears that renewable annual merit scholarships might not be renewed for a number of students: U.S.News & World Report - Education, 5 Big Financial Aid Lies, by Kim Clark, April 6, 2010 5. "Renewable" merit scholarships: Most schools and organizations tell scholarship winners the rules they'll need to follow and grades they'll need to achieve to renew their scholarships in future years. But only a few organizations give prospective, and, all too often, overconfident, students any statistics or warning of the odds of their receiving merit scholarships for all four years. Some officials in states such as Georgia and Tennessee warn high-schoolers that as many as half of the B students who earn Hope Scholarships drop below a B average in their freshman year, and thus lose their merit scholarships for sophomore year. But some schools have set much higher and tougher hurdles—GPAs of 3.5, or even 3.8—for other merit scholarships, and don't always warn the winners about previous recipients' records of achieving those kinds of grades over four years. Possibly in addition to a "Net Price Calculator", college websites ought to be required to reveal a 5-year history of student financial aid statistics including, where applicable, renewal rates of merit scholarships.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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Excellent idea, that.
In addition, I'd also argue that colleges should be forced to discuss mental health problems among their student populations.
I think that there is a sense that students' mental health difficulties are preexisting, or that they develop inevitably, in a sort of bubble that belongs to the student, and this is simply not the case in a lot of disorders.
Stress is a known trigger for a great many mental health disorders that emerge in late adolescence and young adulthood. Those are some serious conditions (some of them potentially fatal, as this tragic story demonstrates)-- and parents who want to know what a college has (for real) as a track record for managing the known rate of such emergence should be able to find it. That is not currently the case.
Rates of addiction, arrest, etc. are also information that parents and prospective students should have at hand, too. Such things can paint a realistic picture of what the level of student support versus crushing stress and isolation looks like on any given campus.
This generation seems fine-- better than fine-- on the surface. But I've known quite a few kids like this girl, and when you know a half dozen or more kids who graduate near the top of their classes, are seemingly motivated, have a bunch of merit aid, and still go off to college only to come home in less than a full year, shattered emotionally-- something is very wrong.
These are kids who came from homes like those of the members here, by the way. GOOD homes. Not homes where these kids were overly helicoptered or Tigered or anything. It's mystifying to me on some level. They are for some reason feeling a level of anxiety and stress over their performance that previous generations simply did not.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,298
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Unfortunately it appears that renewable annual merit scholarships might not be renewed for a number of students: U.S.News & World Report - Education, 5 Big Financial Aid Lies, by Kim Clark, April 6, 2010 5. "Renewable" merit scholarships: Most schools and organizations tell scholarship winners the rules they'll need to follow and grades they'll need to achieve to renew their scholarships in future years. But only a few organizations give prospective, and, all too often, overconfident, students any statistics or warning of the odds of their receiving merit scholarships for all four years.[/i ... some schools have set much higher and tougher hurdles—GPAs of 3.5, or even 3.8—for other merit scholarships, and [i]don't always warn the winners about previous recipients' records of achieving those kinds of grades over four years. Law schools have been doing this sort of thing for a while, too. I see it as being the educational equivalent of a bait-and-switch routine. The colleges know that a big chunk of merit scholarship kids will lose the funding and become revenue sources who will be reluctant to pull out of the college. The financial aid people should be obligated to tell the kids not only what percentage of scholarships are lost at the end of each year (x% of ending freshmen, etc,) but also what's required on average to retain the required GPA --- by subject area. So that might be, "40+ hours a week outside of 20 hours of classes classes and labs for STEM, 30+ for humanities outside of class time, etc. And if you major in theater, prepare to sacrifice many weekends working as an unpaid lighting/sound/backstage lackey during dress rehearsals and performance days and nights."
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Joined: Jul 2014
Posts: 602
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Coming from a continental European perspective where unis will let you succeed or fail on your own without the least bit of pressure but with hearty indifference, I was quite surprised even in the nineties coming to a high pressure place (in the UK) and witnessing (and experiencing) the effects on mental health in the students around me and myself. I knew a number of kids on junior year abroad from a very high pressure LAC in the US and was rather shocked at the workload over and above even what kids had in the UK, including paid work and horrible budget pressures, and the amount of sleep deprivation that was considered normal.
I get these obsessive interests and on of these during the last few years has been the compound effects of chronic stress, lack of outdoor time, bad nutrition and chronic sleep deprivation. And recently, I have become interested in higher education in the US.
The workload and pressure teenagers are being placed under even in high school, and the sleep deprivation that is expected as a matter of course, are staggering, and colleges appear even worse in that respect - and everyone seems to be PROUD of it, as a mark of rigour. Look how we're killing ourselves to get ahead.
Kids are set up for major health problems with this disruption of circadian rhythm and chronic cortisol overload, mental health immediately and cardiovascular and metabolic health later.
I read in a college guide how a student proudly declares a professor told the, to phone them up even at two in the morning if they had a problem. This is ridiculous.
Last edited by Tigerle; 05/10/15 06:45 AM.
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,248 Likes: 1
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... what percentage of scholarships are lost at the end of each year (x% of ending freshmen, etc,)... what's required on average to retain the required GPA --- by subject area. This article appearing online for Time/Money, by Jacob Davidson, titled " 3 Mistakes That Will Cost You a College Scholarship", dated September 3, 2014 gives a brief glimpse: between 5% to more than 40% of students lose renewable annual scholarships. Engineering, computing, and natural science students, and those with athletic scholarships are said to be less likely to retain renewable annual scholarships for all 4 years. It would be great to have full transparency: college websites revealing a 5-year history of their student body's financial aid statistics, including retention of merit scholarships by school/discipline and scholarship type.
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,248 Likes: 1
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Coming from a continental European perspective where unis will let you succeed or fail on your own without the least bit of pressure but with hearty indifference It is my understanding that students in the United States also succeed or fail uni on their own, so I am unclear as to what you are referring to. Would you clarify, please?
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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 1,489
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Stress is a known trigger for a great many mental health disorders that emerge in late adolescence and young adulthood. Those are some serious conditions (some of them potentially fatal, as this tragic story demonstrates)-- and parents who want to know what a college has (for real) as a track record for managing the known rate of such emergence should be able to find it. That is not currently the case.
Rates of addiction, arrest, etc. are also information that parents and prospective students should have at hand, too. Such things can paint a realistic picture of what the level of student support versus crushing stress and isolation looks like on any given campus.
This generation seems fine-- better than fine-- on the surface. But I've known quite a few kids like this girl, and when you know a half dozen or more kids who graduate near the top of their classes, are seemingly motivated, have a bunch of merit aid, and still go off to college only to come home in less than a full year, shattered emotionally-- something is very wrong.
These are kids who came from homes like those of the members here, by the way. GOOD homes. Not homes where these kids were overly helicoptered or Tigered or anything. It's mystifying to me on some level. They are for some reason feeling a level of anxiety and stress over their performance that previous generations simply did not. I've seen this myself. It's an issue many of my RL friends have been struggling with in their college kids. When I read this article it hits close to home as I know quite a number of young adults struggling through university with anxiety & stress. It seems almost universal among those who I know at top tier universities. One thing I noted from the article that I see in the students I know. Most of them will accept the "top rated" school they get into irregardless of fit. I remember asking one young woman a few years back why she chose X Ivy League, and she honestly said "it was the best school I got into."
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Joined: Nov 2012
Posts: 2,513
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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?All points very well taken, Howler. I sometimes forget just how much more high-stakes the situation in higher ed is in the US versus Canada. Here, a full scholarship would be $5-10K/year in most undergrad programs. It's a LOT easier to justify and offset walking away from $20-40K (or less) than the comparable US figures. Frankly, the decision between merit financing and mental health shouldn't be a zero sum decision. Ever. IMO, merit scholarships should come with clauses that permit temporarily lower course loads or short leaves for health related reasons. In the case of my BIL, cancer was a sufficient reason for a leave while retaining a scholarship (thankfully he's -0 years in remission!); why are other health conditions considered less pressing? It boggles the mind the extent to which mental health conditions are doubted and denigrated!
What is to give light must endure burning.
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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 1,489
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Unfortunately it appears that renewable annual merit scholarships might not be renewed for a number of students: U.S.News & World Report - Education, 5 Big Financial Aid Lies, by Kim Clark, April 6, 2010 5. "Renewable" merit scholarships: Most schools and organizations tell scholarship winners the rules they'll need to follow and grades they'll need to achieve to renew their scholarships in future years. But only a few organizations give prospective, and, all too often, overconfident, students any statistics or warning of the odds of their receiving merit scholarships for all four years.[/i ... some schools have set much higher and tougher hurdles—GPAs of 3.5, or even 3.8—for other merit scholarships, and [i]don't always warn the winners about previous recipients' records of achieving those kinds of grades over four years. I wonder if not all of these students really understand how hard a 3.8 might be to maintain. In the U.S. system where many honors & AP classes have a +1 point. Thus many of these students have GPA's that well exceed a 4.0 in High School. In addition to calculating GPA's for H.S. typcially plus & minuses don't matter. But in college GPA's, that A-, B- is worth less points that the A or B. To maintain a 3.8, if your on a semester system taking 5 classes, you must get 4 A's and better than a B in the remaining. If any of those is an A- you drop below a 3.8.
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