Page 70 - SpringBoard_Writing_Workshop_Grade7_Flipbook

Consider some statistics:
* A 1992 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics showed that 30.6 percent of college freshmen did not return in the fall for their sophomore year.
* Of students who entered four-year colleges, only 26 percent received a bachelor’s degree within five years, according to a 1994 study by the center.
* As of 1996, only 23.6 percent of Americans over the age of 25 had a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the Census Bureau.
And consider this: Counselors say that the number of students taking a break between high school and college is increasing. Some are struggling academically but many, it turns out, are superior students.
Twenty percent of Harvard students, for example, take off a year or more during their schooling. “We encourage students to take time off,’’ said William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard. “In fact, in our admission letter, we talk about the idea of taking a year off. We feel it’s a good thing to do, to get off this very fast train that most of them have been on.’’
Mr. Gilpin, who teaches history at Milton Academy in Milton, Mass., is also president of Time Out Associates, one of the agencies that has cropped up to advise teen-agers on alternatives to starting college right after high school, like a postgraduate year at a boarding school to bring up grades or a yearlong program like Dynamy, in Worcester, Mass., which provides a dormlike environment, counseling and internship work.
“Kids are tired,’’ Mr. Gilpin said. “They take time off because they’re bored. They’re burned out. They do it because they haven’t done well and want to do better. Those who are upper middle class, entitled and mobile take a year off to better their college choices.’’
Better that, he says, than begin college on the wrong foot or in the wrong place. “What most people don’t know is, if you have a bad year in college, it is the most difficult baggage to get rid of,’’ he said. “It’s very hard to move from college to college if you’re carrying a 2.3 or a 2.5. Kids who don’t identify their discontent with college will find themselves in a perilous situation.’’
It is preferable for a student to succeed upward—say, from work to community college to four-year college—than it is to aim high, trip and fall down the academic ladder. A bad situation can mean all or some of the following: drinking and drugs, depression, skipped or dropped classes, incompletes, bad grades, flip-flopping majors, flunking out. Meanwhile, it is costing anywhere from $6,000 to $30,000 a year to stay in college, not including the state-of- the-art computer, trips home at Christmas and a new North Face ski jacket.
It’s an expensive way to find yourself.
In two years at the Rochester Institute of Technology, a school with excellent academic rehabilitation programs, Evan revealed himself to be the kind of student one expert calls “bright loafers,’’ children without the energy, interest or sense of urgency to do schoolwork, children whose parents always have to ask, Have you done your homework?
“Among the poorest risks are students whose S.A.T.’s or A.C.T. scores are significantly higher than their grades,’’ said Geoffrey Gould, director of admissions at the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Karyl Clemens, dean of admissions at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., was more optimistic. “Parents wring their hands over sons, especially, just wondering when they are going to wake up and smell the coffee,’’ she said. “The good news is that they do, eventually.’’
The problem is what to do with them in the meantime. Larry Griffith, director of admissions at the University of Delaware, still remembers his dilemma several years ago as high school counselor to a gifted athlete.
My Notes
Writing Workshop 5 • Response to Expository Text 15
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