You might remember some of the troubles I have had with my oldest son, documented partially in a 4 part blog entry (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). One of the current issues cropping up is the fact that his school setting isn’t ideal for college and university applications. His boarding school is on a self-regulated PACE program (Personal Accelerated Christian Learning) and not an accredited high school. It’s important to remember when everything was going from bad to worse, it became a matter of not where we wanted him to go, but what program would accept him.
Now, 3 years later, he is not only beginning to learn to take responsibility for his actions, but he is also looking at finishing the scholastic program and complete high school – at least, their version of it. It’s a decent program and his education isn’t just a cursory ting, but without accreditation, which is much more legal work than you could probably imagine, many colleges and universities won’t recognize the work he has done.
His school this year has partnered with a program that will allow his grades to be transferred to an accredited school for college applications, which we signed up for. Unfortunately, Kyle is the perfect example of wasted potential. With no effort he will pass a class, if just barely. With minimal effort he’ll get high “C” to “B” depending on the subject. With a little bit of genuine effort, he could be a “straight A” student, but he skates by on the bare minimum. It’s frustrating as his parent to see this.
Over Thanksgiving break, Kyle was home for a visit. Instead of doing anything fun, during the 10 days he was home, we worked on college applications. Sure, we watched a couple of videos in the evening, but that was about it. Because the school issue of accreditation, we wanted to apply to as many institutions of higher learning as we could. Kyle had taken the SAT and gained a respectable score (though not as good as he should have). The biggest issue was the number of essays and short answers that needed to be provided. While it would be possible to duplicate a lot of the essays, there was still quite a lot of work necessary.
In the end we applied to 15 colleges and universities. On his previous trip home a few months earlier Kyle looked up colleges and universities with an Engineering program, which is what he is interested in. Then we took that (very) long list, and whittled it down, first by academic requirements and then geography. In the end, we wound up applying to perhaps more schools than normal, but we wanted to make sure he got in somewhere.
It’s an early Christmas present, but one we’ll gladly accept. We got our first acceptance letter. It would appear Kyle will be going to college next year. It may not be his first choice, but it’s an acceptance – Pacific University, about 20 miles East of Portland, Oregon. We haven’t heard back from any other places yet, and don’t expect to for some time. We submitted applications mostly over Thanksgiving break and right afterwards, trying to beat the early admissions deadline at some locations to give Kyle a better chance (we hoped). Now, if every other place sends out a rejection, at least Kyle has this one to go to.
This is a major relief for me. It also proves that with minimal effort, Kyle will be able to succeed at just about anything. Never having gone to college myself (my wife is currently working on her second Masters degree, but that’s a post for another time), I’m really glad that my son has this opportunity. Now he just needs to finish up his current year of schooling.