re-admission to college after dropping out?

Page 1 of 1 [ 3 posts ] 

helen22
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

User avatar

Joined: 14 Nov 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 1

15 Nov 2010, 8:54 pm

Hey, I'm new here. My brother was just diagnosed with Aspergers, he is 24 years old now. I came here because I didn't know anywhere else to go, no one I know knows anything about aspergers. He's always had some problem, but we never knew what it was. He is very very smart, does exceptionally well on tests, but always does very poorly in school. My family has always chalked it up to him being lazy.

He went to college but dropped out two years ago because he was doing very poorly and was very frustrated. He took it really hard, and moved back home and was very depressed. My mom got him to go to a psychiatrist and some other doctors and after a few months of testing it was determined that he has Aspergers.

At first he and my family were really upset, but I am trying to help him see it as a new beginning. Maybe he can go back to college now and get the help he needs to do better. The doctor says one of his biggest problems is that he knows he should be doing well but can't. Are there any good college programs that could help him? Also, he didn't fail out of college but he didn't do very well, I am afraid that he wont be able to be accepted if he tries to reapply. Is there a special program he can apply to that can possibly forgive his grades pre-diagnosis? He is so smart and has so much passion for so many different fields, it kills me to see him so depressed and feeling so worthless.



Ancalagon
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Dec 2007
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,302

15 Nov 2010, 10:21 pm

Some of this sounds a lot like what happened to me. I went to college the first time about ten years ago, started doing fairly poorly, got depressed about it, and started doing worse. The college put me on a 6-month suspension, I came back, did well for the first half of the semester, and then crashed and burned spectacularly. The only grade that wasn't an F that semester was a D.

Now I'm back in school, and haven't made anything lower than a B. It helps that the college I'm at now doesn't factor in the old grades into the GPA, because they were earned at a different school. It helps even more that I've grown up a bit, and that I have a very clear goal, rather than more-or-less going with the flow.

I think the one thing that would probably help him the most would be to have something that he can do and then feel proud of. An accomplishment that he can hang his hat on. Something to show that he is more than what his grades were.

If he's not ready to do well yet, trying again might not help (like my semester after I got off of the suspension). He needs a motivation other than guilt. Guilt works short-term, but then it makes you depressed, and becomes a vicious cycle that sucks you down again.

One failure once (or even several) doesn't make you a failure, he needs to understand that. Also, getting a great pep-talk (from yourself or someone else) won't change your habits. In the end, it's the habit of going to class, the habit of doing the work, the habit of getting up in the morning when you don't want to that make the most difference.

I don't know much about community colleges, but I have heard that they are very relaxed about entrance requirements, and I know that courses there transfer to other colleges. If he were ready for, say, a light course load at a community college and did extremely well, a regular college admissions person would probably give that performance more weight than the previous college performance.

One of the things I'm doing is trying to get my GPA up to a 4.0. I don't need to really, but having that clear goal helps me focus and keeps me from slipping back into old habits. Yes, they're 10 years old now, but even though I've changed in many ways, I'm still me, and I could flunk out again. I won't, though.

This is my favorite motivational video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tjYoKCBYag[/youtube]


_________________
"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." --G. K. Chesterton


zer0netgain
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Mar 2009
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,613

16 Nov 2010, 6:10 am

If that video is anyhow accurate, I have a huge payday coming. :oops: