The Gap Between High School and College Can Be Treacherous
The distance between high school and college is more than the summer months between high school graduation and college orientation. There are many skills and much maturity needed to succeed in college, and many freshman enter the campus without them. Here are a few.
1. Reading between the lines. Because so much attention is spent on attendance and discipline in lower grades, college students are skilled at literal comprehension but weak in drawing conclusions. They often have trouble with inferential learning because it requires stepping beyond what's clearly stated.
2. Structuring study time and materials. It's common for high school teachers to provide study guides just before exams to help students focus on what will be on the test. College teachers expect students to determine this from their notes and textbook reading.
3. Facing the consequences.One of the greatest disservices of many high school teachers is allowing extra credit assignments. Instead of enhancing an already good grade, extra credit assignments are used to compensate for missing assignments that were never turned in when due. Once in college, the students who have long counted on extra credit to pull them through, are shocked, disappointed and hurt to discover that many college professors do not subscribe to this practice.
College freshman who want to succeed must expect to spend time getting acclimated to a very new land in college.
Labels: adjusting to college, college freshmen, college grades
posted by Flora Morris Brown, Ph.D. @ 4:58 PM
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