Some college and university students struggle to achieve the grades they need to pass their courses or to achieve good enough grades to enter graduate school programs.
These students may have done sufficiently well through study and tutoring to achieve high enough marks at the high school level to enter post-secondary programs. However, once there they find themselves in college or university classes that are large and impersonal, where attendance is not enforced and rules are relaxed compared to high school. They run into situations where they are no longer achieving the grades they need to feel successful.
Red Flags for Achievement for College and University Students
There are several different kinds of students who experience these problems. Please consider the following to see if it applies to you or to someone you know:
- Some students have long term learning disabilities that have not been diagnosed, especially in the auditory processing system (listening and learning from oral presentations such as lectures).
- Some students’ study, organization and test taking skills are weak. They have not learned good study skills on how to learn.
- Some students are passing their courses but achieving only mediocre grades that will not allow them access to the graduate programs of their choice.
These students have been able to manage in the routine and rule-based high school program with access to text material and extra help. In the larger and freer context of the university classroom they reach their challenge level, especially when the lecture process is used to deliver a large part of the information that cannot be directly found easily in text material.