My son high school sophomore son spent a free period each day working in his school’s office for the last two quarters. They’ve given him an option of counting it as an elective worth an “A” for the two quarters or counting it as 82 hours of community service. He needs at least 100 hours for the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship at the 100% tuition level. He has 8 so far. He just told me about this and said he was going to take the “A”s.

This is a no brainer, right? He should take the community service hours, correct?

He needs to tell them tomorrow.

I think so, unless he has some other plan for getting the community service hours in.

Explain it to him like..."thats 7 weekends working 6 hrs a day both days to get 82 hrs"

If he otherwise qualifies for the scholarship, then I'd take the hours.
If he needs the easy A for credits or to boost GPA, it gets a little tougher.

He only needs a 3.5 weighted GPA for the scholarship. His unweighted GPA should be 3.7 after his last two exams. His weighted GPA should be much higher since his honors classes count an extra .5 and the two college classes count an extra 1.0. In other words, an “A” in a regular high school class counts 4.0, in an honors high school class it counts as 4.5, and in a college class it counts as a 5.0.

He’s taking all college classes starting this fall. He could put an easy one in his schedule and that would be 3 hours a week for 15 weeks? That would be 45 hours plus some study time. An hour a week would be 60 hours total while 2 hours a week would be 75 hours total. The one thing I’m not quite clear in is I think his college classes also count double what the equivalent high school class would. As an example, high school pre-calculus takes a year. The grade for each semester counts toward your high school GPA. The equivalent college class is only one semester, so your grade then counts double for your high school GPA.

Take the hours. Elective credit for office work ain’t so impressive in the academic sense. Think of it as one kid getting two As in Spanish or something and he got two As in filing papers. People actually look at transcripts. Where does he plan on getting community service hours otherwise? He’s got a year and a half to knock them out on top of school, extra curriculars, friends, etc.

What's his reasoning here? Did he put any thought into the situation at all? If he has a plan to make up the hours in some other way, that's all well and good but I'd tell him if he didn't get the scholarship I wouldn't be making up the difference for his short sightedness.

Can you tell I don't have kids?

At the beginning of the semester he told me they put him to work in the office because he couldn’t have 2 free periods during the day. He had 5 high school classes, but his college class was online which is how he wound up with 2 free periods during the 7 period day at the high school. I asked him at that point if the office work would count as community service hours and he said it would. This was the plan in my mind. We didn’t have to drive him anywhere, it didn’t interfere with swim practice or meets, and didn’t eat into the time he normally uses to study after swim and on weekends.

The consensus seems to be take the hours.

Thanks guys.

Take the 82 hours and run !!!

My freshman dorm put a piece of butcher paper up on one end of the hall and encouraged people to write their thoughts on it. One soul wrote, “Some people focus on grades, me I focus on units.” That stuck with me. Look at the big picture, take the community service.

Take the hours. He has two more years to pump up his GPA, as it sounds like he is motivated to do. Especially since he only needs 10 more hours to qualify he'll have more time to focus on the grades.

quote:

Originally posted by HK Ag:
Take the 82 hours and run !!!

This.

Like vinnybass said, with the 8 he already has, he'd only be 10 hours away from being done with two years left.

I'd take that over two elective "A's" - especially considering electives usually are "hard" classes.

I am a father of a college freshman who graduated from a Florida HS. I have two other kids in the same HS now.

TAKE THE HOURS!

I agree the hours are the way to go. My daughter did the 100 hours and it was a pain in the neck trying to schedule things and things changed with how/where she could complete the hours.

On a side note, if you/he have done the prepaid Florida tuition plan, the Bright Futures is worthless, as the prepaid will be applied first and the Bright Futures will not save you any money.

Totally depends if he has community service already lined up. If that’s the case and he has plenty of time to do it he will have the best of both worlds.

I don’t think it’s unreasonably to tell him if you come up short you’re the one going to be paying for it.

quote:

Originally posted by patw:
I agree the hours are the way to go. My daughter did the 100 hours and it was a pain in the neck trying to schedule things and things changed with how/where she could complete the hours.

On a side note, if you/he have done the prepaid Florida tuition plan, the Bright Futures is worthless, as the prepaid will be applied first and the Bright Futures will not save you any money.

He has a 529 investment plan the growth of which way outstripped what a prepaid tuition plan would have done. My understanding is, for what ever scholarship amounts he receives, he can take the same amount out of the 529 without tax or penalty. If that’s not true, he’s going to have to get at least a master’s degree in his chosen field, so the money will still be usable tax and penalty free.

He’s taking the hours and it’s so true that having that out of the way will free up time for studying for the college classes.

Personally, I would take the A as a buffer for my GPA (it doesn't sound like his GPA is so high or his grades so good that a 4.0 for two semesters will average him down from his higher weighted classes).

He should have plenty of opportunity to hit community service down the road. Universities absolutely want to see depth and breadth of community service, so I don't think it would be a good move to stop serving when he hits the minimum.

.

Make sure he knows how many units that office class "A" grade is tied to.

In High School, a regular academic class can be 3 or 5 units (higher if it is an AP or advanced class) but office work is usually considered a 1 unit class.

The A for a 1 unit work class is not equivalent to the A from an actual 3 or 5 unit academic class.

The bump in GPA might not be of any help for the two 1 unit office work classes.

Since he is working in the office, the school's Registrar will be able to show him how much of a GPA bump he will receive if he chooses the two A grades.

.