Can you get kicked out of college for after one semester for bad grades?

I had a friend who was on academic probation.

You usually do go on academic probation.

I got kicked out of Grad school for failing grades in my first semester. Idk about undergrad, but it's possible

Why didn't you ask the applicant about academic probation? Is that too invasive for interviews? (no sarcasm, hard to know what's allowed these days)

NO. If grades don't improve after one year of academic probation you can get kicked out.

My university would require a quarter suspension then probation until your GPA was back up, it wasn't expulsion though.

[quote]Why didn't you ask the applicant about academic probation? Is that too invasive for interviews?

It isn't really an academic type internship so grades don't really matter. I just got concerned afterwards (probably due to all the TV shooter coverage in SC) that maybe he was a discipline problem or something like that at school.

At Dartmouth bad grades could gets you suspended for three quarters, but only after academic probation. Sexual assault would get you suspended for two quarters, and that could happen right away.

Yes. I went to Georgetown & was dismissed for receiving 3 failing grades in one semester.

In my case, I got sick & was unable to take 3 out of 4 of my finals which meant automatic failure. I got doctors notes, appealed the dismissal & was readmitted after a committee reviewed my case but this isn't typical. The failing grades remained even though I had two A-'s and a B+ so I had to take the classes over again.

This was in 2011.

Was it your first semester r7?

No, it was my second semester. I was dismissed summer 2011 & readmitted for the Spring 2012 semester.

You can lose your scholarship for not making a minimum GPA, and with the cost of college these days that's basically the same as being expelled.

I started Fall 2010

Would that have happened to a first semester freshmen at Georgetown r7? Or would they have been more lenient since they were new.

This guy would have been kicked out after the first semester. (that doesn't even seem practical, sometimes we did even get our Fall grades ubtil Spring semester started.)

I can't say 100% but I'm pretty sure everyone is held to the same standards. I think below 2.0 is probation, failing two classes in one semester is dismissal or suspension & failing three classes is dismissal, regardless of what year/semester you are.

Yup, happened to someone on my dorm floor during freshman year.

At Georgetown grades are posted during winter break.

Is there any reason that would be acceptable for a prospective employee?

I had an aquaintence whose resume read that he didn't graduate college because the college closed. Of course, what an employer wants to read is that despite that setback, he then went on to enroll at, oh, Harvard or such, and then graduated despite the hardship. Nobody wants to read that you gave up after a setback.

Maybe he was on double secret probation and couldn't talk about it.

You lose financial aide for a year if you go below a certin gpa. Students who depend on aide can not register for that year bc they lose tap and pell. So yes they are kicked out that way.

It may depend on the school. I don't remember it ever coming up in undergrad. In grad school, if you fell below 3.0 for 2 quarters in a row, you got booted. It happened to a girl I was friendly with. She kept hanging around the school afterward, thinking that the hardnosed woman who expelled her was going to help her find a job. So much ass kissing. It was just sad.

If you are a real disaster, yes, it can happen after your first semester. Unlikely but possible.

I'm a former academic dean and chaired the committee that did the dismissals/probations/readmissions at a Top 25 university.

Our policy for academic dismissal was "three strikes"; three failures would get you dismissed for academic reasons. This could be three in one term, or even one per term across three terms. The faculty were excellent and notified us of all freshmen with grades at C- or below after midterms who were in risk of failure. We would counsel those students I risk of multiple failures to withdraw and consider enrolling at another school at a later date (an academic reboot). They could just tell their new school that they were taking a "gap year" and realized they were not ready for college. Those who were resistant to withdraw and experienced academic meltdown would get a forced reboot (Academic Dismissal). All students were warned this would happen.

Grades of F were permanent and a 0.00 would always be counted in the GPA at that university. I would advise these students (and parents) to consider transferring to another school where they start over with a new, unblemished GPA.

What caused the problems, R21? Were the kids unable to do the work or was it usually a case of too much freedom and the temptations of the campus bar?

The question is not so much whether dismissal for bad grades is possible.

To ascertain suitability for the intern position, the real question is whether he has sufficient self-awareness and understanding to be able to explain WHY he got those poor grades and explain it to you in a coherent manner and take responsibility without making excuses.

MBAs used to ask me the cliche question of what it took to be succesful. I always told them that self-awareness was the single most important characteristic (intellectual rigor and discpline were not diffentiators, everyone was smart). Without self-awareness there is no capacity for growth from feedback or mistakes.

Another question which might also give insight about self-awareness (though I loathe it for being cliche) would be "what did you learn?" Rather than the usual, I look for signs of resiliancy. How someone responds to a setback tells you a lot about the type of worker they will be.

R21, I'm curious about your opinion on the state of higher education, specifically regarding millennials and their sense of entitlement. Did you leave the school (retire?) recently? What were the major changes over the 25 years you were there?

The 'crash and burns' were often related to new-found freedoms: no one to tell you what to do, easy access to booze/drugs/sex, feeling that one could cruise though exams just one had in HS. Society presumes that all 18 year olds are at the same stage of emotional maturity. While many are ready for semi-independent living, many are not. I think the idea of a 'gap year' for high school graduates to do serve, travel, or work for a year can encourage many to "grow up" quickly.

I've been in higher ed for 30+ years, R24. The biggest change I have seen is the detrimental effects of helicopter parents (especially in the past 15 years). I've had calls from parents complaining about faculty who dared give their child a poor grade or refused an extension encouraging me to fire the faculty for ineptitude. Parents regularly accompany their adult children to graduate school and job interviews. There is frequently the sense of entitlement from students and parents that a 50+K tuition means that the colleges/faculty/deans are the hired help and that the students should be exempt from rules/regulations that are viewed to be inconvenient. I've found the parents to be a greater stresser than the millenials themselves.

But there are still a LOT of great students who appreciate the opportunity of higher education (first-gen, former military, immigrants in particular).

Thanks, R21. I asked because I hire a lot of millennials for part-time work, and I've seen the change in attitude towards work over the last 15 years go from can-do willingness to complain-about-everything, particularly by kids who think everything should be handed to them on a silver platter. Totally agree with your parenthetical exclusions, and that's who I now look for when hiring.

I'm completely honest with these kids when I interview, telling them I'm looking for highly customer service-oriented people who will go the extra mile for my customers. I've had to fire new hires within a week for throwing shade on a customer, because they just don't seem to get it that customers won't be back if they have a bad experience. I actually had one kid's mother come storming in after I'd fired her precious little snowflake and demand that I rehire him and train him better... to do menial manual labor that anyone who can rub two nickels together can do. My reply to her was to have another kid and this time, don't coddle him or her to the point that they think they can send their mama in to get them a job.

I hope the next generation comes back to earth.

As long as they get their money, you can’t get kicked out for academic reasons nowadays.

it happened to my freshman college roomie!

R27

Oh yes one can!

If tuition is being paid for by private funds then suppose a college or university would keep stringing a student along. But results of low GPA are what they are across the board. Once a student dips below whatever trigger they are on academic probation and need to pull up their socks.

Federal and often even state financial aid his highly dependent upon not just gpa but also completing certain number of credits per semester satisfactorily. Students who fail to meet that requirement and or otherwise trigger academic probation will find their financial aid stopped. Worse many places won't allow them to transfer out either by placing a hold on their records.

R21. I agree with everything you say—and I just retired in 2020 at 62 after teaching primarily undergrads for 42 years—started as a grad student, taught part-time at a community college, then some second-third tier state schools and for30 years at a private comprehensive in the northeast. In addition to the effects of helicopter parents, in the last five years or so, I found the students unable or unwilling to do the amount and level of work that was standard in decades past, especially a resistance to reading (literature as well as academic books). They much preferred watching films, following Power Points, and doing alternative kinds of “work.” I taught In interdisciplinary areas, ones that drew on humanities, fine arts, and sicial sciences, so I am all for a range of ways of engaging in learning and demonstrating knowledge (performance was my main area, but as a liberal art, not as professional training). But it still requires some degree of intellectual curiosity and interest in people, times, experiences other than the self. It used to be that I’d walk into a classroom and it would take me 5 minutes to get them to stop chatting with each other (which I took as a sign they were building community and so used as a segue to “business”). In my last years, I’d walk in to stony silence and a class filled with students glued to their phones (or other media). Getting them to speak—to me and to each other became like pulling teeth (my classes were never more than 30, so it’s not stage fright, which I could understand if it were a lecture of100+ students). Also, while students always had some kind of work study, I know many were working 30-40 hours in order to afford an education that cost 50000+ and were exhausted and often had to make difficult choices—food security is a real thing even at private schools.

The mental health crisis among college students is real, not a simple play for sympathy by so-called snowflakes (there are some, but no means the majority), but a reality and college teachers, however empathic we try to be are not trained counselors (though I spent more hours than I can count with students like the disabled Chinese-American student who was an evangelical Christ trying to come out in a Protestant, judge faith community) in a family that disapproved if homosexuality. He was too judgy for the gay community. After failing multiple classes each semester (the college kept putting him on probation, but never suspended him, which is what needed to happen). I counseled him to take a leave, but he wouldn’t and only left when his money ran out. We were all exhausted.

I never thought my job was ever just delivering content, but when content and process became very secondary to quasi-therapy (dangerous for non-therapists to engage), I new it was time to retire. Many of the students were still nice and potentially bright kids—but their clubs and activities became central and actually being formal students fell far behind.

My college has announced it is cutting 130 full-time faculty (about 1/4), including cutting departments and majors. Raised teaching loads, fewer choices—engineered by administrators who have not risen through the professoriate. Their models come from business. We need business folk to steward financial health at the college, but the top stewards should not be people who have spent little time if at all in the classroom or in the library.

It was generally a good run and I treasure working with many of my students and colleagues, but I have no regrets about retiring when I did.

It varies from school to school.

I used to teach at a state university where one F could get you kicked out for a year.

College was easy. How on earth does one fail, other than getting sick?

Not if you blow the Dean and cup his balls.