Janet, it seems that if your son was admitted into Carnegie Mellon (an good for him, you should be very proud), then he must have been somewhat successful in high school, and his teachers must have done something right in order for him to have even been accepted. Maybe there is another underlying reason why he was not a successful as you had hoped, in comparison with other CMU students. College is an adjustment in many if not all areas of a child's life. College students are required to be more responsible in regards to achieving certain levels. I'm not saying it wasn't his post secondary education, all I'm saying is that it can be a combination of a lot of different things. My fiance and my brother both went to Johns Hopkins and were both very successful. Each went to a different Butler County public school. It's like Tilly said, there are some very ineffective teachers out there, but there are a lot of good ones too. Some of your son's teachers must have prepared him enough for him to be successful enough to attend such an elite school. Just remember, as a twenty-something year-old myself, sometimes we have to learn to take resonsibility for ourselves. We can tell our parents whatever we need to to pacify them at the time, but ulitmately we will learn to be in charge of our destinies and how successful we choose to be.