Given enough money & time, anyone can succeed in college. A dedicated tutor would help, too.
As for "compositions," undergrads should not be allowed to write papers _at least_ for the first couple of years, unless _they_ insist on writing one. Reading is incomparably more important than writing.
***** "When people ask me why I don't teach permanently in the United States, I tell them that it is because American universities have this very strange, eccentric idea that you must work for your salary," Zizek says. "I prefer to do the opposite and not work for my salary!"
Zizek has developed an elaborate set of psychological tricks to manipulate his American students and enable him to have as little contact with them as possible. At the first meeting of each course, he announces that all students will get an A and should write a final paper only if they want to. "I terrorize them by creating a situation where they have no excuse for giving me a paper unless they think it is really good. This scares them so much, that out of forty students, I will get only a few papers," he says. "And I get away with this because they attribute it to my 'European eccentricity.'" <http://www.linguafranca.com/9810/zizek.html> *****
Those of us without Zizek's star power & "European eccentricity," however, are forced to carry on the ritual of marking.
Yoshie