2 C's first semester, 2.9 GPA, how bad is that?

[drmfslt]

I'm a pre-vet student majoring in Biology. I got an A in my 1 credit class, and my 4 credits classes were an A, AB, and 2 C's. I am so embarrassed! The C's were in General Biology and Calculus. Is there any chance of me becoming a vet? What should I be doing differently? I really want to do well next semester and hope to do better than a 3.5 but that will obviously be hard because my GPA last semester (which was my first; I'm a freshman) was a 2.9. I have a ton of animal experience, though hardly any vet experience as of now. I will be volunteering a lot at an animal shelter this semester. I'm really broke so I have 2 jobs at school, though I don't think that was an issue last semester. A big issue was taking 2 science classes and a math class at once. What do I need to change? Is there any hope?

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[orca2011]

You're a freshman, so you definitely have time to pull your GPA up but you will need to approach school differently. Since this is your first semester, you were still adjusting, but it sounds to me that you might need to drop some things to bring the grades up.

I understand having to work in college, but you might have to drop down to one job or cut back on hours. While people do get into vet school with lower GPAs, grades are still a huge part of the application process. I'd also maybe consider cutting back on hours at the animal shelter. Maybe work on setting up shadowing/volunteering over the summer instead of during the semester so you can focus on grades. The big issue shouldn't necessarily be taking two science classes and a math class at once. You're going to be taking like 6 super intense science courses all at once in vet school, so you need to learn how to manage your time now. Also, try new study techniques. Talk to professors for some ideas of what might work or get a tutor. Study in groups.


ETA: Sorry this isn't the most eloquent of advice. I've been up since 5:15 and my brain is done for the day.

 

[Bismarck]

A few things to consider (not directed at anyone in particular)

Step one: take a deep breath.

Life isn't over after finding out you're 'average' in lower level classes. There are many people on SDN who are now in vet school (or are veterinarians) who got a few Cs along the way. If you did your best, no sweat. Sometimes you get faculty that aren't the best teachers and you survive the best you can. That said, see below.

Step two: figure out why your performance didn't meet your expectations.

Think about your extracurricular load, learning style, etc and find a way to get where you need to be. If doing 22 credits while leading 26 clubs and working 80 hours a week has an impact on your grades (exaggerating a bit here) it might be time to rebalance work/life/play. Ditto for the party animals out there.

Step three: make an improvement.

A few Cs early on is a blemish but hardly a non-starter. Show that you can work beyond the factors that limited your performance initially and really take the time to shine in upper-level courses (e.g. courses starting with 3xxx or 4xxx) to show your mastery of more challenging information. Even better if you can do this while maintaining a job, research, etc.

Step four: Realize taking your lumps is a life skill.

Vet school will quickly deplete you of happiness if you constantly focus on grades. Find other aspects of life to be awesome in and round yourself out as a person.

Edit: and beaten to the punch by Orca with similar advice. Go go SDN hivemind!

 

[Hollista]

Yes you can still be a vet! 🙂
But you're gonna have to work for it! Getting mostly As from here on out can bring up your GPA quite a bit, the more classes and more units with As the more the Cs will get out weighed.
GRE exam! Study hard for these or take a class and dominate these! The Cs early in will be easy to explain if you show your commitment and improvement!! You can always talk about how it was a wake up call for you and you realized you needed to step up and commit more. Showing that you can handle 2 jobs and good grades will be impressive (I have 2 jobs as well and support myself while taking more than 15 units a semester, and I think it shows my dedication and preparedness for vet school).
Start getting that vet experience! Very important! Maybe you an start by volunteering and turn it into a job so you can quit one of your other ones. Look for emergency clinics so you have more hours that fit outside of classes (sucks but I work a lot of graveyard shifts in order to fit more hours in a week).
It's all possible even if you're not that 4.0 student..research schools that look at more your whole app and not just your GPA. Ones that will recognize your hard work besides just your school work!
And just keep improving those grades! Go to the tutoring hours for your hard classes and use all the help available!! You can do it!!! 🙂

 

[pp9]

I have a few C's in some key classes and I'm a senior. I agree with what everyone else has sad above! My plan is to retake anything with a C this summer (or take a year off if needed to retake/get more hours) and apply again. Also, some schools allow you to petition for your first year grades to be deleted. HOWEVER, since your first year includes vet school pre-reqs, you would need to repeat those later in your undergrad career if you chose to delete your first year I believe. Illinois is one of those schools, I'd look into it!

 

[that redhead]

Like orca said, you may need to evaluate your non-academic commitments. Instead of volunteering at the animal shelter this semester, consider waiting for summer break and looking for vet experience instead (more bang for your proverbial buck). Consider your budgeting - are two jobs really necessary or can you try to save a bit more and cut back to one?

Then find a way to succeed academically. Find a tutor, go to office hours, do problems/work outside of class, change up the way you study and/or study more efficiently (when you sit down to study, how much of it is actually studying versus Facebook, etc?) These grades won't hobble you now if you can turn around and kick butt. But if this continues to be the trend, it's going to be a rough road ahead. Good luck

 

[beatles1964]

I agree with what everyone else has said. It is only your first year, but you'll definitely need to approach the next couple of years differently. Unfortunately it's super easy for GPAs to drop with just a bad grade or 2, but it then it's much harder to raise it back up to what you'd like. Try talking to your professors and asking if there is anything different they can suggest you try to succeed in their classes. Good grades in the sciences are so critical and vet schools will look at your science GPA as part of their criteria. You still have time to improve, but it's only going to get tougher as classes get more difficult. Sometimes the first semester is a wake up call, so it's good you're looking into this now before you're farther into your undergrad.

As for experience hours, like someone else said, volunteering at shelters and other non-paid positions are great to add to your resume, but vet hours are even more important. If money is an issue, try calling a few vet clinics to see if they would hire you as a paid vet assistant. You'd be surprised how many clinics are willing to take pre-vet students under their wings even if you do have little experience. You just need to make a few phone calls. A 3 month summer gig at a vet clinic would be ideal, so it's important you start asking around now. (This is also important if you want to get some good letters of recommendation from vets who have seen your skill level improve over a few yrs). Or if you can't find a steady paid position at a vet clinic, you may want to consider getting a job at a kennel, groomer, or advertising as a pet-sitter. That way, you're making $ and gaining experience. On a side note- a lot of vet schools don't list a required # of vet and animal hrs, but they will expect you to have accumulated a minimum. From what I've seen heard and seen here on SDN, a lot of applicants will have 500+ vet hrs, and that's on the lower side... and they will have a few thousand animal hrs.

 

[lailanni]

I'm a pre-vet student majoring in Biology. I got an A in my 1 credit class, and my 4 credits classes were an A, AB, and 2 C's. I am so embarrassed! The C's were in General Biology and Calculus. Is there any chance of me becoming a vet? What should I be doing differently? I really want to do well next semester and hope to do better than a 3.5 but that will obviously be hard because my GPA last semester (which was my first; I'm a freshman) was a 2.9. I have a ton of animal experience, though hardly any vet experience as of now. I will be volunteering a lot at an animal shelter this semester. I'm really broke though I don't think that was an issue last semester. A big issue was taking 2 science classes and a math class at once. What do I need to change? Is there any hope?

I got a 2.9 in calculus my first quarter at university. And later on, a 2.9 in physics. Haha, I guess we can see that I was never meant to be a physicist! My average GPA was above at 3.6something at application time.

So to me, sounds like you have these things going on:
- Job A
- Job B
- Shelter volunteering
- 3 hard classes.

You have plenty of hope, but you should consider a different approach. What are your priorities?

If you're looking to boost your GPA, it should look like:

#1. 3 hard classes.
Fill in the rest to support #1.

Jobs take time away from studying. Studying is how you're going to own those science classes. Consider cutting back hours or dropping a job all together. I know it's hard when school is so expensive, but that's what student loans are for: to help you be a student! It might be nice to have a smaller undergrad debt, but if the result is decreasing your chances for your dream job then you might want to reconsider.

Does the shelter volunteering count as just animal experience or vet experience? You say you already have a ton of animal experience, so consider cutting back or dropping it if it's only going towards animal experience. If it counts for vet experience, which you say you have very little of, perhaps keep lower hours and go as much as possible during summer break. (Ditto what everyone else has said about seeking a job at a vet clinic, especially during the summer)

Also keep in mind the general statement "you need 2 hours studying outside of class for every 1 hour in class." That should give you a good estimate of how much time you'd ideally need to really cover material. Adjust your time and work to give school the priority. Say you have 5 hours of bio lecture a week. You'll need to set aside 10 hours to study. If you have 3 big science classes, that's potentially 15 hours of science lecture a week and an ideal 30 study hours. You can see how being a serious student is a full time job itself.

Don't hesitate to get a tutor, ask for help, or join a study club. I got a tutor in organic chemistry. I got a 3.9. I studied in a few clubs. I'd go to TA help sessions when I was confused. There's usually some help available if you're stuck!

Good luck 🙂

 

[LetItSnow]

Step two: figure out why your performance didn't meet your expectations.

Bismarck's advice was all spot on with what I'd suggest. I'd add that you need to be willing to be brutally honest with yourself. And if you can't be honest with yourself, don't expect anything to change.

I've seen one person after another go on and on about how the teacher set them up to fail, or their job set them up to fail, or etc etc - excuse after excuse. When I'd probe into how they studied, it would turn out they just plain weren't doing the work. They weren't showing up to class prepared, or they weren't taking good notes, or they were focused only on finding the 'answer' to homework instead of deeply understanding the problem (I have in mind a particular physics study partner for that one; she'd do great on the homework because she'd find the right 'formulas', but she didn't have a cognitive understanding of the problem or solution so when she'd get to the test and encounter a slightly different question she was hopelessly lost.).

If you are really, honestly putting in enough quality study time, you should not struggle to maintain better than a 3.2 in undergrad in my opinion. There are exceptions (learning disabilities, life events, schools that are trying to flatten the grade distribution, etc), but in my experience 9 times out of 10 when someone doesn't perform as well as they want, it boils down to not putting in enough effort.

In your specific case, I wonder if you can work two jobs, volunteer, take two science classes plus calculus, and still find sufficient time to study for those classes. That may be biting off a bit more than most people could chew.

Find out what resources your school has to help you improve. Taking advantage of them now when your GPA is easily salvageable would be a lot wiser than waiting until your junior year.

Last, though obviously you want a higher GPA to get into vet school, a 2.9 isn't, you know, akin to failing or anything, and people get into vet school with 2.9 here 'n there. You didn't flat-out fail out of school (like, ahem, some of us have). So don't be too hard on yourself. Look at it as an opportunity to make some changes to meet your goals, and congratulate yourself on still being in the game after your first post-high school semester.

 

[drmfslt]

If you are really, honestly putting in enough quality study time, you should not struggle to maintain better than a 3.2 in undergrad in my opinion. There are exceptions (learning disabilities, life events, schools that are trying to flatten the grade distribution, etc), but in my experience 9 times out of 10 when someone doesn't perform as well as they want, it boils down to not putting in enough effort.
In your specific case, I wonder if you can work two jobs, volunteer, take two science classes plus calculus, and still find sufficient time to study for those classes. That may be biting off a bit more than most people could chew.

This is a better way of looking at it for me. I put more time into those 2 classes than my other ones combined and still got bad grades in them, but maybe I still didn't put in enough time. I did have a Calculus tutor, I thought I should probably add that. I was getting a D and managed to pull it up from there. I was getting a low BC in Bio until the final. I literally studied every spare moment I had but I guess that wasn't enough. I'll try limiting my sleep and using that time to study, otherwise I am considering fewer hours at work (I worked an average of 15 hours a week). I guess it was hard for me to manage my time working that much, taking 17 credits plus 4 hours of lab a week, and trying to study between all that. This semester will need big changes but I'm excited to try again and give it everything I have! Thank you very much for your opinion, I'll definitely try to find more real study time!

 

[orca2011]

This is a better way of looking at it for me. I put more time into those 2 classes than my other ones combined and still got bad grades in them, but maybe I still didn't put in enough time. I did have a Calculus tutor, I thought I should probably add that. I was getting a D and managed to pull it up from there. I was getting a low BC in Bio until the final. I literally studied every spare moment I had but I guess that wasn't enough. I'll try limiting my sleep and using that time to study, otherwise I am considering fewer hours at work (I worked an average of 15 hours a week). I guess it was hard for me to manage my time working that much, taking 17 credits plus 4 hours of lab a week, and trying to study between all that. This semester will need big changes but I'm excited to try again and give it everything I have! Thank you very much for your opinion, I'll definitely try to find more real study time!

Try not to do this bolded part. And this is something I am guilty of, but when I hit the wall where I'm too tired, I just go to bed. In my senior year of undergrad I actually decided that I wouldn't stay up past 2 AM for any test. I was usually in bed before one, and I ended up having my two best semesters (well US semesters). I've gotten back into the habit of staying up later for exams in vet school just because of the shear volume of the information, but it's not something I'd recommend. It wears you down quickly.

Also, I'd really look at the quality of the time you're putting into your studies, not just quantity. Freshman/sophomore year, I'd always study around people or with the TV on or off PPTs on my computer. My grades were fine, but I definitely could have done better. There were too many distractions that way. Now, I still study with noise by listening to trance music because I don't like hearing people talk around me. However, I have printed out study guides and do active studying by highlighting and rewriting key points on blank computer paper. Not saying this is something you're doing, but something to consider as well.

 

[ducktoller]

going to try to be brutally honest here. I agree with everyone else on what was said, but I just want to add one thing into the equation.
Perhaps if you asked me a few weeks ago, I would've said don't worry, keep at it, and do the best you can.
However, realistically, there are times in the pre-vet journey, when doing best you can is simply not good enough- that is just something to be aware of.

I obtained two C+'s early on in my undergraduate career (no retakes allowed at my school) , successfully managed steep upward trend in grades (with continuous volunteer/work etc), and still missed the final hurdle of getting an interview for the school I wanted.
I wouldn't say you can successfully get into any school you want,
but I would be confident affirming that if you have the desire to become a veterinarian, you will make it, no matter where you go 🙂

Definitely don't give up however. With smart studying, and knowing your strengths and weaknesses, I know you will be a fantastic addition to the veterinary team.
just my two cents.

 

[Bernsters83]

Yup

 

[Rabbit Riot]

I'm a pre-vet student majoring in Biology. I got an A in my 1 credit class, and my 4 credits classes were an A, AB, and 2 C's. I am so embarrassed! The C's were in General Biology and Calculus. Is there any chance of me becoming a vet? What should I be doing differently? I really want to do well next semester and hope to do better than a 3.5 but that will obviously be hard because my GPA last semester (which was my first; I'm a freshman) was a 2.9. I have a ton of animal experience, though hardly any vet experience as of now. I will be volunteering a lot at an animal shelter this semester. I'm really broke so I have 2 jobs at school, though I don't think that was an issue last semester. A big issue was taking 2 science classes and a math class at once. What do I need to change? Is there any hope?

There's no reason to be embarrassed. Most people I know who are in vet school, pursuing vet school, or have pursued vet school at one time have all received C's at some point in their academic careers. It's not unusual to have a few.

You have over three years to improve your GPA and build your resume. Re-evaluate at the end of your first year if this is the right career path for you. Even if you choose to stop pursuing vet school at some time in the future, you should still be aiming to do well in school.

What I can suggest, if it's not already the case, that you find on-campus jobs that offer you a paycheck and animal/veterinary experience. If you can do that, you can put off volunteering for the time being and free up more time for studying. As others said, try new studying techniques and seek out more help from peers and instructors.

Try not to be so discouraged in your first year. You have the time for improvement.

 

[Jamr0ckin]

I would think that adcoms know how rough the transition from high school to college can be. If you can make some changes to your time management and study methods, and improve your grades for the remainder of your undergrad career, I think you will be fine. I know several people in vet school who had crappy first semester/years but did well after that. And the adcoms noticed and they were still admitted.

To overcome a slightly lower GPA, you may need to have a higher GRE, so be prepared to study for that.

Good luck! If you find yourself struggling this semester as well, don't be afraid to ask for help: advisors, tutors, academic support center on campus. "There will always be help for those who ask" ~Albus Dumbledore.

 

[Lupin21]

You need to be a well rounded candidate. You need the extracurriculars not related to vet med, you need diverse experience, and you need to show that you can handle a full course load and maintain a good gpa. Extracurriculars mean that you will have something to save your sanity when you are taking the 18-21 units of hardcore classes in vet school. You need to have the experience in vet medicine to make sure you still feel like the pain and anguish is worth it. Seeing as you are just getting started, you now have a small taste of what it is going to take. Keep asking questions and striving to do better and if you truly want it, you at least have a few more pieces of the picture and can keep at it. Time management and the ability to prioritize are invaluable.