C's in bio and chem, advice?

[devdev2697]

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So i just finished my first semester of freshman year in college and I ended up with a 75 in biology and a 79 in chemistry. I'm really worried about my gpa and whether I can actually make it... I definitely realized after the first couple of tests at the beginning of the semester that I needed to change my study habits and overall habits so that helped me with my grade and I recovered from the failed tests and ended up with an 81 in chemistry and a 79 in biology, but obviously both of those grades dropped a significant amount after the finals. I just don't really know what to do about this. C's don't look good and I'm really stressed out and worried because it only gets harder from here. Any advice is appreciated.

 

[efle]

TA hours, your school's office for academic resources, studying with others, studying more overall. Especially with Bio it is usually not enough hours spent rather than concepts too difficult.

 

[ciucia53]

TA hours, your school's office for academic resources, studying with others, studying more overall. Especially with Bio it is usually not enough hours spent rather than concepts too difficult.

I second TA hours. At my school, you could go to a different TA's office hours if your own TA was not the best teacher. Also, find out if your school has a tutoring program for gen ed requirements that you can utilize. For chemistry in particular, the thing that helped me the most was doing a bunch of practice problems? The week before the test, I would re-do all the homework problems, all the practice problems in the chapters we would be tested on, and the problems at the end of those chapters.

You mentioned that you already know you need to change your study/overall habits. Is there anything in particular that you think was messing you up?

 

[deleted738762]

You can't do anything about your grades now, except learn from it. Learn from your mistakes, and don't make them again. Many people do bad, you just have to move on and focus on the future. If you keep thinking about your past grades, it's going to have a profound effect in your future classes. Trust me.

Start fresh next semester and maintain higher grades, which isn't impossible. Plus how great would it look if you go from 2 C's to A's from now on. People always love a comeback story.

My friend had a 3.4 GPA because he did bad in a few courses, and now he is closing in on a 3.7 with a great upward trend. Just start fresh!

 

[DrGoon]

You can definitely recover but the classes get harder. try to befriend older stuents that have taken those classes and get some old tests from them. work those out open book until you know exactly how to get the right answer. teachers typically test the same topics. I hate to say this but if you're struggling this much in these classes and you're truly giving it 100%, med school may not be for you. It gets a lot harder. Most of my classmates thought these classes were a breeze

 

[DrGoon]

If you just dicked around though and pulled these grades, I wouldnt worry too much. Just try harder next time

 

[DrGoon]

TA hours, your school's office for academic resources, studying with others, studying more overall. Especially with Bio it is usually not enough hours spent rather than concepts too difficult.

Also this. If you're not getting the concepts I would really think about switching fields because those are pretty elementary (not trying to be condescending just stating facts).but again if you just arent putting in the time you can change that. something that helped me out was studying with a good friend. our teacher gave us a checklist of every topic we needed to know and we would sit there each read a page or chapter from the book then explain what we jusy read to the other one. wish I had kept this strategy up in med school

 

[ciestar]

So i just finished my first semester of freshman year in college and I ended up with a 75 in biology and a 79 in chemistry. I'm really worried about my gpa and whether I can actually make it... I definitely realized after the first couple of tests at the beginning of the semester that I needed to change my study habits and overall habits so that helped me with my grade and I recovered from the failed tests and ended up with an 81 in chemistry and a 79 in biology, but obviously both of those grades dropped a significant amount after the finals. I just don't really know what to do about this. C's don't look good and I'm really stressed out and worried because it only gets harder from here. Any advice is appreciated.

Let. It. Go.
You're a first semester freshman, you have eons of time to change that. Stressing over it will only make your stress worse and your performance could drop due to impending anxiety over needing that A. If there is academic support at your school to deal with that particular problem, USE IT. If tutoring is available, give that a try. Try studying with your friends and bounce ideas off each other and try to teach each other.

Advice: assess your study habits, how do you prepare for exams? Utilize TA and instructor office hours if you're struggling with a specific topic and need further clarification. Chem, to really get it you have to apply it, so I cannot emphasize enough practice problems, same goes for physics. Are you giving your efforts everything you've got? Are you cramming or procrastinating? If yes to either, that's already a huge problem.

PS: Cramming kills you in med school 🙄

 

[DrGoon]

Let. It. Go.
You're a first semester freshman, you have eons of time to change that. Stressing over it will only make your stress worse and your performance could drop due to impending anxiety over needing that A. If there is academic support at your school to deal with that particular problem, USE IT. If tutoring is available, give that a try. Try studying with your friends and bounce ideas off each other and try to teach each other.

Advice: assess your study habits, how do you prepare for exams? Utilize TA and instructor office hours if you're struggling with a specific topic and need further clarification. Chem, to really get it you have to apply it, so I cannot emphasize enough practice problems, same goes for physics. Are you giving your efforts everything you've got? Are you cramming or procrastinating? If yes to either, that's already a huge problem.

PS: Cramming kills you in med school 🙄

Id say if he's already giving it his all then he should be very worried. If he's procrastinang then that is an easy, easy fix. But studying with friends is what got me through. My best friend and I took every med school prerequisite together and just held eachother accountable. It's much easier to fall behind if you dont have somebody else hitting you up to go pound out 6 hours teaching your selves thermodynamics/electromagnetism/calculus. Also dont try to just make an A as an undergrad you have to try to make the best grade in the class everysingle time by knowing everything. Its very managable to do this because if you dont score the highest mark then you definitely did well enough for an A/B+. I found we could spend 18 hours for each class in gen chem, physics, and bio classes and teach the entirety of the testable material to ourselves over the course of 2 days or so. We also had enough time to get absolutely wasted 4 nights a week and spent most of our time chasing tail

 

[ciestar]

Id say if he's already giving it his all then he should be very worried. If he's procrastinang then that is an easy, easy fix. But studying with friends is what got me through. My best friend and I took every med school prerequisite together and just held eachother accountable. It's much easier to fall behind if you dont have somebody else hitting you up to go pound out 6 hours teaching your selves thermodynamics/electromagnetism/calculus. Also dont try to just make an A as an undergrad you have to try to make the best grade in the class everysingle time by knowing everything. Its very managable to do this because if you dont score the highest mark then you definitely did well enough for an A/B+. I found we could spend 18 hours for each class in gen chem, physics, and bio classes and teach the entirety of the testable material to ourselves over the course of 2 days or so. We also had enough time to get absolutely wasted 4 nights a week and spent most of our time chasing tail

So much this. Studying like you did really works. Know it well enough to teach it!

It's also impossible to know everything, let that idea go ASAP.

 

[DrGoon]

So much this. Studying like you did really works. Know it well enough to teach it!

It's also impossible to know everything, let that idea go ASAP.

Disagree here. Very managable to know how to work every question in gen chem and physics and calc if you've masteres the principles. Idk about yall but our teachers would send us a list of topics that were to be tested and if you could do all that then you were golden. I found that the people that didnt perform as well hadnt actually learned the concepts and resorted to rote memorization. Again the amount of material tested at the undergrad level is not that much compared to what you will have to do in med school

 

[deleted738762]

Disagree here. Very managable to know how to work every question in gen chem and physics and calc if you've masteres the principles. Idk about yall but our teachers would send us a list of topics that were to be tested and if you could do all that then you were golden. I found that the people that didnt perform as well hadnt actually learned the concepts and resorted to rote memorization. Again the amount of material tested at the undergrad level is not that much compared to what you will have to do in med school

Ok buddy. Their is a difference between knowing how to solve a problem, and knowing everything.

 

[ciestar]

Disagree here. Very managable to know how to work every question in gen chem and physics and calc if you've masteres the principles. Idk about yall but our teachers would send us a list of topics that were to be tested and if you could do all that then you were golden. I found that the people that didnt perform as well hadnt actually learned the concepts and resorted to rote memorization. Again the amount of material tested at the undergrad level is not that much compared to what you will have to do in med school

I am pulling this from a med school perspective. I NEEDED to know everything in UG and that carried onto med school and it tends to screw me over because I spend too much time on the little details. But for some UG courses, they want you to know every single little detail (aerobic respiration products/enzymes comes to mind).

 

[DrGoon]

Ok buddy. Their is a difference between knowing how to solve a problem, and knowing everything.

Yeah dude you need to know everything in undergrad. its not that much material. Impossible in med school but definitely doable in undergrad. you have what like 3 chapters of material on most tests??? the only people that got accepted to med school out of my graduating class had this mentality. the ones that said "oh yeah Ill be fine I know 90% of this testable stuff" are the ones that did a post-bacc, wasting two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars

 

[deleted738762]

Yeah dude you need to know everything in undergrad. its not that much material. Impossible in med school but definitely doable in undergrad. you have what like 3 chapters of material on most tests??? the only people that got accepted to med school out of my graduating class had this mentality. the ones that said "oh yeah Ill be fine I know 90% of this testable stuff" are the ones that did a post-bacc, wasting two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars

Depends on how you define everything, right?

 

[devdev2697]

I second TA hours. At my school, you could go to a different TA's office hours if your own TA was not the best teacher. Also, find out if your school has a tutoring program for gen ed requirements that you can utilize. For chemistry in particular, the thing that helped me the most was doing a bunch of practice problems? The week before the test, I would re-do all the homework problems, all the practice problems in the chapters we would be tested on, and the problems at the end of those chapters.

You mentioned that you already know you need to change your study/overall habits. Is there anything in particular that you think was messing you up?

I think at the beginning of the semester I just started studying too late. I didn't realize that you need to study every single day not just when the test is about to come up. And I did finally turn it around and got my grades up but the finals messed up my progress big time. It's not that I don't get the concepts because I understand all of them it just doesnt translate as well on my tests.

 

[efle]

I think at the beginning of the semester I just started studying too late. I didn't realize that you need to study every single day not just when the test is about to come up. And I did finally turn it around and got my grades up but the finals messed up my progress big time. It's not that I don't get the concepts because I understand all of them it just doesnt translate as well on my tests.

Well hey, it sounds like it's just a matter of going over topics a few more times until they're fully memorized and familiar. For cumulative finals it is very normal to do nothing but study most of every single day for a couple weeks at the end of every semester. Just one of the things you gotta do as a premed, you'll have plenty of company in the library 24/7

 

[wb100]

YouTube videos are your best friend. Try to watch a 10 min khan academy video before your lecture on the topic you guys are going to go over that day. After lecture rewatch the video (if it was pertinent) and then go through lecture notes the next day. I know trying to learn material before a lecture is a drag but it honestly helps to just familiarize yourself with some terminology. Even if you get only 20% of what the video goes over you can easily increase that to 50% level of understanding once you hear it in lecture again. I always put on a video while I was eating lunch or breakfast and it was easier for me to sit down and actually watch. If that doesn't help or you need more in depth material read the book.


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[Sardinia]

I think at the beginning of the semester I just started studying too late. I didn't realize that you need to study every single day not just when the test is about to come up. And I did finally turn it around and got my grades up but the finals messed up my progress big time. It's not that I don't get the concepts because I understand all of them it just doesnt translate as well on my tests.

I'm surprised my friend isn't here. Go to your tutoring facility. Stop trying to self assess. You had your shot and your assessment landed you a 81 and a 79. If you want to keep scoring around that range, then go ahead and self-diagnose your poor GPA. If you want professional feedback then go to your tutoring center and find out what resources they provide for you. Integrating a group structure study dynamic or interaction with a tutor is going to add more dimensions to your learning than just sitting in a room all alone with your head in a book.

If that method scored you 100s on the examination, then you don't have a problem. However, there is a kink or an issue in how you study that is resulting in you not reaching one or two divisions higher than what you should be getting. And the more feedback you get as a student will help you immensely. Also there are a variety of issues that are unaddressed.

How much time do you actually put into studying compared to the amount of credits/time spent in class?
How do you study for a certain class when it comes to exam time?
Where do you study?
What tools do you use in order to study?

If you don't see a deficiency in any of these areas, then you probably won't stick to your "study every day" mentality. There is a fine line between studying the material, understanding the material, and mastering the material. And right now you're in the bottom 1/3 of your student phase where you're trying to put the wooden blocks together while the other students are spelling words from their wooden block setups.

 

[halmoni]

I think at the beginning of the semester I just started studying too late. I didn't realize that you need to study every single day not just when the test is about to come up. And I did finally turn it around and got my grades up but the finals messed up my progress big time. It's not that I don't get the concepts because I understand all of them it just doesnt translate as well on my tests.

idk what university you're attending, but you certainly don't need to study everyday to pull off an A for most classes. Test taking itself is a skill. Doing practice problems is way of studying. If you just try to understand the concepts in ochem (and gen chem for that matter) without doing any practice problems, you're gonna have a bad time. Tests are a way for professors to evaluate your mastery of the material. Yes, most of the time bio classes will ask you to regurgitate info, but some upper div classes might go deeper than that depending on your prof (i.e. asking you to analyze the results of an experiment while utilizing the concepts taught in class).

Your first priority should be figuring out what lead to those C's. Personally I think it'd be a waste of time going to see a TA if you don't even know why you're doing poorly. When I was a TA, the most successful students I had in my classes always knew what sort of questions they wanted to ask me or what sort of advice they were seeking if they had any weak points. Going to a TA and blindly asking them "Why am I getting C's" isn't gonna change a thing. One of my worst students actually asked me something similar, and I'm pretty sure she either failed or almost failed the class. Are you having problems with practice questions? Do you not know what to expect on the tests? Do you perhaps not understand the concepts as deeply as you think you do? You have to be honest with yourself when you're looking into your weaknesses.