First year undergrad advice?

[FT2FLY]

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Kind of a vague question.. but I would appreciate some advice for a freshman in university.

I'm majoring in Biology here at Western Ontario University. It's been a pretty tough adjustment considering all of these first year courses are designed for Ontario high school students. I've had to catch up on a lot considering I did my high school in the USA. Just took some midterms and I'm not feeling too good about them.

I know it's an adjustment nonetheless for anyone coming from high school to university, but it seems like double work for someone with my background. Especially having taken sciences once a year in the USA and coming into a system where students have been taking Bio, Chem, Physics etc every year.

Worried about my GPA, but I'm glad I chose Western because making an 80-89% in a course will give me an A at this school. I've heard that those A's get converted to 4.0s come time for dental applications. Western gives out A+'s if a student makes 90-100%.

While I'm trying to keep my nose above water with this course load, I'm considering doing other things to express my interest in dentistry. I've done dental orientated research, so I'm going to try to get that published. I know that GPA and DAT are the two big things needed to get into dental school though.



I've heard schools look at overall GPAs and Science GPAs separately. Is that true?

Any insight, advice, etc toward getting into dental school in the future?

 

[y3nd0]

Yes, oGPA and sGPA's are viewed separately, which is why they have them in the first place. Someone could have a 3.5GPA due to filler/easier classes, when in reality their sGPA is a 3.0, or something like that.

I didn't do any sort of activity until the middle of my sophomore year. I used my first year at uni as an "adjustment" year to get used to the pace and workload. I kind of regret my decision since I didn't admit to myself that I adjusted faster than expected. Take your first semester/quarter catching up and the second half with an added activity (community service, dental related volunteer, research, shadowing). If you still find yourself struggling next semester, forget the activities and still try to adjust. Start your activities during the summer of your freshman year, at the latest. Start early so you aren't scrambling a couple years later to rack in the hours (like I had to).