This is a long post, but I wanted to give some advise and hope for those that really need it. Most of it is background, the real advice is the last couple of paragraphs.
I just finished my spring semester, took 21 hours (4 engineering 1 science 1 humanities 1 language) and made out with a 3.87 GPA. Would have made a 4.0, but I had a fever during one of the exams and I did really bad..and despite my herculean effort at the end of the semester, I fell short.
I mentioned this semester, because for many as the school year is over/about to be over, they are facing some difficult situations with grades. I wanted to give all the young premeds who may be struggling, some advice on how to improve the GPA.
I have made previous post about my situation, but just a quick recap: at the end of my soph year my cGPA was around a 2.6. But since then (jr and sr) I have taken 90+ hours averaging a 3.8 GPA per semester. So now my crappy 2.6 is now almost over a 3.5 (need a semester or so). On top of that, when I met my fiancée I had just started getting out of my hole and she had just fallen into hers. Well over the last two years she followed my advise and her GPA has also followed a similar trend as mine. Also my friend took the same advice and made some great GPA improvements
Since it worked for the three of us, I wanted to share with anyone who cares:
I feel that most good students fall into a common trap. In HS most of the premed students were excellent students that never had to face much adversity as far as grades were concerned. SO naturally they are not so experienced in dealing with grade related adversities.
I have seen two general ways that people have struggled:
1. One group did not adjust well to college/made bad choices and started freshman year poorly (My friend and I were in this group)
2. Another group did well their freshman year and started struggling sophomore year. This usually happens because most freshman classes cover the same materials as your AP/IB classes, and so you can get away with studying like you did in HS. But unfortunately this creates bad confidence, and the bad study habits carry over to soph year when you start taking classes with new materials. This is when this group starts to struggle; they approach it like HS (since it worked freshman year) but that does not work. (my fiancee was in this group).
In either case, the biggest mistake that you could make after a bad semester is trying to overcompensate. After my first semester (it was bad) I was a wreck, and to try and gain the lost ground, I tried the brilliant idea of taking too many hard classes together.
In retrospect, I felt scared/confused and my confidence was shot. So I became impatient, I wanted results right away. I started the next semester only thinking about getting back on track. Well in trying to push so hard, I ended up struggling. This struggle was not due to working too hard, but because I became impatient and tried to fix everything quickly by taking too many hard classes and not paying attention to what I was doing wrong.
It is funny, because when I met my fiancee, she was also doing the same exact thing. She had a great freshman year, but struggled her first semester sophomore year. She become impatient about getting her grades back on track, and so she also tried to remedy the situation by taking too many hard classes together. Well she too did not fare too well that semester.
So now the way that we fixed our GPA, was through patience. I realized that pressing did not help, it only hurt my confidence more. And that hurt confidence put me into a cycle of bad grades that I could not get out of. So after my sophomore year, I took the summer of and did some soul searching and volunteering abroad, and came back with a lot more wisdom.
My new plan was to make small goals and slowly achieve them. My first goal (fall JR year) was to get at least a 3.0 (I had never done that in college). I took 3 classes, and worked hard and ended up with a 3.3. This is not great, but it built my confidence. Before that semester I was doubting that I could even make a 3.0. The thing that this semester did was allow me to really evaluate and try new study techniques. With too many classes, it was hard for me to identify what was wrong and to try and fix it. I noticed that I was able to make improvements that semester just by eating breakfast and lunch (before I was tight on money and used to only eat dinner) and not taking only morning classes (took more afternoon classes).
So with my confidence starting to rebuild, my goal for the next semester was to get my cGPA over a 3.0. Since I found that I could handle 14 credit hours with the minor adjustments, I decided to take 18 hours. This semester I worked hard and learned that I needed to sleep more (I was only averaging 4 hrs a night) and also I realized that all nighters were hurting me. My freshman and sophomore year I used to always do all nighters before the exam, and that always made me do bad. So during the second half of this semester I forced myself to sleep 6-8 hours before an exam. This small adjustment worked really well (I ended up getting my GPA up to a 3.015).
After my JR year, I took 5 summer courses. Now that my confidence was rebuilt and I had learned a bit about how I learn,my goal for the summer semester was a 3.7 GPA. I followed my new found ideals and ended up with a 4.0. I continued using these new adjustments and my Sr year I took 20 and 21 hours and ended up with 3.8's both semesters. I plan to continue working hard and smart, and hopefully after two more semesters I will be good to go.
So my advice for all the young premeds that are posting about how to do better in school: TAKE IT ONE SMALL STEP AT A TIME. Fixing your GPA is not an over night thing, you need to slowly chip away at it. No one can tell you exactly what you need to do to fix the grades, but by taking it easy and not becoming impatient, you will able to fix them yourself.
For those are stuck in a rut, I suggest that for the following term, you take 1 core class and 2-3 easy/fun classes. Fun classes should be things like foreign language, art, history, or just about anything that you would enjoy and know for a fact to be a guaranteed A. By doing this, you will only have one class to worry about. That way you can focus hard on your one hard class without being overwhelmed/ And at worst you end up with 2-3 A's and 1 B. This will not only build your confidence, it will also slow things down for you to recognize problem areas. Eventually you can start taking more difficult courses, and things will be easier for you to handle. Trust me, confidence is a huge thing.
As I have said, three of us did this and over a two year period we all went up by .5-.7 points in our GPA. My friend (not premed) went from a 2.1 to a 2.7.
I just finished my spring semester, took 21 hours (4 engineering 1 science 1 humanities 1 language) and made out with a 3.87 GPA. Would have made a 4.0, but I had a fever during one of the exams and I did really bad..and despite my herculean effort at the end of the semester, I fell short.
I mentioned this semester, because for many as the school year is over/about to be over, they are facing some difficult situations with grades. I wanted to give all the young premeds who may be struggling, some advice on how to improve the GPA.
I have made previous post about my situation, but just a quick recap: at the end of my soph year my cGPA was around a 2.6. But since then (jr and sr) I have taken 90+ hours averaging a 3.8 GPA per semester. So now my crappy 2.6 is now almost over a 3.5 (need a semester or so). On top of that, when I met my fiancée I had just started getting out of my hole and she had just fallen into hers. Well over the last two years she followed my advise and her GPA has also followed a similar trend as mine. Also my friend took the same advice and made some great GPA improvements
Since it worked for the three of us, I wanted to share with anyone who cares:
I feel that most good students fall into a common trap. In HS most of the premed students were excellent students that never had to face much adversity as far as grades were concerned. SO naturally they are not so experienced in dealing with grade related adversities.
I have seen two general ways that people have struggled:
1. One group did not adjust well to college/made bad choices and started freshman year poorly (My friend and I were in this group)
2. Another group did well their freshman year and started struggling sophomore year. This usually happens because most freshman classes cover the same materials as your AP/IB classes, and so you can get away with studying like you did in HS. But unfortunately this creates bad confidence, and the bad study habits carry over to soph year when you start taking classes with new materials. This is when this group starts to struggle; they approach it like HS (since it worked freshman year) but that does not work. (my fiancee was in this group).
In either case, the biggest mistake that you could make after a bad semester is trying to overcompensate. After my first semester (it was bad) I was a wreck, and to try and gain the lost ground, I tried the brilliant idea of taking too many hard classes together.
In retrospect, I felt scared/confused and my confidence was shot. So I became impatient, I wanted results right away. I started the next semester only thinking about getting back on track. Well in trying to push so hard, I ended up struggling. This struggle was not due to working too hard, but because I became impatient and tried to fix everything quickly by taking too many hard classes and not paying attention to what I was doing wrong.
It is funny, because when I met my fiancee, she was also doing the same exact thing. She had a great freshman year, but struggled her first semester sophomore year. She become impatient about getting her grades back on track, and so she also tried to remedy the situation by taking too many hard classes together. Well she too did not fare too well that semester.
So now the way that we fixed our GPA, was through patience. I realized that pressing did not help, it only hurt my confidence more. And that hurt confidence put me into a cycle of bad grades that I could not get out of. So after my sophomore year, I took the summer of and did some soul searching and volunteering abroad, and came back with a lot more wisdom.
My new plan was to make small goals and slowly achieve them. My first goal (fall JR year) was to get at least a 3.0 (I had never done that in college). I took 3 classes, and worked hard and ended up with a 3.3. This is not great, but it built my confidence. Before that semester I was doubting that I could even make a 3.0. The thing that this semester did was allow me to really evaluate and try new study techniques. With too many classes, it was hard for me to identify what was wrong and to try and fix it. I noticed that I was able to make improvements that semester just by eating breakfast and lunch (before I was tight on money and used to only eat dinner) and not taking only morning classes (took more afternoon classes).
So with my confidence starting to rebuild, my goal for the next semester was to get my cGPA over a 3.0. Since I found that I could handle 14 credit hours with the minor adjustments, I decided to take 18 hours. This semester I worked hard and learned that I needed to sleep more (I was only averaging 4 hrs a night) and also I realized that all nighters were hurting me. My freshman and sophomore year I used to always do all nighters before the exam, and that always made me do bad. So during the second half of this semester I forced myself to sleep 6-8 hours before an exam. This small adjustment worked really well (I ended up getting my GPA up to a 3.015).
After my JR year, I took 5 summer courses. Now that my confidence was rebuilt and I had learned a bit about how I learn,my goal for the summer semester was a 3.7 GPA. I followed my new found ideals and ended up with a 4.0. I continued using these new adjustments and my Sr year I took 20 and 21 hours and ended up with 3.8's both semesters. I plan to continue working hard and smart, and hopefully after two more semesters I will be good to go.
So my advice for all the young premeds that are posting about how to do better in school: TAKE IT ONE SMALL STEP AT A TIME. Fixing your GPA is not an over night thing, you need to slowly chip away at it. No one can tell you exactly what you need to do to fix the grades, but by taking it easy and not becoming impatient, you will able to fix them yourself.
For those are stuck in a rut, I suggest that for the following term, you take 1 core class and 2-3 easy/fun classes. Fun classes should be things like foreign language, art, history, or just about anything that you would enjoy and know for a fact to be a guaranteed A. By doing this, you will only have one class to worry about. That way you can focus hard on your one hard class without being overwhelmed/ And at worst you end up with 2-3 A's and 1 B. This will not only build your confidence, it will also slow things down for you to recognize problem areas. Eventually you can start taking more difficult courses, and things will be easier for you to handle. Trust me, confidence is a huge thing.
As I have said, three of us did this and over a two year period we all went up by .5-.7 points in our GPA. My friend (not premed) went from a 2.1 to a 2.7.
