Hello everyone! I am currently an undergraduate freshman considering applying for transfer admission into the Cockrell School of Engineering for the Fall of 2020. After doing some research on the transfer process, I discovered that the grades earned in dual credit classes “follow” you around for your entire career, and affect more than just the high school GPA (believe me, I’m kicking myself for failing to realize this earlier.) While I didn’t totally bomb any classes while enrolled in DE (two classes for a total of 6 credit hours at a 3.00) they would hypothetically bring my cumulative transfer GPA down as stated in the title. The thing is, the two classes I took are college algebra and trigonometry, and I will be applying for transfer with Calculus 1 and 2 credit. My question is, if I achieve a 4.0 for the entirety of my Freshman year (I’m currently on track) will the admissions office treat the 3.83 (which seems to be around the cut off for transfer applicants for Cockrell recently) as it is, or will they consider the fact that the lower grades were earned during high school, and that I have done much better in the more advanced math classes, which are also a part of the “technical coursework” that they “carefully review.” (as stated on the Cockrell external transfer website) Any insight or correction of faulty logic on this would be greatly appreciated!
I have two reactions to this.
First of all, you cannot change the past. You can do your very best from now on. If you can get A’s in calculus in university, then this will go a long way to offset B’s in pre-calculus. Do the best that you can do, and this will open up opportunities. I don’t know if this will get you into Cockrell/UT Austin. However, if you do anything related to engineering then knowing calculus very well will be very helpful for a very large amount of what you do in the future.
Also, in my experience if you do very well in high school algebra, trigonometry, and pre-calculus, then calculus is pretty easy. Students who have trouble with these prerequisites seem to find calculus difficult.
Putting this together, my suggestion is that you try very hard to stay ahead in your calculus class. You should seriously consider getting a tutor or seeing the professor after class to get extra help. Work hard on your homework. Make sure that you understand why things work the way that they do, and do not just memorize. If you forget the formulae in the middle of a test, you should be able to re-derive them in the margin of the test before correctly answering the test questions (and yes, this did happen to me once).
By the way, most very successful people have something in their past which is significantly worse than two B’s earned in DE classes while they are in high school. Don’t kick yourself too hard over this.
@DadTwoGirls Thank you for your perspective and for the quick reply! I’m sure that eventually I will need extra help on a few concepts and will seek out office hours, but I can genuinely say that I have no concerns in my ability to keep up in calculus right now - something about the fast pace just works for me. It’s funny you should mention the ability to derive formulae, just yesterday I found myself needing to solve for the derivative of some inverse trig function on a practice test because I had forgotten it. It’s always a good feeling when you can solve for things that are generally memorized and have a better understanding of the material because of it!