Long story short, this is technically my third year of college but my school considers me a sophmore. My grades were pretty decent throughout college, and I have three w’s so far (one in a bio course when I transferred to my school, and 2 in the same calc class) Thing is, I’m a computer science major and I truly hate what I’m studying. Only did it because my parents wanted me too and now I’m up the creek this semester because I’m basically failing everything besides my bio (even though my grade isn’t hot in here either) and bio lab course which I plan on keep no matter what.
Besides those 2 courses, I have 2 CS courses, and a math course (not calc). I can’t drop the math course (which I’m failing completely, like no chance at all to even get a D) without dropping one of my CS classes. Now my other CS course is also not going so well. My plan was to keep trying but with another midterm and final coming up I really doubt I can truly bring up my grade that much.
Moral of the story is I’m switching majors once the fall is done to something completely different and unrelated to engineering. I know I’m going to get a academic warning (which means nothing at school, but I’ll end up getting the same thing anyways when/if my gpa goes past a 2.0) anyways with 3 w’s, but I’m honestly so scared my GPA is going to go in the toilet. And since I’ll be switching majors, these CS courses won’t count anyways, but I have no clue if having all those W’s is going to look awful, or if people are going to look at my transcript and think “well I can see why they switched out”
Do you plan on working out of college or going to grad school? If you’re working I doubt they’d ask you for your transcript. As for grad school chances I have no idea
Not sure yet, but I would want to work after graduate if I find a job that relates to my degree. Maybe grad school 5 years down the line, but it’s not in the cards right now to go to grad school as soon as I graduate. And if I did go to grad school, it would be for something completely different then the classes I’m dropping.
W’s indicate that something is going on where you cannot handle the course that semester. It could be medical, social, or academic. If you have one semester where you had 3 W’s, you should be able to explain what happened. Like “I was in the hospital” or “My father died” or “That was the semester I realized that computer science was not for me. I switched majors to underwater basket weaving and have done well since.”
So try to figure out what the issue is…taking too many classes? Too many hard classes? Taking wrong (for you) classes? You will need to figure it out so you can start on the right track and do well in the future.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking about saying, because I mean it’s the truth. I’m getting 3 w’s this semester because I’m realizing that my cs courses and my heavy math class is not for me. I know when I switch majors I will do a lot better (I’ve always struggled with math courses and the engineering course were always a struggle for me, I would just barely pass them.) I just have no experience on how this would look would future employers or if it won’t matter at all because I’ll be in a completely different field anyways. I was so stressed and worried I even emailed the head of my new major to ask him about his opinion but haven’t heard back yet.
I know my plan from here on out, I’ve just never had an experience where my whole semester besides 2 courses goes down the tubes. I had to manually drop the two courses today and the woman in the bursar’s office gave me a hard time about dropping two courses at once and told me all my w’s are going to look bad, so I chickened out and didn’t even mention the 3rd class I want to drop even though I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to do it online.
Make an appointment with your academic adviser to discuss this. ALso maybe go to the Career office and see if they have any tests that help you find what major is good for you. Talk to a favorite professor of a favorite course and see what they have to say.
But right now talk to your adviser. …NOW… before you do anything else…if you Withdraw and go to Part time you may not be eligible for financial aid nor housing.
^^^Yes, agree with @bopper. Talk to your advisor ASAP, Determine if withdrawing from the classes will move you to a part-time status. If the withdrawals do move to part-time status before you do anything you should meet with ResLife to determine if it will impact your housing situation and Finanical Aid to determine how it will impact your aid.
Hey guys, so this is what happened. Also let me just say I do not live on campus (my college is close to my house) and my family pays out of pocket for my tuition so I don’t have financial aid or housing and I already paid for the semester.
My advisor who is also the head in my new department (I’m switching to something in the humanities for those curious) told me that my GPA is more of a concern than the W’s (especially because I’m switching out) so he advised me to go ahead and drop the course then have a failing grade. Especially because I won’t be retaking these courses anyways. He told me that an employer isn’t likely to look at my transcript and if they do it’s just to confirm I have a degree and to (maybe) see my cum GPA. He says it would be more of a concern if I had 3 W’s in a semester related to my major (same thing regarding possible grad school in the future). He said if anyone gave me a hard time about it whether it’s related to grad school or the professional world to just be honest and say what went wrong and that I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing.
Besides, all my W’s (I honestly hate how many I have) are all related to engineering or math. I’m not a bad student at all, which is why I feel so terrible about all of this. The rest of my transcript is A’s and B’s. It’s not like I sat down and did NOTHING and decided to just give up, because otherwise I would just finish up my CS course and be done with it, but my grade is so far gone.
I talked with a couple of my friends and one of my friends said she failed calc and her gpa took a huge hit and its taken her forever to bring it up (and she wants to go to med school). And since I don’t have a long time left to graduate (compared to say if I was a freshmen and had another 3 years to bring up my gpa) I suppose I wouldn’t be as worried. But since I’m expected to graduate in either 1 year to a 1 1/2 years I don’t have that much time to fix it if something went wrong.