<p>I am going to be a freshman at UC berkeley or davis.</p>
<p>let's say I decide to take a couple a days off during school, will I get penalized by school authorties?</p>
<p>I know I will risk missing class and info, but otherwise, is it alright?</p>
<p><em>laughs</em> No one will care if you cut class- it's you who will bear all the penalties and consequences of missing lecture.</p>
<p>EDIT: There are some courses that has class participation, particularly English writing courses which would count against you. But school authorities wouldn't be calling you and checking where you are.. unless you are kidnapped or something.</p>
<p>It depends on the instructor usually...each instructor usually sets their own attendance policies.</p>
<p>redski's right... most schools allow profs to choose their own attendance policies. Always check the syllabus!</p>
<p>Some profs don't check attendance...but give pop quizzes that count for significant portions of your grade.</p>
<p>So yea, it's not completely clear cut. That said, no one's going to come after you and sit you down for a talk about not cutting class...they assume that if skipping is a problem for you, it'll show on the transcript as a lower grade.</p>
<p>For the most part, attendance isn't mandatory - but overall you'll get a higher grade by going to class rather than not going just because you'll be a bit more familiar with the instructor's style & what he thinks is important. Some professors will give out a pop-quiz if they start noticing low attendance (more to take attendance rather than see what you know). But overall, the professor wouldn't even notice that you weren't there and wouldn't care if you were there anyway.</p>
<p>If you miss a few days, it won't really make a difference. Attendance is mandatory in classes like chem lab where you can't make up the daily assignment very easily and other classes where there is a participation grade.</p>
<p>Just make sure you get a note from mommy saying how you were sick . . . </p>
<p>College isn't high school - if you need to skip class to finish a paper, your prof won't find you the next class and yell at you about not having a note. I know people who go to maybe half their classes but do all the work and do well on tests and get A's. Sometimes it's better to skip a class and finish a paper for another class. You really have to learn to be responsible though and not abuse it, or you're going to be looking at some bad grades.</p>
<p>Be aware that it depends on the school and the class size, though. At the UCs, you're unlikely to be noticed or cared about to that extent, however at smaller schools or those with smaller classes where the professors build relationships with each student and tend to be more individualistic, it is actually quite important to be there virtually every day.</p>
<p>it just depends on what the class is. some prof's say if you miss 3 classes you loose a letter grade and some prof's just don't care. you'll figure it out from the beginning because they put attendence information in the syllabus. my classes were all pretty small so all of the prof's knew me and they'd realize if i wasn't in class. </p>
<p>i was the best person in our class at coming an hour late to my computer graphics class.. (it was pretty much a waste of my time to go, so i just went for the second half of it.. made up what i missed in the first half in our 10 minute break, and then finished the second half in about 10-20 minutes and would leave for the day.. great class) and i think i missed at least half of my digital imaging classes for about a month because we were working on a project that i decided i would be better off working on at home rather than in class... i would pop in for 5-10 minutes a week just to touch base with my prof. but i got A's in both of them..</p>
<p>that's an example of a prof not caring as long as you get the work done :)</p>
<p>At my first college I found that going to lectures was useless for nearly all of my classes. The lecture material was straight from the book and did nothing to help understand my engineering homework. At my second school the classes were smaller and the professors actually went in-depth into the problems that they were teaching the class, so I found that missing class was not a good thing in many cases. If I had a choice I would never attend lecture because engineering lectures are among the most boring things for me to do. It's either that or I have just lost my patience with lectures since I am graduating in May.</p>